To the Inca Bridge and Back

This should really be called the Andes part II, the previous installment merely the foothills to the Andes.  Dad, you'd said how much you liked the pictures, to keep them coming, and so this is especially for you.  For the rest of you, welcome to the Frank living room.  Pull up a chair while I share these pictures with my dad.  He's got some beer in the fridge for us, too.  Crack open a cool one.  I think there might be some chips in the pantry cupboard.  Not to worry about getting greasy fingers on the photos.

 

What struck me immediately when the snowy peaks came into view was not so much the height of the mountains--they are like the tall backbone of an old giant.  No, what was so amazing were the colours.  For us Canadians who've travelled through the Rockies, the Kooteneys, the Cascades, the Coastal Mountains--and for others who've driven through the cathedral peaks of the Alps--there is a sameness to those familiar ranges.  The Andes are a riot of colours, red and yellow and green and blue and grey, rocks, drifts and crags running and overlapping each other.  Vegetation, where possible in this barren landscape, adds another depth of complexity of colour.  Yellow grasses on green gravel or red gravel, or green cacti on red rock.  Each turn of the road opened one incredible vista after another.  The pictures don't do it justice.  You'll have to use your imagination, too.

The only valley we drove through where people actually lived.

The traditional roast chicken was delicious.

The scale was enormous.  I felt a little like Bilbo Baggins on his formidible adventure.

Along one valley a enormous river bed had carved out perfectly vertical walls, as though man-made.

The mountain in the background looked almost transluscent.

The concrete power pole is probably a couple of stories high.

At the top of the road the highest peak was obscured in cloud.

This is known as the Inca Bridge, a natural phenomenon. The purpose of the long-disused building in the previous picture wasn't immediately obvious.

It was bleeping cold.  We had to support the hardy vendors stuck outside in the freezing wind.

This is the same 'walled' riverbed.

We're almost back again into the plain near Mendoza, back to the warm temperatures.  It reminds me little of the American southwest, yet unlike anything there.

 Next time...Buenos Aires...

Love to all,

Grace