After returning from the southern loop with Zach and Reem, and a short breather in Salta, we packed up again to head north for the colorful northern reaches of the Salta and Jujuy provinces.

Unsurprisingly, the roads to the north were beautiful. Still we were surrounded by the flaky strata of folded red rock, but as we made for the north, there were more colors, more integration. Things seemed less stark, abrupt or surprising and it all flowed together into a harmonious whole. The towns seemed larger and more bustling than some of the small towns to the south, but they were dustier, drier, and it was a but more of a hustle.

Getting off the bus in Humuaca, we were in immediately hit by a wave of people trying to usher us in to hostels. Behind them, a wave of people selling pizza and empanadas. As we walked it became people offering truck rides to a local rock formation which, depending on who you asked, was either called “the fourteen colors” or “the eleven colors”. Funny on its own, funnier when you place that with the more famous feature to the south called “the seven colors”.

It’s hard to know what a town is made up when you arrive. It feels like we’re constantly arriving at places during siesta — we show up to empty towns and wonder/worry at the offerings and vitality of the places. Eventually, 5 or 6 rolls around and the streets are insane with life, people flood the streets from all directions. People take siestas pretty seriously in much of this part of the world. You get up early, open shop at 8 or 9, leave for a long lunch with the family around 1, take a nap, do some laundry, then come back to work at around 5 or 6, work till 9, eat a late late dinner, stay out drinking or go to bed after midnight… It’s intriguing, who doesn’t like naps? Still, I don’t think it’s for me.

Humuaca was cute, dusty. A small grid of roads with the ubiquitous churches and monuments, restaurants and artesian shops catering to tourists. With a short hike across the river, one finds the chalky white climb of rocks to the towns mirador. Shockingly, Humuaca was also host to one of the best/nicest restaurants we’d been to in months.

One of the most obviously different things we start seeing up this far north is the visible infusion of influence from Bolivia. Humuaca is a stones throw from Bolivia, and the women increasingly are seen with colorful skirts and those distinctive wide brimmed hats.

At a recommendation from Zach and Reem we next grabbed a bus from Humuaca to the tiny town of Iruya. The small bus would carry us three beautiful but treacherous hours to the northeast taking us in and over and through rich high desert landscapes. It became kind of a game to look at the impossible terrain ahead and guess where our path would take us. After awhile, the dominant feature was a massive gouge in the earth, thousands of feet deep — and it was carefully switchbacking down and along this impossible route that the bus would finally find, nestled into a gully along this canyon, the picturesque town of Iruya.

While Iruya has very little to actually do, it has plenty of things to see. I’ve never seen anything quite like this tiny hidden little town pressed in to a canyon wall. We spent one long day, and part of the next, walking the steep streets, laughing at wandering donkeys, and of course, hiking the local mirador and snapping photos. The evening was spent with new friends at our “hostel”, the house of an old man that hustled us at the bus stop. Sparse but comfortable, and dirt cheap, we enjoyed our stay that evening drinking wine and muscling through enough spanish to share a few laughs with our housemates.