Pascal_B, okt. 2023
First of all: Our tour guide, Monserrat, was great! Super friendly, spoke very good English, was knowledgeable and had a very positive energy about her!
So, the rest of the review is not linked to her performance.
A few things you should know when considering this tour:
- This is in fact not a 2 days trip but two different tours on two consecutive days. That means you will travel with two groups and potentially even two guides. It also took some coordination effort to organize our pickup in Purmamarca on the second day (but the operators speak English and can be contacted through WhatsApp, so it all worked out in the end).
- This trip has close to no physical activity. That means you will sit for hours and hours on a bus, get off every now and then to click a few pictures, then get on again. The only longer stops are in villages to get something to eat, the salt mines in the first day and at a pottery workshop on the second day.
- What we learned during our stay in Argentina: Most probably you will get the same tour much cheaper when booking locally (eg through your hostel) than booking through a platform like this. This is simply an effect of different exchange rates but over the course of the trip this can sum up to several hundred dollars.
- While you will find bathrooms throughout this trip (and the guide helps with always announcing the next bathroom options) please bote that there often not in good condition. Toilet paper and soap are not a given. So, if you go make sure to carry some paper and some disinfectant with you.
Now for the trip as such: What is truly stunning are the views you will have on this tour pretty much from the second you enter into Jujuy. That alone is worth a trip from Salta up north. The mountain of seven colors is great but does not look as nice in really life as in some pictures you might find online. However, you will see these different colorings throughout the trip so the overall phenomenon is impressive.
The salt mines are primarily great for pictures. Make sure to take sunglasses, otherwise you will be pretty much bkinded there.
The appeal of Purmamarca was only revealed to us at night (and thereby not as part of the organized trip) when we discovered the surprising and amazing live music scene this village has to offer.
On the next day the pottery workshop (tour only in Spanish unfortunately, but our guide gave us the most important information upfront) and the stop at the tropic of Capricorn felt to us a bit like filling activities and in the first case a chance to buy souvenirs.
Humahuaca was to us quite frankly a bit underwhelming (again, guides tour only in Spanish). There ia a restaurant organized there with cheap food and a very authentic experience, a band came and played a few songs, the other guests enthusiastically sang along. If you consider going to that restaurant: Unfortunately, the place served dirty plates (and we are not talking about water stains, these plates were seriously dirty) and both in the salad and in the empanadas were sand.
The next village, Tilcara, we liked much better, it also seemed to be in better shape. Unfortunately, we only got 30 minutes there. If you are looking for a proper and fully functioning bathroom, this is the place (eg cafe A La Payla).
We did not cover the church of Uquia even though it was part of the description.
So, can we recommend it? Not in this 2 day setup. The second day was not too interesting for us and in hindsight we probably would have found something more relevant for our taste.
What we can recommend is doing just the first day and either coming back to Salta in the evening or (if you have the slightest interest in live music) staying the night in Purmamarca and then coming straight back the next morning.