What a beautiful village this is

  Purmamarca, Northern Argentina, Argentina Saturday, May 14, 2016

The packed bus trundled on through beautiful Argentinian countryside and 6 hours after we set off, we pulled up at Purmamarca. We were the only ones that got off. The thought immediately crossed out minds - "Does everyone else know something we don't?" Or was it the other way around? Maybe we knew something they didn't! We had to go through the whole - let's find somewhere to stay - game again and this time it was Jody's turn. She set off on foot leaving Bryan in the Tourist Information Office, armed with a simple map they had given her. As she walked around, she snapped off a few photos as this place was beautiful. The main square had an assortment of craft stalls all around it. Women with brightly coloured blankets and llama jumpers, hats and gloves on their stall sat around not seeming to really care if they sold anything or not. This whole place had the feeling of not having a care in the world The village was a collection of just a few streets - all dirt - no tarmac here. It gave the impression we had gone back in time to some sleepy European village where they still gathered together to bring in the harvest and drink ale on the village green afterwards. It felt like the England of Laurie Lee. It was dreamy! Yep - we are definitely the ones in the know here this time :-) All those tourists on the bus just sailed through this and onto Salta. We checked into a hostel and were soon sipping wine in the village square ourselves. What a perfect way to end the day as the sun went down. The following day we set off to find what we had come here for - the 12 coloured mountain. Having been already to Rainbow mountain in Peru, this was a natural stop for us - why wouldn't we want to see this beautiful coloured mountain too? It wasn't located very far away. Not like in Peru where we had to do a 2 day hike. Oh No! This one was tucked away around the back of the shops. A 3km walk takes you all the way around it on a well worn path - not well worn by foreign tourists that's for sure - just locals here. Then as quickly as we had arrived, it was time to leave again. Yep we were back on a bus and heading for Salta. Why on earth are we leaving here as we have only just arrived. Well it's the internet thing again. Bryan needed to work and we barely had a bar of internet signal. This place truly is a place from another time. So leave we must but this is definitely one place we would come back to and we hope it won't be too long in the future either.