Tupiza, Bolivia: Canyon del Inca and La Torre

We took two very nice hikes in the desert surroundings of Tupiza, the first to the Canyon del Inca, which we did together, and the second to La Torre, which I did without Naomi.

The Canyon del Inca was a very narrow crack in red sedimentary rocks that you can walk up only by scrambling over little cliffs and waterfalls, and under huge boulders that block the way. In order to get there, we walked through some very dry quebradas. This one was called Canyon de los Machos because the strange rock formations look like men:
We also passed by this sedimentary unit that stands on end, projecting right out of the desert floor. It was called the Puerto del Diablo, or Door of the Devil.Here I am, standing on a little cliff in the Canyon del Inca.As we climbed up, the canyon eventually got this narrow.At the top of the canyon, we found a rare geologic oddity, called an armored mud ball. According to Naomi´s sedimentology professor, these are extremely hard to find in "the wild". We broke open this curious rock for the photo. It is actually a lithified mud ball that, at one time in the past, broke away from its muddy unit and rolled down an ancient gravelly hill slope, becoming rounded and gathering pieces of rock and sand on its outside as it went. The gravel on the exterior gives it its "armor", while the inside is pure, fine-grained mudstone.

While Naomi was still sick, I went out on a long hike through several little villages and fertile valleys in order to see La Torre, a huge tower of rock standing in a river. Here are some photos of the irrigated valleys that I love so much: When I stopped for lunch to eat my tamales, the people who were working in the fields also stopped to eat in the shade of trees, leaving their work. They were growing corn, carrots, beets, potatoes, broccoli, cut flowers, and these red onions, left in a beautiful pile.More fields and irrigation:I got lost, asked for directions, hiked down a riverbed without a trail, had to ford the swift river up to my waist about eight times, got very thirsty, and eventually found La Torre:On the way home, I walked on the railroad tracks along the Tupiza river, which was beautiful except for the sewage that flows down from the town. Here the river was constrained by a huge ridge of rock that formed a narrow gate:To get around it, I got to walk through this short train tunnel:

The day after this hike, we left Tupiza by jeep for the Altiplano and the salt flats.

--Ryan