Salta is more indigenous in color and culture than the other cities I've seen in Argentina, but it also embraces its colonial heritage. It’s not short on restaurants, bars and sights, but the main draw is the surrounding mountains, deserts and forests. So after exploring the city for just over a day, Sasha and I rented a car headed north.

The roads were remote, and sometimes barely passable, the rock formations were dramatic and colorful, and the towns were quaint and friendly. The highlights were Purmamarca, home of the famous Cerro de Siete Colores, and Iruya, a town that seems so hard to access that it shouldn't exist. Aside from the fact that both of us got violently sick for 12 hours (I was keeled over in the street not 20 minutes after claiming that whatever she had “probably wouldn't affect me, because I never get sick”), road trip 2.0 was amazing.

We made it back to Salta with a filthy car, just in time for Sasha’s 5pm flight home. It had been a whirlwind 9 days, into which we squeezed a bit of everything. I was sad to send her off so soon, but there was only a month until my return to Los Angeles. Her departure seemed like the beginning of the end… of the beginning?