The clean mountain air

It may have been la cocina argentina; it may have been the bumpy road; it may have been the lower air pressure at altitude–heck, it may have been a combination of all three. Whatever it was, the drive to Cachi, with its twists and turns, breathtaking drops and dramatic ascents, took an especially harrowing turn that left us gasping for air and grasping for door handles–while the puna, spread wide in all its arid glory, watched over us and our pulmonary travails with a silence most puna-like in its sparse, unpeopled timelessness.

- M