Porfidio Puca no tiene reparos en acercarse a un grupo de motoqueros que cenan tranquilamente en el único lugar habilitado en la pequeña localidad de Tolar Grande en la puna salteña y advertirles que, si no van a usar los caminos para su travesía, mejor se vayan. El daño que puede realizarle una huella de un vehículo a los estromatolitos que custodia es irreparable si esto sucede. La anécdota la compartió en 2017 a través de sus redes sociales un conocido agente de viajes salteño cuando se encontraba con otro grupo de turistas extranjeros al que guiaba por la zona.

Big Tolar is almost 14 hours from the capital of Salta.While 631 kilometers separate it by RN51, the road is complicated, of gravel, with calamina and stone and can only be reached in high -bearing vehicles as trucks or 4x4 cars.There circulate today between 15 or 20 trucks that go to mining ventures that began to expand in the area while tourism, especially post pandemic, was now relegated.The garbage, in those paths it is recurring, regrets: “Plastic bottles and hygienic paper always appear on the route through which more vehicles circulate.It's a shame".

"Before the pandemic they visited us 900 tourists from Italy, France, China, Korea, Japan, England or Germany," Puca recalls in a telephone dialogue with La Gaceta from his "office", in the middle of Puna.The sky is clear and communication is done without problems.

“Now many Salteño, Tucumano, Cordoba, Mendoza, Entre Ríos, Chaco and Buenos Aires came now.Pass a truck per day with 3 or 4 people ".According to the park ranger, everyone is surprised and appreciated for their work "it must be that they never met someone thrown into the desert, in a salt," he says with a smile that crosses the phone."I feel that we are doing homeland here".

The best time to know Tolar Grande is spring, summer and the first days of autumn- from October to March-.The intense winter cold means that, by snowfall, the roads become dangerous or inaccessible.

The Guardian

The sea eyes are three lagoons of volcanic origin in the middle of a white salt, whose color varies according to sunlight between turquoise and green.In specialized tourism sites, travelers recommend going to dawn to have better light at the time of photos.It is estimated that the water of these lagoons is four times more salty than that of the ocean.

HELLO How do U Clean An Rgb Mousepad Without Destroying The Wirs ??MINE IS SO DUSTY NOW AND IDK How To Clean It I ’… https: // t.CO/4R3UMKAMX8

— jana ni mitsuya Thu Jun 03 05:14:55 +0000 2021

There, a group of Conicet researchers led by Tucumana María Eugenia Farías discovered living stromatolites, microorganisms considered creators of life environments on Earth because they create oxygen from carbon dioxide by photosynthesis.Sea eyes would be an important reserve for the air we breathe.

To avoid the pollution of the environment, it is prohibited to get, approach or step on sea eyes.The posters in the place and the function of Puca is that: prevent people from circulating there and that do so with caution around the lagoons, since on the edge the terrain is fragile and brittle.

The park ranger walks every day round and forth from the town of Tolar Grande, where he lives, in the eyes of the sea, the provincial area in which he works.The area is arid, dry and windy: “I leave at half past five in the morning of my house and at 7 I am already in the sea eyes until 19 or 20 hours.They are an hour and a half or two of walk.I bring my food, water and mate every day.It is very nice to come here.Once I left some bread and cheese for the next day but the foxes in the area, which are accustomed to seeing me stole it.It was very funny, ”he recalls.“Here you have to be 8 hours of service and you leave your home quietly.I educate and teach people to take only photos.It is nice to work in an area like this reservation, ”he says without turns and explains that the only times that he was not to guard the sea eyes was because he was making the censuses of vicuñas or flamenco that the Ministry of Environment of Salta performs or wastraining in capital.

Mina chance

Al límite con Chile, en el departamento de Los Andes se encuentra un pueblo fantasma que dejó la Mina chance.It is more than 4 hours of large tolar, for that lunar landscape and crossing the Salar de Arizoo.Porfidio Puca says that his first encounter with the Puna was when he worked there, at the end of the 90s.“At that time sulfur was thrown for Jujuy and I was loading some trucks.We carry sleep bag, preserves and water.The last truck in which we were traveling and we were seven or eight days stranded without help and almost no food until we started the walk towards a large tolar where they attended us.There I was working in the Municipality with a contract that was renewed annually until I entered the Secretariat as a parking lot, ”recalls Puca.

At a height of 4.180 meters above sea level and about 25 km away west, near the border with Chile and Catamarca, the exploitation area of the old Julia mine is located, which extends on the slope of the star hill (also called Lastarriaor sulfur) at an average height of 5.505 meters above sea level.Founded in the 50s, chance was a poured mine and town, with access to the railroad.In their golden stage, they lived there 3.000 inhabitants between the workers of La Minera and their families and who provided services to the mine.Today, 4 -day tours are offered to know “mining stories, ghost towns and incredible landscapes”, according to some tourism sites.

Cuando uno llega a los Ojos de Mar y comienza a dialogar con el guardaparque, si se menciona haber ido a la Mina chance, la primera pregunta que realiza Puca es: “¿estaba el perrito?”.In the mine, or what remained of it after the successive looting of the last decades, two puppies were lived that could never be transferred.One of them, the oldest, died frozen due to low temperatures (-20 ° C) in winter.The other, one black, still stays alive and receives each visitor from the place.

“Every time someone goes around, I remind you of bringing water and food.In the dining rooms or when I see someone doing tourBut they bit us.They are brave, so we decided to leave them and assist them as we can.We no longer touch them, they must believe that we are taking away the place where they live when we go ”.

Drug in the Puna

The news about trucks entering with drugs from Chile and are abandoned before the attentive gaze of Gendarmerie are reproduced continuously in the Salta media."I think there are already 18 trucks that the people of Gendarmerie found in the area: abandoned or covered, with the lights covered to move at night alone with the moonlight," says Porfidio.“Be of several stories because they leave the vehicles and start walking through the Puna that is very hard.Once they found two traffickers dressed in pilgrims in the Salar de Pocitos.84km had walked to get there.It was September 15, Lord's Day and the Virgen del Milagro ".