Last week I returned to Calilegua cloud forest for the first time in nearly two years: and in a couple of weeks I will be taking intrepid guests up to Tilcara to do a four day hike which finishes in Calilegua.
Calilegua, the Yungas (“warm valley” in Quechua) northeast of Salta, has fantastic sub-tropical vegetation, but access is limited because of its heavy rainy season (up to 1,800mm), so we only run trips there from April to November.
Compared to other short tours of ours over three days, like the Classic wine route through the Valles Calchaquies or the combination of the Quebrada de Humahuaca and the mountain plateau, our Salt & 7 Colours tour, it’s not so widely requested, perhaps because it’s less well known.
That’s a shame, as it offers fantastic scenery, a complete contrast to the more arid landscape further west.
I will be going back next month with guests from the UK to do our Fourteen Colours & Cloud Forest trip, through Calilegua, back down into the Quebrada de Humahuaca, and across into the mountain plateau, a circuit which has been opened up thanks to a mountain road built in October 2019.
On my latest trip, with the two Johns from the UK, we met our local guide Teresa in the nearby city of Libertador San Martin, hub of the Argentine sugar industry, where Ledesma produces more than 400,000 tonnes of sugar (and 120,000 tonnes of paper) every year.
She took us on some hiking trails within the national park (on one of which a puma was spotted a week later!) and then we continued to the hill village of San Francisco, wghere we spent a couple of nights.
The following day we hooked up with another local guide Daniel Cruz and went on a hike into the Selva Montana (one of the four different biosystems in the Cloud Forest which change according to the altitude).
It’s always been an obligation to contract guides when entering national parks, and it makes sense when they are easily available (and knowledgeable, as they always are in my experience).
Whether we are inside a national park or not, at Poncho Tours we always work with local experts on the ground when doing longer hikes, as they’re up to the minute on changes in climatic conditions, route changes and local sensibilities.
But from September 15th, in President Milei’s drive to liberalise tourism (and many other sectors), it will no longer be obligatory to contract local guides, except for activities regarded as high risk like rafting, horseriding, diving, fishing and activities on ice (not that you could actually do any of these things without the essential equipment provided by specialist agencies).
In Santa Cruz, a province in Patagonia I’ve not visited (yet!), famous for its Perito Moreno glacier, the local guides association is challenging the ruling in the courts.
A few months ago, perhaps to prepare the way for this new legislation, Milei appointed a new head of national parks, Sergio Martin Alvarez, a 58-year-old architect with no background in tourism or conservation.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he commented: “Tourism guides who do a good job have nothing to fear,” as they will still be contracted because of their skills and professionalism rather than as an obligation.
That may be so, and we will still continue to work with local guides, but will every agency do that?
The deregulation of the national parks is part of Milei’s campaign against government waste, of which there is admittedly a huge amount: the iconic photo of him wielding a chainsaw (then copied by his “bro” Elon Musk when he was briefly running DOGE in the USA) during his 2023 election campaign represented his determination to cut the flab.
As ever with any surgery, operations need delicate and careful scalpels rather than chainsaws: otherwise you risk cutting to the bone and killing the patient.
