Salta

29/05/13 to 02/06/13 - We arrived in Salta in the early morning, quickly found a hostel, and then it was time to warm up. Salta is a small city, 1000 m above sea level, and is warm by day but chilly by night. We spent a day wandering around the city, eating at the market and going up in a cable car to the top of the mountain that overlooks the city. It wasn't an amazing view (then again we have been rather spoilt) but there were a lot of people doing aerobics and jogging at the top.


You can notice a change here from the rest of Argentina, the faces of people are different, looking much more Andean or indigenous and there are different food choices other than just steak, empanadas or pizza. We saw for the first time the colourful flag of the campesinos (peasant farmers) that we would see much more of in the coming weeks.




We decided to hire a car for 3 days to explore the countryside around, which was a good decision. On day 1 we drove to the village of Cachi, about 150km west of Salta. The trip took 4 hours and we just had time to eat a lunch (llama stew) before leaving to return to Salta before dark. The real treat was the drive though, as we wound our way up switchbacks, through rainbow coloured rocks and mountains and up onto plains filled with cactus and occasional llamas and vicuna. We reached an altitude of 3700m and could feel it was harder to breathe and the air was much cooler. We needed to acclimatise and it was good practice. The roads were just gravel in places, but generally okay if a little dusty.

The next day we went to the district of Juy-juy, and to the village of Tilcara, where there was a ruined Inca fort and the Devil's Throat, a deep gorge through the mountain. Again though, the highlight was the drive, winding around hillsides above lakes and up through giant mud-mountains reminiscent of huge termite mounds. There was also a botanical gardens in Tilcara, with nothing but hundreds of varieties of cactus.

The biggest attraction near Salta is the famous Tren de las Nubes (train to the clouds). The tickets were really expensive and a lady in Tourist Information told us we could follow the same.route by car, so we did for our final day. Again it was a nice journey up through mountains, and across high plains up to 4200m to the Polvorilla viaduct. This was a feat of engineering when it was built and is still impressive now as it curves across the valley 70m above. We saw the train roll in for its final stop, where hundreds of handicraft sellers and their llamas had turned up to just in time to sell to the tourists who were hopping off the train. Half an hour later they were all packed up and making their way home across the ridge to seemingly the middle of nowhere.

We returned to Salta, returned our car (covered in dust) and spent our last Argentine pesos on a kilo of fillet steak, a bottle of Malbec and some potatoes for our last proper Argentine meal which we cooked in the hostel.