What to do in Salta?
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2004
1
5
38
Trip End
Ongoing
Salta,
Argentina
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Iīve asked where the name comes from and the best answer Iīve heard is the town takes itīs name from the salt flats about 4 hours out of the city. In Argentina the distances are so huge that 4 hours is considered a stroll. We took an 18 hour bus ride to get here but if you think that the country is 12,000 km from tip to toe you might get an idea of the size.
Back to the salt flats. Despite what you might have heard about salt flats this particular one is not a dried up salty lake. Instead the alluvial flow from the surrounding mountains brings salt to the valley below. The workers here can only work for 25 years and after that they start to go blind due to the constant sunlight and the reflections off the salt. They receive 5 pesos per tonne
Abseiling down a dried up waterfall
. If you think that a bottle of salt costs 2 euros which is about 7 pesos and a bottle contains 100 g of salt and a tonne contains 1,000,000 g of salt you can see how they are getting ripped off by the Argentinian government. And they have to pay 240 pesos per month in taxes.But Salta is so much more than salt flats. On friday we went white water rafting. Feckin brilliant. It was on a river that had class 3-4 rapids. The hardest is class 6 so it wasnīt so bad. There was one class 4 rapid when we dropped 7 meters in one go. Keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Afterwards we went hiking up a 1,000 meter hill or mountain in your language (I mean Carrauntoohil is only 1,080 m high and at the moment I am typing this in a town at 1,500 m altitude). To get back to the area we were staying in we had to absail down a dried up waterfall. Not too shabby at all. And all for the low low price of 35 euros. Happy days.
Yesterdat (saturday 11-9) we went on tour. Going on tour in Argentina is an undertaking and in total we covered 600 km in 15 hours. My ass is numb. We went to a settlement like Newgrange which was inhabited from 1,000 AC to 1,400 AC. The lads lived underground and buried their dead in the garden.
"Whatīs that smell?",
"Granny"
"O, si".
But that was their custom
One day my son, this will all be yours
. Archeaologists found hieroglyphics which foretold a large force that would kill off the tribe and so as not to be killed the city of 3,000 people dispersed a year before the Incas rolled into town. The Incas only lasted 100 years before the Spanish arrived who considered the town too cold and isolated and it is only now that it has been found again so that lads from Ireland can run around looking for arrow heads and axes."Is that and axe?"
"No, its a stone".
We really landed on our feet in the hostel. At the moment we are the longest standing clients there so now we are given the keys to the beer fridge and are almost working for the hostel. People have come up to me thinking I work there. We will wait here until the lads arrive from Bolivia in a few days time and then it will be the 12 pubs of Salta.
Pauds is happy now that Cork won the All Ireland, boy.
