Salta

  Salta, Argentina
Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Day 24-27 (1st - 4th July): We arrived in Salta on Canada Day and were pretty wrecked from the long bus journey. We found a great hostel in the centre of town, which seemed to be run by distant relatives of the Adams Family. The whole family seemed really nice, except for the granny, who seemed very grumpy every morning.

Salta is a very interesting town, and it is much warmer than Buenos Aires and Iguazu. We went to the cathedral on Sunday night, but found it very difficult to understand the fast Spanish spoken. The choir was great and the acoustics were amazing`!

View of Salta

On Monday, Fraser had his hair and beard cut by a local barber, and then we took a gondola ride up to a nearby mountain overlooking the city (a very touristy thing to do). The view of the city and surrounding area was great and we chilled at the top with a nice, refreshing cerveza. We then strolled down the mountain, and noticed that the stations of the cross led the way. We found many locals running this route, which was quite impressive.

Original Train for Tren De Las Nubes Route

We were very eager to take "a trip to the clouds" on the famous "el train de las nubes", but once we got to Salta, we found that it hadn't been working for the last two years. Apparently, some tourists got stuck on the train at the top of the mountain, the army had to come to rescue them and the train company  had it's license taken away. Now, it looks like a Swedish company is going to buy them out and start running the train.

So, instead of the train trip, we took a car tour by one of the local tour companies. We covered a 500 km loop of stunning scenery. The landscape was mountainous and desert-like; however, in the summer season the area does get a lot of rain and sometimes the roads are closed.

Particularly striking was some of the remote houses that were there. One house we were told about was on the other side of a mountain, and the only access was a narrow steep path visible from the road that snaked up the mountain. It must have taken a whole day for them to reach the road from their house ... you wouldn´t want to get back home and then realise you forgot to buy the sugar from the store!

Along the way we stopped at the Tastil ruins (a pre-Incan civilization named by the Spanish after the musical rocks they had), then San Antonio de los Cobres (a unattractive mining town that seemed so remote from the cities of Salta or Buenos Aires), and Salinas Grandes (salt plains).

Andrea shrinks in size

Mini Andrea and Fraser

At the salt plains, we were quite disturbed when Andrea started to shrink to only a few inches in size ... not soon after Fraser was also the same size!





Fortunately the effect wore off after leaving salt plains, so that we could see the multi-coloured hills on the way back, and el cerro de los siete colores (hill of seven colours.)

Cerro de los siete colores

Our next destination is Cafayate ...