BootsnAll Travel Network



Salta

Hopefully had my last long bus journey for a while when I travelled from Iguazu to Salta, another 17 hours. Salta is a city in the north west of Argentina, it has a strong colonial influence with a lot of interesting original architecture but is also one of the first places I´ve been to Argentina with a large indigenous population.
I spent a few days in the city seeing the sights and going to a few museums. I also went up in a cable car to the top of a hill overlooking the city.  There were good views at the top and it was a nice walk back down to the city.  I went to a really interesting museum about high altitude archaelogy and how they discovered 3 mummified child sacrifices on the top of a mountain near Salta on the border with Chile. I also spent a day going to San Lorenzo a small village just outside Salta where I had a good walk through the jungle.
I  spent the next 2 days doing tours organised by the hostel. The first one was a trip up to the alti-plano and salt flats. It was a really good day as the scenery was constantly changing. We started off travelling through the rainforrest in the valley, went up into the dessert where there was loads of cacti, and amazing rock formations. Each layer of the rock is a different colour because of the different minerals they contain. We stopped for lunch at the town of San Antonio de Cobres, which is a small mining town on the edge of the altiplano. On the way here we were giving coca leaves to chew as they are suppossed to help prevent the effects of altitude as we were up at about 4000m. They taste disgusting, like really bitter tea and I don´t know that they had much of an effect although I didn´t feel ill.
After lunch we crossed the alti-plano hundreds of kms of flat land with very little there except llamas and wild donkeys. Then we reached the salt flats which were very impressive as they covered such a huge area. After that we started heading back to Salta , stopping off on the way at Pumamarca, a small town famous for the hill of 7 colours, a rock formation by the town with different coloured layers in it. It was a long day as we left Salta at 7am and didn´t get back until 9pm, just in time for a big BBQ organised by the hostel. I had met a lot of people in the hostel over the previous few days so it was a good evening with lots of very good steak. We ended up going out to the area of Salta where all the pubs and clubs are for a few drinks and we saw a local folk music performance. But it turned into a bit of a late night. Ended up getting back to the hostel just in time to have breakfast before going out for the day on the next tour. This was a trip to Cachi, a small town a few hours drive from Salta. For me the highlight of the trip was driving through the Cardones national park. There were literally thousands of cacti either side of the road, in a valley surrounded by more amazing rock formations. We stopped here for a while to have a look round. The area also has a lot of spiders, didn´t manage to find any tarantulas but we did see a few black widows.
Went out to another BBQ that evening but managed to get back to the hostel in time for a few hours sleep before getting the bus the next morning.

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One Response to “Salta”

  1. Juno Says:

    Hi,

    Just wondering how long it took you by bus from Salta – Iguazu,

    Thanks,

    Juno

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