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The city of Salta is located at 1.150 meters above sea level in Argentina´s northwest part, closer to Chile and Bolivia than to Buenos Aires. It is the capital of the Salta provincthewith a poputation of around 620.000 inhabitants. In Salta we find the southmost remains of the Inka trail as well as other ruins. Salta is also the argentinian city with the best preserved colonial architecture.
The trip to Salta started around 10am, almost on time, with a modern, clean and fully operational Andesmar bus (a big difference to what I had in Bolivia). The drivers were very friendly and there was even coffee and hot water (for mate drinkers) for free. Next to me was sitting Facundo, a friendly and very communicative argentinian law student returning home after 10 weeks travelling through Chile, Peru and Ecuador. He had started at 1am in Iquique and was one of the few passengers onboard as the bus reached San Pedro.
The drive was nice and the road in excellent conditions. Everything went find for about 3 hours until we reached the border. At this place all buses queued for control and there were two buses in front of us, one of them was an Ormeño going from Lima to Buenos Aires. After a short while we had another two buses behing us, both from La Veloz del Norte and one of them was coming from Lima too. To be honest I didn´t expect that many people to take the land route to travel from Peru to Argentina, it is a 3 days drive!!. Most of the travellers were famiiles with children, returning to Argentina at the end of their school vacations.
Nobody gave us an explanation of what was happpening, but it took in total 4 hours to have everybody in our bus "controlled". It seemed to me as we had just arrived at lunch time and the agents and people at the counter were tired and decided to have a looong break. It was Friday in case that explains something; our baggage was not controlled ?).
But the good thing is this gave everybody time to interact with other co-travellers and at the end we had a small group of people with some contact and the same destination (Salta), without a reservation and knowing that due to this delay we would be arriving Salta close to midnight.
On the way to Salta we passed Argentina´s Salinas Grandes, looked very nice but was a sort of repeatition after what we saw in Uyuni.
Once in Salta, one hostel had sent an employee to the bus station to advertise and get some passengers to come. It was midnight and everything else was closed so that with the photos of the rooms, a free taxi to the hostel (700m away) and a good price (70 Ars) he convinced 8 of us. To be honest, the place was noisy and not very clean but who cares about that at midnight after a 14 hours bus drive.
Agustin and Facundo, the argentinean fellows in the group guided the rest (Ulli from Markdorf, Alejandro from Santiago, me and a couple others) to a place in Salta's center with a dinner menu for 60 Ars, at 1am!!. With a full belly, ear plugs and mask nothing stopped me from sleeping long after sunrise.
The next day was used to walk around in the city. Salta´s cathedral has a beatifull and very rich inside that shows the richness this area had in times of the colony.
It's main square (9th of July square) is very colonial too, full of monuments.
There is also a monument to Francisco de Toledo, Viceroy of Peru who send the order to found the city in 1582. The spanish conquistadores arrived to Salta (and later Cordoba) from Peru and Bolivia, before they had established Buenos Aires as new center.
The other streets around the square are busy with shops and colonial churches.
After lunch, me and Ulli walked to the top of the San Bernardo hill, east from town. There is a park with refreshing water falls and a nice view of the city and the entire valley. It was a warm, humid day.
In the evenning we (Alejandro, Ulli and myself) went to a peña called La Casona del Molino, a place where the locals get together for dinner and bring their guitars for improvised singing and dancing local folklore. The atmosphere was very nice and the food too.
The next day was raining (first rain after 2 weeks) and I had booked a tour to Cachi, a small city in the yunga region near Salta. The drive to this place is known for its curvy and steap roads, unfortunately it was so cloudy that we could not see the road behind at Cuesta del Obispo.
Santos, our tour guide, was an incredible entertainer and managed to get everybody in the tour participating in all activities, questions and jokes despite the early hours (the tour started at 7am), short sleep and bad weather. It was a lot of fun; I cann't remember having such a funny tour before.
At one of the stops I got interested in an old Ford pickup track across the street. A couple of photos later I noticed there was somebody doing repair work in the truck's inside; it was Tito. Exchanging a few words was enough to get engaged in a conversation that almost caused the tour bus to leave without me. Tito and his family lived in Peru for 3 years sometime ago and the truck still had some peruvian stickers on its windshield.
Once in Cachi at 2.500 meters high, we stopped 2h for lunch and some sightseeing. It was my chance to try Locro, an argentinean speciallity. It was tasty; perhaps a big heavy for the heat (one cerveza grande cooled it down) but not similar to the brasilean feijoada as somebody had claimed. Other options were Empanadas salteñas, tamales or humitas. Does it sound familiar?
We returned to Salta around 8pm. Santos our guide and enterteiner had invited everybody to join for dinner at the same peña I went the day before. I don't know who joined him, my bus to Cordoba was leaving at 8:30 and I just had time to say good bye and jump off the bus. I felt I should had planned one more night in Salta.
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