Salta

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Salta is by far the most colonial city we have visited on this trip. Whereas Buenos Aries was a large bustling city and Pt Iguazu was a small town supporting the falls, Salta has a traditional colonial feel. With its central plaza surrounded by the cathedral and government buildings, it demonstrates its Spanish heritage. It is very tourist friendly with affordable restaurants, sidewalk cafes on the plaza and museums, but does not have tourist city feel of cheap t-shirt stands. On the way to Salta, we met an Aussie couple in the Pt Iguazu airport. We had to wait a few hours for the late plane which is not uncommon for Argentina Aerolinas. We finally got to our B&B which turned out to be great find. 44 Caceros is run by Jorge and Susana who turned out to be great hosts. We really enjoyed our morning breakfast with Jorge with his limited English which was far better than our Spanish. He kept asking Leona what Frank said because he couldn’t understand him. This is understandable since Leona doesn’t understand him as well sometimes! We had lengthy discussions of Salta, Argentina and places to visit. We ran into the Aussie couple, Doug and Kelley, a couple of times in Salta and ended up having dinner together. Fun people as we talked a lot about each others travels around the world, golf and world affairs. We also did an all day tour with them through the salt flats and Purmamarca. It was long day and we exceeded 14,000 ft which caused a little bit of a headache for everyone. A very interesting afternoon was also spent at the museum which housed the mummified remains of three children who were sacrificed by the Incas and found at over 22,000 ft on top of Mt. Llullaillaco in 1999. After 14,000 ft, we sure as hell wouldn’t want to go to 22,000 ft let alone be sacrificed.



Next stop is Mendoza, the Argentine wine capital about 600 miles south. We are taking the overnight Andesmar bus.

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Photos

Salt Flats
Who has Frank in the palm of her hand? Leona!

Cactus
Slow growing at 1 cm/year