Salta - Almost Bolivia

South America » Argentina » Salta
June 1st 2006

Published: June 18th 2006

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Vitaliy

Local people

At the far north

Only at a distance of one nights' bus from Cordoba, Salta is totally different from the rest of Argentina, primerly because of the people.
No more the European look - half of the residents here look much more like Bolivians, and this difference is so sharp compared to the people in Cordoba.
The architecture is also much simpler - almost all the buildings are 1 or 2 floors, although the city is quiet big.

But like in Cordoba, the good stuff about Salta is the country side - those small villages around. Therefore I ended up renting a car twice - once going south of Salta, and once north.

I had a luck renting a car with a great company - Paul from Norway, Cameron from New Zealand, Deborah from Australia and Eitan from Israel.

The driving itself was quite interesting, as Salta is basically one big intersection, and no driving rules apply here. Then on the way back to Salta from Catchi I had an experience driving in the worst possible conditions - it was a really bad and curvy dirt road, two way though in many places only one car could pass safely - having a

Salta

Me & Paul

high cliff at one side, during the night, add to this the fact that we went through the clouds, so the visibility was close to zero, and you'll get the best possible driving conditions.

The first time we rented a car we went south, to Cafallate. The biggest attraction there are the road itself with interesting rock and mountain formations, and the town of Cafallate, famous for its bodegas (wineries).
Luckily for us, Kameron is an Oenologist (he's in the wine industry, basically tasting, and redistributing different kinds of wines to different countries, if I understood correctly), so he took us to some great bodegas, including Colome - the highest winery in the world at 3015m. This is really a rich peoples' place. There I tasted the best white wine I ever had, and also some great sandwiches and an interesting ice cream desert, based on a local cactus.

In Cafallate we did as well an awesome field quad riding, which is going on a small 4*4 ATVs on a 4*4 road, which was allot of fun. I know I'll do this again whenever I'll get a chance.

Than we haded back to Salta late at night,

Salta

so we couldn't enjoy the scenery of the road, but took this fact to our advantage - Paul understands allot in photography, so he taught us some interesting tricks, and we did some great night shots.

The second time me and Paul went north, to interesting ingenious villages - San Antonio de los Cobres, Humamarca, Purmamarka and Tilkara. We passed also Jujui, where we had an ordeal with our car, but that's a totally different story.

On the way we saw some Inca ruins which weren't too impressive, and then went to the Salinas Grandes - the salt planes, a preview of the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, which were nice, but actually the most interesting part was the high road, which went as high as 4200m, my record thus far. I could definitely fill the altitude, especially since we didn't have enough time for acclimatization.

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