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Published: June 30th 2008
Salta is a pleasant town in the North of Argentina with a pretty main square, and an Irish bar which showed the European champions semi-final! (poor Liverpool) The surrounding areas though have some of the most spectacular scenery I have seen so far this trip.
South of Salta is the Parque Nacional Cordones - the cactus national park! I know we'd already seen a cactus forest in Chile, but that was like a window box in comparison to this place. There were literally thousands of them......as far as the eye could see. Some were up to 10 metres tall, and they grow at rate of about 1-2cm per year, which makes them pretty old. Some looked like little people, some like big hands and others just looked like rude hand gestures!
Further south there are loads of gorges and amazing rock formations which stretch for miles and miles.
One of the rock formations is called 'the amphitheatre' in view of its shape and acoustics (and of course there was a man and a flute and collection hat perfectly situated to demonstrate this) and another is called 'Garganta del Diablo' (devil's throat) because once you've walked through the gorge you
are greeted with what looks like a giant rocky tongue sticking out of a giant rocky (and very ugly) mouth. There were a few stops along the way, to take photos, but primarily to say hi to the llamas and stray dogs.
We visited some little towns (Cache, Seclantas, Molinos and San Carlos) all complete with a pretty main square and whitewashed church then spent the night in a slightly larger town called Cafayate. This town was excellently located for visiting the surrounding wineries the following morning. The thought of drinking wine at 10am wasn't that appealing, but it's surprising what you can achieve when you put your mind to it. Our guide somehow picked up on the fact that we quite like wine (can't imagine how........) so took us to five or six wineries (instead of the usual two) and a goats cheese factory (yum). In celebration of Russell's birthday we decided to purchase a bottle or two, and ended up with seven; somewhat ridiculous when you consider how full our bags already were.......hmmm think the morning's samplings had impaired our usually excellent judgement.
North of Salta is a train line called the Tren a las Nubes
- the cloud train - which winds through the mountains with a huge number of impressively engineered bridges and viaducts. Unfortunately it was shut about four years ago for safety reasons though there is a road which closely follows its path. The cloud train culminates in a huge viaduct (viaducto la Polvorilla) which was apparently designed by Mr Eiffel, and you can definitely see a resemblance! We stopped at a little place called Santa Rosa de Tastil to see the pre-Inca Atacama indian ruins, and to admire more cacti. Lunch consisted of the local cuisine - goat empanadas (like pasties), barbecue goat and milanese llama - before continuing on to Purmamarca.
The north of Argentina has its own salt flats - not as extensive as those of Chile, but flatter, whiter, and upon sampling, I can in fact confirm, salty. Our penultimate Argentinian town was a place called Iruya, where a guiness ad was recently filmed! For the bargain price of 30million Euros. I wonder if they'll make there money back in guiness sales? Anyway, it's the ad with a giant domino cascade through the streets of a small town, if you've seen it. The town itself was quite
pretty, and its roads are too narrow for vehicles, but the three hour drive to get there was breathtaking, driving up to 4100 metres then down 1500 metres through the valley, on probably the most narrow winding road I've ever been on, sheer drops just outside the window.
The last night in Argentina was spent in Humahuaca where we found a cosy little bar with a resident puppy. I ordered a hot chocolate (instead of a g&t - unheard of I know) and received a cup of hot milk with a large piece of chocolate to dunk or dissolve as I saw fit - not as nice as it sounds - should've stuck with the g&t!
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