Sunny Salta

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So another overnight bus journey, this time around 11 hours, from Cordoba to Salta. We knew that this wasn't going to be quite as luxurious as they weren't offering the same service. The seats reclined some way but were nowhere near as comfortable as the full recline though we did manage to sleep a reasonable amount. Dinner appeared to be a range of different cheese and ham sandwiches - brown bread, white bread, some kind of rolypoly pudding thing - with cheese and ham - and a main course of rice with unidentified meat. Overall probably worse than airline food. In the morning we were woken by the steward throwing our breakfast packs at us - not exactly 5 star service!

The hotel hadn't received our reservation when we arrived but luckily still had a room and we had a lovely breakfast there while waiting for it to be ready. Somehow our first day in Salta rather disappeared without us doing very much, not helped by the fact that everything around here closes for a long siesta between about 1pm and 4pm. Late afternoon we went to a private ethnology museum near the hotel where we were greeted by a rather amusing middle aged man who was slightly camp. He offered to give us a guided tour but when we declined he pretty much gave us the tour anyway, hanging around in each room watching to see what took our interest and jumping in with information. There were some fascinating items that had been collected by the director of the museum over 2 years of travelling through northern Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. We got the impression that he had also been involved in some of the research though he only seemed to focus on certain themes, endlessly making us look for snakes, feathers and tigers (we think he meant jaguars) in the designs on pottery and textiles. He also kept calling us ´boys´- a translation of ´chicos´we assume but amusing at the time.

Having an early start the next morning we went in search of a relatively early dinner but this is Argentina and almost everywhere was closed at 7.30pm and if not, empty. Still, we finally managed to find a place for a quick snack around 8pm.

The alarm went off at 5am the next morning for our trip out to the mountains and salt lakes. When we last came to Argentina we had read about the Tren a las Nubes (train to the clouds) that ran from Salta high up into the mountains with a number of switchbacks and two 360 degree revolutions (in the horizontal plain, not the vertical!). We had been looking forward to this ever since though had been aware that it stopped running in 2005 due to maintenance requirements/an accident/somebody suffering from altitude sickness and them not having correct medical facilities on the train....take your pick of the reasons. However, everything we had read in the last year or so suggested that it would be back up and running by the end of 2007, then early 2008 and then by May 2008. In the weeks running up to arriving in Salta there had been little new information and so we were not surprised to discover that the train was still not running, though we did eventually see a newspaper article saying it would start on 6 August....so near and yet so far!

So instead we booked ourselves onto a specially designed truck that did the route up to the mountains but then travelled across the puna to salts lakes and down from the mountains a different and equally spectacular route. The truck had hatches in the roof which could be opened so that you could stand on the seats and get the full panoramic view.

It was a very long and very cold day but full of so many amazing views that I will quickly run out of superlatives. The road up into the mountains follows some of the route of the train and breakfast was served by one of the stations just as the sun was touching the tops of the surrounding mountains. We had a brief stop at Tastil, where there are some pre-Columbian ruins, though we only had time to look briefly around the small museum and travelled right through to San Antonio de Las Cobres at a breathtaking (literally!) 3,775m. This is largely a mining town and has an end of the world feel about it - we didn't hang around long. From there the road wound along the high plateau north and we stopped an hour or so later at a hamlet (not sure where you call a place with only one family) in the middle of nowhere where we were shown their greenhouse to grow tomatoes (pretty amazing at this altitude) and their freezer made out of salt bricks. We also ate lunch off salt tables....and very good it was too - a local stew called locro.

From there we pushed on to Salinas Grandes, the salt lakes. These are a huge expanse of dirty white salt stretching as far as the eye can see onto which we drove the truck and had a walk. The salt is washed down from the surrounding volcanoes when it rains into the lake but because the area is almost desert, the water soon evaporates leaving hard packed salt. They mine the salt by digging pools into the salt until they hit water and then leave the salt to crystallise out in the water which they then collect and take to be processed. Wandering around in the sun was the first time I'd felt warm all day, despite having had a huge woolly poncho to wear on the truck over my multiple layers....how do people live up there?

From the salt lakes we hit our highest point of 4,200m at the top of a pass taking us back east away from the mountains. We hung out of the truck for most of the journey which switched back and forth down the cactus covered mountains. Our final stop was at Purmamarca, at the bottom of the pass, which is famous for its 'Seven Coloured Hill' - the mountains in this area are full of different minerals and have amazing colours. Unfortunately it was late in the afternoon by the time we arrived so none of the hillsides were in the sun though you could see that they were quite impressive. The day ended with champagne all round before some of the people on the truck got off to stay somewhere nearby and we had wine and nibbles on the long drive back to Salta, arriving at nearly 10pm. While it was Saturday night and this would be just about the time Argentinians start going out for dinner we were exhausted and Hugh was starting a cold so we just fell into bed.

As we'd come to expect the following two days in Salta brought blue skies without a cloud and we took it easy while Hugh recovered from his cold just meandering around the town, sorting a few things and visiting a couple of museums. The highlight of these being the MAAM which was built to house the remains of 3 mummified childrens bodies found at the top of Llulliallaco, a volcano near the Chilean border in 1999. It is believed that the children were sacrificed to the gods as part of one of the many rituals and celebrations that the Pre-Columbian groups had. The museum has a collection of the many artifacts found buried with the children including shell necklaces indicating trade with very far off coastal groups. They also have set up specially climatically designed laboratories where they can study the mummies without them decaying any further. The bodies were naturally preserved by the exessively cold and dry climate the top of the volcano. They have one of them on display at any one time and we saw the six year old girl who was partially damaged by a lightening strike at some point but is still wearing clothes and has braided hair left. It is really quite moving to look into the eyes of a 6 year old from 500 years ago.

We also had one fun night out at a local Peña - a restaurant where they have a folk music show, sometimes bringing in the audience. The one we had intended to go to was unfortunately closed (of course!) but there was music coming from the restaurant next door and when we had a look in we spotted a couple, Adrian and Dina, who had been on the truck trip to the mountains so we joined them for dinner. There was an excellent singer for the first half followed by very impressive dancers and Adrian, being originally from Buenos Aires though now living in the US, wowed us (!) when he was pulled up to dance with them.

And that was Salta - a lovely town surrounded by mountains and with a lovely climate, at least in winter....I imagine in summer it's unbearably hot. We'd arranged to pick up a car following our 4 days there ....but more of that next time.

Lots of love

S + H xx

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