Pitstop in Salta

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South America » Argentina » Salta
April 5th 2006

Saved: July 28th 2015

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Rock a las Nubes

For me, it´s the cactus and the clouds that betray the fact that this is an earth shot, not a moon shot.

We chose the town of Salta in the Argentinean north west as a place for a pitstop. It was on our route up South America, a handy place for moving on to Bolivia and a quiet place in which to take a break from being on the move for what seems like all the time. As it turned out it rained most of the time and the traffic outside the hotel meant that we weren’t catching up on as much sleep as we wished, but there you go. Ain´t complaining. When it was dry enough we sat at café’s in the pleasant central plaza whiling away the afternoons with beer and empanada, the local version of pasty, and shooing away the shoe shine boys. How they thought they could do anything for my walking boots I’m not sure, but they seemed persistently optimistic. The evenings were mostly spent feasting on deservedly legendary Argentinean beef that left me wondering just what it is that we´ve been eating back at home all this time, and some none too shoddy examples of the national grape produce.

We did manage to lapse into tourist mode on a couple of days, taking the cable car

Valley View

Looking back down the valley, road on the left, railway on the right

up to the local peak and being well rewarded with distant views of the Andes that surround the town. The main event however was the “Mercedes Benz a las Nubes”, a less evocative sounding replication of the famous but currently non-operational Train to the Clouds. The tour starts by following the railway into the Andes and does indeed head into the clouds on an unpaved road that winds its way up the valley. We are treated to impressive views of cactus fields nestled at the foot of jagged outcrops, colourful rock and distant peaks swathed in cloud. The many different tour operators who conduct these tours congregate at the dusty old town of San Antonio de los Cobres where one restaurant is doing a roaring trade in supplying lunch to hordes of tourists, and outside which the locals are doing their best to make a peso selling dolls, hats and, obscurely enough, bits of rock. One little waif of a girl in an oversized baseball hat charmed C out of her bottle of coke and was later seen demanding a peso for the photograph a tourist had just taken of her. Leaving the railway at San Antonio we head west

Mountains

I stared at this view for a few minutes, and then did a double take when I saw the mountain peaking above the clouds (just to the right of and above centre)

on a bone jarring road so unpaved that I suspect the driver was navigating by desert compass. The first afternoon stop was at a salt lake, a huge white expanse blinding to look at for too long even with sunglasses. The salt miners who work here wear guerrilla style face protection that makes them look very sinister indeed and we learned that the souvenirs they sell so cheaply actually double their salt mining wage. From here we crawl our way a little more smoothly on paved roads that snake up to the highest point of the journey at a breathless 4170 metres (over 12,000ft) above sea level. The road down is an equally breathless journey down the steep sides of a glacial valley with views of impossible looking and impossibly coloured rock that I can´t possibly describe adequately. The tour guide joked that we were at the gates of Minas Mordor (one of his better and more PC jokes in fact), but I´m not so sure that Mr Tolkien hadn´t seen this area himself.

Enough with the words, look at the photos and weep, because the actual views are infinitely better. If you´re travelling in this area I can´t