Saucy Salta

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En route to Salta we passed through some amazing scenery, most notably the Andes! And I cant quite believe quite how lucky I was, but we saw a volcano erupt...one of the four remaining active volcanoes (out of 38 extinct and 2 dormant ones) in the region surrounding San Pedro de Atacama and close to the geyser field we had visited a couple of days previously. At the Argentine border the smoke and ash from kilometres away started to fall so we had to make a pretty sharpish exit on the bus during our lunch!
Salta was a lovely colonial city with a beautiful (pink!) cathedral and green plaza. A few of us trekked up the San Bernado hill for views over the city and the Andes beyond. I thought it was only right to reward this effort with some steak (what looked like half a cow) and wine (Malbec) in the evening. Vegetarians (or lightweight rowers), please don´t look at the photo below... Argentina was much cheaper than Chile. Gemma, Steph, Leah and I had a lovely empanada (a kinda South American Cornish pasty) lunch with salads and drinks and it came to a grand total of 50 Argentinian pesos. You may think this sounds like a lot, but not when you know that there are 5 pesos to the pound, so for each of us lunch cost approximately 2.50 GBP. Dinner with the amazing steak and wine didn´t cost much more. The evening ended drinking Salta beer outside a cafe in the plaza at about 2 a.m. Some people had bought tons of coca leaves and were trying them out. I didn´t particularly like the taste of them, so Lee thought it would be a good idea to stuff them into my ear instead. Well, at least my right earlobe won´t suffer from altitude sickness.

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Comments

[Team Southey]

where there`s smoke ther`s always a volcano ...
Dear Brave Lizbie Just your ordinary ,every day occurence then ? ...althpough from that distance it does look very similar to one of your Dads mighty bonfires after he`s neatened the trees in the field! .... Try and be careful ! .Loads of love xxxxUs xxxx and Marms xxxxxxxxxx

[anonymous]

Lizbie all i can say is it looks a slightly better steak than Charlstons!!take care kes