Whenever you mention Salta here everyone immediately says, "ooooh, Salta la linda!!" (Salta the beautiful!!). And it was a really nice city with great surroundings. Although if you can't make it to Salta, going to Arizona might be close enough (similar mountains, desert, cactuses, adobe houses and churches started by Spanish priests!).
I stayed at a hostel called Las Rejas but I had my own little room and bathroom, which was nice. It had been a long time since I'd stayed in a hostel and I'd forgotten that $25 a night doesn't get you much! I had a really skinny bed, with a foam mattress and the saddest single pillow ever. But it was clean and I got a lot of reading done without a TV to distract me. The only bad thing was that the place was really empty. I'd purposely chosen a hostel over a hotel in hopes that there would be other solo travelers, but there were only one or two people that I ever saw, mostly older couples. So I did spend a bit of time feeling sorry for myself, while eating sandwiches alone at cafes!
The nice thing about my hostel was that it was really close to the city center, Plaza 9 de Julio (July 9 is Independence Day). Most of the key tourist sites in the city are surrounding the Plaza. There is a massive, ornate cathedral and a history museum housed in the old Spanish colonial city hall. There is also a small but interesting museum called Museo de Arquiologica de Alta Montana, which houses the mummies of some Incan children that were sacrificed about 500 years ago, buried on top of a nearby volcano and found by archaeologists in the 90s. They only display one mummy at a time, but it is amazing how well-preserved they are - they actually look more like wax figures than 500 year old humans.
On my second day I booked a tour to some of the main sites in Salta & Jujuy (the next province north, bordering Bolivia). Again I'd hoped to meet some other travelers, but instead ended up with 20 Argentinians, only one of whom (plus the tour guide) spoke English! Everyone was really nice, and it was good practice for my Spanish, but after 15 hours my brain was seriously tired! We traveled in a converted truck, which had panels in the roof that opened up so we could stand on the seats and take pictures while they drove. There was even a tiny bathroom on the bus, but through careful planning and a minor level of self-dehydration I managed to avoid it! :)
The trip started by working our way over a mountain range to the high desert that borders Chile. There is a lot of mining in this area, including the largest production of lithium, so many high-tech companies have a presence in the area. We stopped in a tiny mining town and I noticed that the sign for the church was sponsored by Siemens! While driving through the desert we saw llamas (very cute!), vicunas (similar to a llama, but much rarer and with wool that is meant to be the best in the world), ostriches and wild donkeys. The area is very remote and the little farm where we had lunch was the only sign of civilization that you could see in any direction (and you could see really far as it was completely flat and treeless!). Lunch was interesting. It started with empanadas and quinoa soup (both good) and finished with llama meatballs (ok, but I couldn't get over eating the cute animals) and some sort of dessert which was basically corn kernels soaked in sugar water (pretty terrible).
After lunch we drove another hour to the salt flats, which were very cool. I was very grateful for my sunglasses because with a white surface and not a cloud in the sky, the brightness is almost overwhelming. The ground was completely made up of salt - you could scrape a bit off with your shoe and it looked just like sea salt in your hand. The last main stop was a little town called Pumamarca where there was a market for souvenirs and we dropped off a few fellow passengers who were going to stay overnight. Overall, a good but very long day!
Back in Salta, the next day, I took the cable car to the top of one of the main hills around the city. It was a little vertigo inducing, but a funny old lady from Uruguay that I shared the car with kept saying "Tenemos fe!" (We have faith!) and we made it! At the top is a park with a nice man-made waterfall structure and great lookout points over the city. I also did a mountain bike tour that took us a little bit outside the city to a provincial park. It was myself and a guy from Switzerland who had just come from travelling down the Amazon in a ferry - which sounded like something I am nowhere near adventurous enough to do! It was a great ride, but unfortunately it was 95 degrees and I was practically dead by the end of it.
One of the main things I noticed on this trip was the extreme levels of poverty and it was a reminder that outside of BA, Argentina is still a developing country. Most of the houses we passed while on the tour had outhouses and an oven outside. They were adobe or cinder-block and only one or two rooms, with a few chickens or sheep in the back. We also saw people riding donkeys or using small donkey carts to carry items along the road. The people in this region are also much more likely to be native South Americans and they look very different from people in the south of the country. In BA I do not stick out as a foreigner at all, but in Salta I was definitely a lot taller and paler than most of the population!
Salta and surrounds also were very Catholic. Every tiny village had a chapel and the rural bus stops would have a message painted on them saying "the Virgin protects you". I went into the cathedral in the city and people were lined up for confession during their lunch break. Even after sixteen years of Catholic school, I don't think I know anyone who just pops into church for confession on a random Thursday! The airport is teeny tiny, with three gates, but there is a chapel and before the flight a number of my fellow passengers went in to pray and light a candle in front of Mary (and we had a great flight! Maybe I should pray more before boarding?).
All in all a good trip, but I was very glad to get back to my (temporary) home in BA and especially my nice, comfortable bed!
Sounds amazing. Thanks for sharing!
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