Salta! Not Salt-a

The guy at the bus ticket counter stared at us blankly when we said we wanted two tickets to Salt-a. Of course it was one of the many pronunciation mistakes we would make on this trip. We tried saying it a few different ways before he realised we were talking about Salta! He said it in a beautifully staccato way that I have since repeated to myself frequently while walking down the streets of Salta! An exclamation mark is required every time.

To be honest, it's a long way from Mendoza and San Juan and I genuinely wondered if we'd made the right decision to head so far north when our next destination would be Iguazu on the other side of the country. But whenever we mentioned we were headed to Salta(!) the reaction was always 'Ahhh, Salta(!) muy linda!'

And yes, Salta really is beautiful, with its old buildings, cobblestone streets and citrus trees whose fruits you can pluck while walking down the footpath.

We'd decided to rent a car to drive to the nearby canyons but we arrived on Sunday afternoon during the seemingly perpetual siesta, so we figured we would accomplish little that day. On Monday it turned out it was a public holiday for Columbus Day (which was actually the following day but they moved the holiday to Monday) and we could only hire the car from Tuesday.

So we ended up with a whole day to wander the streets of Salta! Now there isn't a huge amount to do in town, with just a few pretty churches (which were already closed for siesta by the time we organised the car hire) to look at and a nice town square. We had a lovely lunch of Super Panchos while sitting on a park bench watching the activity in the square of which there was actually quite little. In fact, with the amount of traffic that day, we figured driving would be a piece of cake.

After checking out the churches we wandered to another park, where most of the locals were hanging out and celebrating their day off. They had row boats for hire in the tiny lake which were very popular and everyone was eating ice creams, fairy floss or fruit cups. We wandered through the markets which were primarily selling gourds for mate. In fact, I can't imagine there is sufficient tourist demand for mate gourds and I'm sure every Argentinian already has 20 at home, so I'm not sure how so many stalls selling this and only this actually stay in business.

We then checked out the cable car that would take us to the top of the hill, but decided the view probably wouldn't be that exciting. Of course we could have walked to the top to get some exercise, but sitting in the park eating a fruit cup seemed like a much better idea. Hey, do what the locals do right?

Next Stop: The slowest 190km in Argentina