I’m a bit behind with the blog I’m afraid, but here’s the post about the next stop in chronological order. From Buenos Aires, we caught a flight to the town of Salta, a old colonial town in the North West of Argentina, founded in 1582. To give you an idea of the distance to Salta from Buenos Aires, the same journey by car would take 20 hours – what appears a relatively short distance on a map of South America is always much MUCH further than you can imagine.
We didn’t get to our hotel in Salta, northern Argentina, until 4.30pm and just had to dump our bags and go out immediately with our local guide, Mariano, to see the sights of Salta before dark. Salta is the first place where we’ve started to notice that people look different, with the more chiseled faces and darker skin we associate with Peruvians. People also seem to have shrunk considerably in height. We came across two vertically challenged police women and asked if we could take a photo of them with me (I was at least a foot taller than them) but they said it was against the rules, as they scuttled away from my large and looming presence.
The main square of Salta is really beautiful, with two stunning cathedrals – one pink and yellow and the other dark red and white. I just loved the architecture around this area and wished we could have stayed longer, so that we could have seen more of the town in daylight, as one evening there was just way too short. Hardly worth changing the sheets! Mariano took us out on a walking tour of Salta and then upon the Teleférico (cable car) to the lookout point called Cerro San Bernardo above Salta to point out the various landmarks. As it was early evening and getting dark it was positively arctic up there – it is mid Winter here after all!
Next day, we had a 7am start (yawn) and began to make our way slowly North through Jujuy Province and the Hill of Seven Colours and the Quebrada de Purmamarca, to our next northern Argentian destination of Tilcara. What an amazing and colourful area it is, as you’ll see from the photos. We stopped in the village of Pulmacara for a very hot hike and a bit of a history lesson and then had the most delicious and colourfully-presented lunch at a local tapas restaurant where we got to try all sorts of local delicacies. Amongst other things, more llama, but at least this time in an empanada, so it was shredded and very tender and tasty. A lovely little village with lots of Adobe buildings and Mexican colours. Linda (one of my fellow frosty tops) and I did some great bargaining at the local market to buy some pashminas.
With another few stops along the way we finally made it to Tilcara and I started to really feel the effects of the altitude – i.e. breathlessness, headache, nausea – despite the medication and gallons of Coca tea. In hindsight it could have been the medication that made me feel so unwell, since it came from a Brazilian pharmacy in the wop wops…You can also chew about 10 leaves of the Coca plant, which look like dried bay leaves, throw in a wee lump of volcanic ash for sweetness (?) and chew it into a pulp and then poke it up between your gum and lip and suck on it for several hours. Yum yum!
We had a beautiful hotel in Tilcara but again we were hardly in it, although we did skip the late afternoon optional tour and sat by the pool instead, which was luxury. Tilcara is 2465 metres above sea level it was super-hot there but a dry heat, which is very manageable. We had a beautiful dinner in the village, during which we were told that we had to meet for breakfast in the Bosworths’ room at 5am and be on the road by 6am the next day, as we were crossing the Andes into Chile and there was snow predicted on the other side of the border crossing called the Jama pass. We thought if we had to resort to walking over another border, at least from the Jama pass we could use our suitcase as a ride-on and reach the bottom fairly quickly. Luckily we didn’t have to test that theory :o)
2 Frosty Tops Do South America 