Salta
By Jaimy de Vries
Me encantada Salta! The Salta province is widely known as “Salta la Linda”, or “Salta the Beautiful”. It’s easy to see why. The entire province is jaw-dropping at every turn. The city Salta is beautiful with lots of colorful colonial buildings and markets, its my favorite city so far in Argentina. It feels like I’m walking in Barcelona. The people here were really kind, the weather was nice (around 25 degrees) and the food (especially the ice cream) is really good! In just one day I felt at home.
After my flight I arrived at my hostel. I was surprised, even though it had a 9.2 rating, how kind the owners were and how clean the hostel was. I was even more surprised when I got a private room while I made a reservation for a 4 bed dormitory room. I had all the privacy to do some research about Salta and the environment. After a good night sleep I decided to go to the city center. First I walked to the tourist office. It’s always nice to get advice from someone who knows the area, because on the internet you can find lots of information, sometimes too much and you get overwhelmed by the tour operators. There are some good options in the city & province. I did all the main sightseeing’s and more! Here are the top things to do in & around Salta.
- City center: In the city center you can stroll and marvel at the colonial buildings, visit museums (Museo de Arqueología de Alta Montaña), take a chairlift to Cerro Bernando (with sunset) and visit the artensal market.
- Tren de las Nubes: You can buy a bus + train ticket for the Tren de las Nubes at the bus station
- Day trips: there are lots of tour operators that offer day trips from and back to Salta. This is a full day (12 hour) trip. Nice trips are to Cafayate, Cachi, Purmacara, Salinas Grandes, Humuaca, Hornocal, Quebrada de las Senoritas. You can also go to these places by rental car.
- Road trip: even better! You can visit all the places where you can go to on a day trip by rental car. You can sleep overnight in: Cafayate, Cachi and Tilcara. With a rental car you have more freedom, less tourists around you and you get to ride on some amazing roads!
- Tolar Grande: you can visit Tolar Grande by a tour. You can do it alone, but it's not to recommend because it's a remote area with lots of dirt roads. It's a 3 day trip to the high dessert, it is something different and highly to recommend if you don't like to do tourist stuff.
Salta city
There is much to see in the city center. You can just stroll and wander between the many colorful colonial buildings. I started my trip in the city center by walking towards the chairlift up to Cerro Bernando to get a panoramic view over Salta. Close to the chairlift you have the Artensenal market where they sell souvenirs, ceramics and more. I bought a one-way ticket (600 pesos) to the Cerro Bernando and hiked my way down on the stairs back to the city center. The panoramic view was amazing. You can see the whole city of Salta with red roof tiles, surrounded by mountains. Besides the great view you can enjoy the park at the top where you can stroll through the waterfalls, shop at a little market and grab a coffee at the panoramic restaurant.
A couple days later I took the chairlift again, but then before sunset. This is the best time to go up, after the sunset you take the chairlift back down where you can enjoy a view over all the city lights.
A perfect example of how Salta is, sunny and relaxed
Loved the colonial buildings and cathedrals
Not always so straight anymore…
Beautiful view from Cerro Bernando
The chairlift up to Cerro Bernando
Vamos a la escuela
Spanish class
In Salta it’s cheaper to take a spanish class than in Buenos Aires. Because I want to say more then “Mi Español es malo” (my Spanish is bad), I decided to take a crash course Spanish for backpackers. On the second day I started my Spanish class with Milton. We met up in a café and practice Spanish up there. I hear maybe 200 new words a day, it’s difficult to remember them all. But most of the time during our lessons we practiced grammar. He only talked in Spanish with me. Onl, when I didn’t understand what he was talking about, he explained it in English…it’s a good way to learn a new language. Muchas Gracias Milton!
In a cafe with Milton
Inca history
I found out that Salta has a history of the Inca culture. And I always had a fascination about this culture, so I was eager to learn more. I still had lots of time left, so I decided to visit the museum: Museo de Arqueología de Alta Montaña de Salta. One I can recommend to visit. The museum is about the archaeological heritage discovery in 1999 at the top of the Llullaillaco volcano in Salta. In that sacred place, more than five hundred years ago, the lives of three children and a set of miniature ceremonial objects that had a symbolic character were given to the gods in the context of the Inca Capacocha ceremony. The capachoa ceremony was hold if an important inca ruler died. The chosen children went to the volcano with lots of items to offer and show to the gods. Children were chosen by the community, the most beautiful and strongest children got picked. They walked to the volcano accompanied by a group of adults. They sang and danced along the way to the volcano, where they would start their trip to the divine world. They died peacefully, because of the effect of chica that they drank, the cold and lack of oxygen on such height.
Cafayate
On my first week I met Juliana, a girl from Brazil, and she was my roommate. She couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak Spanish. But one way or another we could understand each other perfectly and we tried to learn another language. We took a day trip together to Quebrada de las Conchas & Cafayate. The landscapes were, again, amazing: we saw many panoramic views over red gorges with big cactuses, rivers and rock formations. We took several stops at the Quebrade de las Conchas and took some photos. This town grew because of the winery families. We visited one winery. And of course I took a sip of their wine and bought a bottle. The tour was in complete Spanish, good for my SpanishIi thought. It was like a crash course learning new words. At the end I think I understood 5% of it. But I learned some new words.
Con mi amiga Juliana
Me encanta el helados!
Well if you know me a little I just love ice cream!! And in Argentina the ice cream is really good. The temptation is high…but you know I walk more than 10.000 steps every day. So I’m allowed to eat one ice cream a day. But one day the strangest thing happened… Here on the streets you see what I think are homeless or poor people with kids, they try to sell small things like socks, sandwiches or facemasks. They try to sell it to me a lot, because well I look like a tourist – so they probably think there’s something to catch. So as usual in the afternoon I was eating an ice cream and was already halfway there. Then one man with dirty clothes walked towards me, I was like “nooo not again!” And then the weirdest thing happened. He asked me for my ice cream!!?? First I thought I misunderstood him because he asked it in Spanish……
Good ice cream in Argentina (one of the best)
but yes he wanted my half eaten ice cream. I was already quite done with my big ice cream. So I was like “Why the hell not …. strange, but why not?” Then he called his son and was singing “hellado hellado” and he gave it to his son. So cute…it was my best spend half eaten-ice-cream ever.
Tolar Grande
In Salta I went on a 3 day tour with Origins travel to Tolar Grande. We drove in a remote area and stayed in a town in the middle of the Andean dessert. I booked this trip 4 days in advance, later my friend Anna and Paul joined. It was an amazing trip. We saw many different landscapes from gorges to a life-less red dessert and lots of Salt flats. It felt like we were traveling on another planet. We got to see some interesting wild-life too, mostly on the road itself, like Guanaco’s, llama, Suri’s (Andean Ostrich) and more. At night we got to see the milk-way and falling stars.
To read more about this trip, click on the link below.
Road trip to Jujuy
My last weekend in Salta I went on a road trip with a Paul, Anna and Cindy (a friend I met in Bariloche). We rented a car for 10.000 pesos a day and drove to Tilcara on route 9. First we drove through the jungle and later among gorges. Our first stop was Quebrada de las Senoritas. We parked the car and took a small hike of approximately 45 minutes. We took a little more time because of the 100 pictures we took at this amazing landscape. After that we drove to Hornocal – the 14 colored mountain. We needed to pass a dirt road with a normal car, we drove carefully because it was a rented car. We made it at the end of the day. This is the best time to go to this mountain because of the positioning of the sun. It was again an amazing jaw-dropping view. After marveling in this area for an hour we drove back just before it got dark.
Raodtrip with my travel buddy Anna
We reached Tilcara and had a nice dinner at a restaurant. Like very Argentinean restaurant stray dogs are welcome and they just love to get petted. During our meal we enjoyed a good live music show. On a full stomach we drove back to our hostel and had a good night sleep. The next day we had an amazing breakfast and then we drove to Salinas Grandes. Paul didn’t join us, so it was just a girls trip. Just after 5 minutes we got on hold by the police, because we forgot to put our lights on and she wanted to give us a fine. But luckily at the end we didn’t had to. To calm our driver and to continue on good spirit we put on a mama-mia song and sang-along! To get to Salina Grandes we needed to cross many hairpin bends. When we were finally there we drove on the Salinas Grandes itself. It turns out you need to pay a guide for 1000 pesos and they’ll escort you to the middle of the salinas. It was so strange and beautiful to drive on a salt flat. When we reached the center we took some fun photos. What was quite annoying is that we needed to leave after 30 minutes. So you can’t stay as long as you want. When we drove back and parked our car at the entrance I bought a nice lunch and we sat down on a picknick table. At that moment we looked around and realized that everything was made of salt: the food and souvenirs stands, the statues, the picknick tables and chairs, the road and even the souvenirs were made of salt. Of course I bought one salty souvenir, it’s quite unique. After Salinas grandes we drove to Purmamarca, famous for its artensenal market. The market is really colorful. They sell blankets and scarves in every color made of llama wool, they sell dolls, bags, and lots more! It was not that crowded as your read on the internet. After some shopping we headed back to Salta. It was a great mini-roadtrip!
