Return to Salta

In all the excitement of my few days in the Quebrada de Humahuaca, I kind of forgot about Salta. It wasn't that nice really, probably just the change from Buenos Aires that did it. I got back Saturday night after a long bus journey and headed out for dinner.

I've been keeping a notebook of every restaurant I go to along the way. This is the nicest dining room I've been in. There's a wonderful buzz - a chatter that floats above the tables punctuated only by the clattering of cutlery. A couple of waiters take up a guitar and drum. I don't like live music in restaurants. But I like it here. The whole room is alive and happy. Looking around, everyone is smiling. Isn't that the whole point?

I wake up late on Sunday, since I sank another beer and watched Rocky III in my hotel room. Predictions? Pain. I've got six hours before my flight, so after a big lunch in the plaza, I head up the teleférico - a Swiss made cable car that takes you to the top of Cerro San Bernardo. Like every hill in South America, it comes complete with it's own Jesus, and some wonderful views. It occurs to me that people are walking around with those bunches of leaves because it is Palm Sunday.

After a coffee or two and just chilling for a while, I head back down. I'm kind of fascinated by the cable car itself. How much convincing would it have taken to get in the first ever one? This guy only dates from 1987 apparently, but the technology still looks somewhat primitive. Either way, it works. And it beats the hell out of the steps.

Back at the bottom I stroll through the park and remember completely why I liked this place so much. Everyone is just taking it easy. They're all smiling, eating ice creams, sailing round the boating lake. It is a town completely at peace with itself. Not that there's anything wrong with Buenos Aires, but all big cities, by their nature, suffer from the same complaints. I'd take the composed, effortless, tranquility of Salta before the frenetic mayhem of BsAs any day of the week. And so would they. It's written all over their faces.

Humahuaca

I eventually woke to find Humahuaca bathing in magical early evening light. Everything in the town was glowing, I had to rub my eyes to believe it. I strolled around for a while, fuelled by my third gatorade of the day, snapping away. I couldn't face a proper meal and survived on a few alfajores bought off some dude. First impressions again (not counting the walk from bus to bed) and this is my favourite of the three towns I've stayed in in Jujuy.

Come morning I am feeling normal again. I decide to take a cab to a hillside cemetery we passed in the bus and I'd read about in the guides. I trawl Frommers and the Lonely Planet looking for it's name but the entry seems to have mysteriously vanished. I splutter out my request to the taxistas and head off. After a while, no cemetery. Definitely not where I left it. Then it transpires that the one I'm looking for is Maimara, which is south of Tilcara, not Humahuaca. God I must have been tired. I basically forgot a whole day. 30 pesos later and my cabbie drops me at Humahuaca cemetery instead, which he insists is very nice. And it is.

Their cemeteries here are alive with colour, and they build little houses for the dead people to live in. It's Saturday morning and the place is buzzing with people, tending graves, arranging flowers, and there's even a new guy being interned. I feel awkward strolling about with my camera, an obvious gringo, but everyone smiles and says hello. They really are great. Everyone raves about Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, but given the choice, I'd definitely rather see out eternity here, away from all the pollution, cats, famous dead people and American tourists.

I walk back into town past the monumento a los héroes de la Independencia. I'm sure they'd be proud of it. It towers over the town, fist clenched and raised triumphantly. Which is pretty much how I feel when I get to the top of all those steps.

It's Saturday. I had thought about taking the tren a las nubes - a crazy train ride that takes you up into the Andes on a winding, spiralling track. It is meant to be amazing. But you're on the train for 17 hours. I sit in the Plaza Santo Gomez, sipping gatorade in the shade, watching the world go by and congratulate myself on not going. A cute little kid picks the right moment to ask me to buy her some food and walks off with ice creams in every pocket. Once I get lunch out of the way, I'll be ready to leave. Sadly.

A brief struggle

After the match, fuelled by a few cervezas, we climbed one of the hills to drink some mate and admire the view. I'm admiring these guys' patience as I stutter out my ill-conjugated Spanish.

The sun is slinking down for a well earned rest as we decide to circumnavigate the village via the paseo de los colorados. Night falls about half way round. I am starting to feel properly shattered by this point. The best I can manage is food (llama) and sleep.

The llama and I have a post digestive disagreement and I spend most of the night awake with stomach cramps. When I don't have stomach cramps, my sun burnt shoulders are rubbing against the sheets in agony. Check out time arrives and I am done for. Sun, altitude, cerveza, exercise, lack of sleep and llama have combined to put me in the hurt locker. I skip breakfast, sink a gatorade and board the bus for Tilcara.

Tilcara

I'm headed for Humahuaca but wanted to stop here on the way. I step off the bus into yet another dusty little town, though it's bigger than Purmamarca. I'm in no fit state to do the place justice. I buy myself some food and water to take on the walk up to el Pucará, a pre-Hispanic hilltop fortress that overlooks the town.

View from el Pucará

The walk is okay but I start to feel a bit of altitude in my weakened state. At the top I settle down for my sandwich but it is inedible. I trudge back to town having admired the view and scull another gatorade. I trudge around town a bit more before making a snap decision to skip town, and bundle my things on a bus that is about to leave.

I must have crashed on the bus, since before I knew it I was in Humahuaca, rucksack cutting into my sunburnt shoulders and no idea where I'm going. I don't care what desperate shithole I stumble into, the first place I find with a bed for me I stay in. There are signs up everywhere for places, but the hostels themselves are nowhere to be seen.

I inexplicably cross a bridge, and find myself ringing the bell of the Hostería Camino del Inca. $220 a night! ¡Gracias a dios! I was thinking I'd have to settle for $10 and they give you a bucket to crap in, but no. I nestle down between the soft sheets and sleep for a thousand years.

Las Salinas Grandes

I sleep all right in the hostel, though foam pillows should definitely be banned. And I'm up early to take a trip out to the salt flats. I'm the only gringo on the minibus that takes fifteen of us out on the hour or so drive.

I'm excited about this - mainly for the photos, but as usual, things don't quite work out as planned. The best thing about the trip is the drive - it is breathtaking (in more ways than one). We start out along a gorge bordered by craggy ridges and peaks, before rising out of the valley, and stopping for photos.

We stop again at a peak of 4170 metres. Some guy passes out and the locals administer some coca leaves. I feel for my breath. I wouldn't want to be doing anything more strenuous than paying 15 pesos for a souvenir at this altitude. We press on, and as we descend, we glimpse the salinas in the distance.

They're very hard to photograph, and I have a kick ass camera. The light is reflecting off the salt and burning the sky. (Not to mention my skin - I now look like am permanently wearing a wifebeater). You can play around with the sense of perspective here, and people come up with some awesome shots, balancing people in their hands, standing on beer bottles, that kind of thing. I don't have a tripod though, and I'm on my own so it's going to be hard. The best I manage is to make myself look like a kind of giant.

The shots of just salt are just boring, and the only ones I really like have some kind of focus.

From the other side of the road on the way back, another chance to glimpse the stunning scenery. The clouds have dropped a little by now and things look very different.

Arriving in Purmamarca around three, I am ferociously knackered. Probably a little bit of sunstroke - I've basically been standing on a mirror at midday on the tropic of capricorn - and a kind of altitude hangover as well. I need rest. But there's a problem. El superclasico is on. My new friends console my bad luck at having missed the game as the residents of this sleepy little hamlet pack the cafes and bars, and we all sink a few beers.

Purmamarca

Salta itself nestles on a flat plain surrounded by lush green hills. The bus ride north to San Salvador de Jujuy is much of the same - green, lush and beautiful. I'd enjoy it more were the guy next to me not a) fat and b) singing along to his iPod. At Jujuy I change for a bus to Purmamarca, just in time. I sit next to a guy called Diego and amaze myself by managing to sustain a fairly normal conversation. Could being out of Buenos Aires, in the real world, where no-one speaks English, be the stimulus my pidgin Spanish so desperately needs?

This leg of the journey is surreal. The green and pleasant land soon yields to a barren, red landscape as we snake our way up the Quebrada de Humahuaca, carved out by the now dry Rio Grande. Purmamarca itself is tiny, barely four blocks square. It sits beneath the cerro de los siete colores, but is actually in a small dip between three imposing peaks. It is real backpacker country.

For the first time in my life I climb off the bus into the dusty street and look for a hostel. I find one quickly enough. It's new (bonus). The foam mattress hasn't been softened up by years of (ab)use so I can probably get some sleep. I wander around with the camera and sit myself down for a beer in the square. It's hot. A stereo pumps out an Andean pipe music cover of the sound of silence without a hint of irony, but it still can't detract from the basic peace. This is a special place.

Salta la linda

Although it's only been just over two weeks since Uruguay, I already felt like getting out of town again. I am meant to be travelling after all.

Flying across Argentina is an awesome experience - it is both beautiful and vast. The eighth largest country in the world apparently. It certainly looks and feels like a different country when we touch down in Salta. The air is clean for a change, the people look more Andean, and I think they smile more too. The stunning landscape frames them with a peculiar beauty.

I'm trying to travel like a backpacker. I have a backpack, and no hotel or hostel reserved. My guide is the Lonely Planet's South America on a shoestring. First choice in my new guise: bus or cab. I'm a fraud. I take a cab. It´s two quid more. I check into a decent hotel I got out of the Frommers guide and after a nice shower I actually see the bus pass my window. South America on a towrope.

Salta is among the most beautiful towns I have ever visited. I start walking to the bus station to check out plans for tomorrow (not very cool of me I know). I walk through Parque San Martin with it's boating lake, little foodstalls and cable car to the overlooking peak. I feel a long way from Buenos Aires.

Iglesia San Francisco

Heading back towards town I spot the tower of Iglesia San Francisco, a stunningly ornate church. From here I head into the main square, Plaza 9 de Julio. I don´t exaaggerate when I say it is one of my favourite plazas anywhere in the world. Breathtaking buildings line each side, the greatest of them being the 19th century Iglesia Catedral, widely considered the most impressive in Argentina. Inside is even better. I sit and think peacefully for a few minutes. Some might go so far as to call it praying.

Iglesia Catedral, inside and out

The plaza itself is full of people. Schoolkids, workers, viejos. It seems as though the whole town is here, just kicking back and chilling out. Like they know how lucky they are to live somewhere like this, and they need do little more than to just gently soak it up. The other three sides of the square house two museums and the old town hall, or cabildo. There is a wonderful sense of colonial splendour, for once not decaying resentfully.

Plaza 9 de Julio

The place is clean too. You're not hopscotching your way through a maze of dog turds everywhere you go like in BA. It feels safe, even when I ambitiously seek out a restaurant late at night that is blatantly no longer there, and literally cross to the wrong side of the tracks. Salta is great. I am at peace. It goes on the list as somewhere I love straight away and to which I will return. But first I have to leave; a bus ride north, and more spendour, await.