Salta, Argentina

Salta was a refreshing change after Asuncion. It´s a very flat city but supposedly has the largest church bell tower in South America - if you look very closely you can see this in the foreground in the picture above.

We have spent three days in total here.

The first day was free for site seeing and shopping. I tried some local market food which was actally OK - Tamale and some local cheese.

In the afternoon I went up on the cable car and got some great views of the city. I walked back down to get some exercise.

In the evening we went out for a Steak at one of the Footprint Guide recommendations. It was one of the best steaks I´ve ever had - (Dad and Steven I bet you are jealous when you see the photos) - they gave us free Champagne and Empanadas (which are like mini meat pasties) to start. In fact the steaks were so good that even one of the veggie girls had one!! The local Argentinian red wine was good too (made with the Malbec grape)but possibly the best thing was that it worked out at under 5 pounds per person!!

The next day was whitewater rafting and nearly the whole group went along. I´ve ordered a photo CD of the day so will hopefuly be able to upload some shots. It took me a while to get into it but once I did I really enjoyed it - we rafted for about 12 kms down the river. It was a grade 3 course (intermediate) There were some good rapids but our team managed not to capsize the raft. It was a long day but everyone enjoyed themselves and the rafting organisers cooked us a BBQ (more steak yet again!!). On the evening we went out for a few drinks for the tour leaders birthday. There´s a good bar in the central square called Time Bar where you can sit outside and watch the world go by.

We were delayed for a day in Salta but will head out tomorrow towards Uyuni in Bolivia. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were supposedly killed in a shoot out in a bank near here.

Finaly I´ve included a photo of the campsite at Salta. There was good news and bad news when we arrived - the good news was that the campsite has the largest outdoor swimming pool in the southern hemisphere - the bad news was that it was off season so was empty!!!