Salta

Ok… Argentina is big. Really big. 27 hours and much of my sanity later, we arrived in the city of Salta on the western frontier. Normally we try to avoid travelling for so long, but it turns out that there isn’t much to see between Iguazu and the west of the country. Flights were incredibly expensive, so we took a bus… A brutally long bus. Thankfully we have the laptops, so at least we were able to watch some movies in English.

Salta is an old colonial town, and as such it makes a pretty chill base of operations. Lots of cool bars and restaurants are located here, and the people seem to take life a bit more easily than in the big cities. The history here is pretty rich as well. Salta’s claim to fame is that it was the city that first declared independence for Argentina from the Spanish crown. It’s other claim to fame is actually the musical genre of the pena (warning youTube link)… which is as much of an outing as it is a musical form. Unfortunately, we were too drunk/full to ever make it out to one of these events… but we did eat a lot of good food out here. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but food out here is 1st rate. This is especially true for steaks, which I happen to love :)

Aside from the city, there are a ton of outdoor places to see around Salta. Several incredible canyons are nearby and we took advantage of the proximity to sign up for a tour while out here. The one that we visited was called Quebrada del Toro, named after the Toro River that flows through it. The drive through here was amazing. This region is rich in various mineral deposits, and the hills and valleys in the area reflect this by glowing in reds, greens, whites, yellows, and browns: the colors of the various oxidized metals (iron, copper, borax, uranium, etc.). En route, we visited a large salt flat appropriately named Salinas Grandes. This was a fun visit for taking photos, as the flat expanse makes for good forced-perspective shots, tricking the human eye. Apparently there are two different types of salt flats, and they are actually called different things… at least in the Spanish language. A Salta (I think…) is a salt lake created solely form dried ocean water. Salt mined from here does not get replenished. A Salina on the other hand, is formed from a volcanic uprising… as such salt mined here is actually replaced and re-grown from below! Pretty cool. Because the salts come from a volcano, there are many more minerals contained within besides sodium-chloride. Much of the salt is actually mined for borax or potassium… and is poisonous to us fragile humans. We were careful not to put our hands in our mouth after touching the stuff. What’s cool here is that the entire bed is only solid on the surface. Dig down a foot or so and you’ll inevitably hit water. The salt miners here dig vast networks of rectangular salt pools and just leave them be… the volcanoes below do the rest to replenish the salt from below.

Check out the link below for pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/richmosko/Salta

… and here is a link to Salta on the map of Argentina (Click Here).

Tags: Argentina,Salta,Quebrada del Toro,Salinas Grandes