Salta, nicknamed ‘Salta the beautiful’ is an old colonial city in the north west of Argentina. The guide book says the city has a population of 535,303, smaller than Mendoza, but still a decent sized city.  We had looked forward to visiting it for a long time, having read about the city when we were still researching destinations to visit while still living in Wellington.  Driving into the city first impressions weren’t great.  Narrow busy streets, chaotic traffic with lots of pedestrians doing random stuff.  The municipal campground 6km from the centre was where we’d planned to stay but it gave us bad vibes so we decided to move on.  We were lucky to find space at a Posada very close to the city thanks to the help of the tourism office.  It was also insanely cheap, only 170 Pesos. Unfortunately Semana Santa (Easter) was starting the next day, and most people have five days of vacation as a result, Thursday through to Monday. It felt like all of Argentina descended on Salta and the north west of Argentina.  For the next five days we were constantly battling crowds and having difficulties with finding accommodation (even campsites). In the end Semana Santa won, and instead of taking our time to see Salta and the Jujuy provinces we ended up spending one day sight seeing in Salta and then camping in San Lorenzo, a village 12kms outside of the city.  However a whole group of dogs were at the campsite as well and they barked all night long, and even fought with each other.  Not a wink of sleep was had, and while we thought we’d stay a couple of days extra in the village we ended up packing up mid afternoon and driving four hours north to the village of Purmamarca where we camped the night before crossing back into Chile via the infamous Paso de Jama.  The one good thing about this rushed finish to our time in Argentina  was that we came in on budget, and spent the very last of our Pesos buying expensive fuel in Susques, a small village just a couple of hours before the border crossing into Chile. Continue reading →