I Drove All Night (1)

Tilcara cemetery
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[Click a photo for more!] My next hop was to Salta, the biggest city in the north of Argentina. And you can straight away ntice the difference, with many more Andean faces and aless cosmopolitian feel than further south.

I checked into a hostel, Corre Caminos, and checked out first thing the next morning as it was by far the scruffiest and least welcoming place I've been so far. I moved across town into Inti Hausi which was a world of difference away and straight away bumped into two Brits, Nick and Hatty. It was a hot, sunny day so we took advatnage and went for a mini hike in the hills outside town.

Sure enough, we passed through the clouds into bright mountain sun

Humahuaca cacti
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There' so much to see in the area around Salta that we decided to hare a car for four days and do a couple of circular routes north and south. Two others, Orla from the hostel and Luciano on hols from Buenos Aires, joined us for the first two-day leg.

We got the car, a shiny Ford Fiesta sedan, dropped off at the hostel and hit the road north. The weather in Salta was cold and grey but we were promised that it would brighten up as we climbed, and sure enough we passed the cloud line and the bright mountain sun came shining through.

Climbing through the clouds
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Salta is already at 1,190m and after a couple of hours we were passing the Tropic of Capricorn and went up to nearly 3,000m. Up here, you already feel the effects of the altitude - everything is more of an effort, even simple things like walking up steps or getting up after bnding down take a photo.

We passed through stunning mountain scenery and villages including Tilcara for lunch, and Humahuaca, before doubling back to stop in a cold Pumacara for the night in an old fashioned mountain hostal with basic but nice rooms, a breakfast of just coffee and powder-dry cracker biscuits, and one extremely grumpy owner!