Day 66: Salta

Yesterday, Day 65, was mostly taken up with a spectacular bus ride up and over the Andes from San Pedro in northern Chile to Salta in northern Argentina. The road descending beneath us looked like the coils of a garden hose carelessly tossed into the shed (pic).


So I'm chilling out for a couple of days in Salta, a pleasant city with a fine main square (pic). It proved something of a refuge in my traumatic trip to the country in 2010, so I have good feelings about the place, in much the same way as I don't about Rosario. Or almost anywhere else in Argentina.


There's a lot of splendid colonial architecture here, mostly churches (pic). Can't remember what the name was. Saint something, I think.

But the main attraction of Salta for me is the main square's pavement cafes – in the last ten weeks of touring Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, I hadn't seen a single one. A fine place to spend an evening people-watching. Or even beer-watching (pic).