Salta

June 17, 2025 to June 18, 2025

Tuesday the 17th of June 2025

A short day on the bikes.

The road between La Caldera and Salta continued in the narrow and windy fashion that it was the day before but the surface was dreadful due to the parade of heavy vehicles carrying gravel from a riverbed quarry just outside La Caldera.

After passing through the satellite towns of Vaqueros, Cuidad de Milagro and Castañares, we entered Salta itself from where we had a good cycle path for most of the way until we hit the center of the city.

The path had lots of horse dung - we encountered various folk on horseback, some dressed to kill, all the way to the city center.

We had pre-booked a very nice apartment just a block away from the main square. Of course we arrived at our too early to check in but the staff kindly allowed us to drop our gear off with the bicycles being stored in their office.

We walked down to the square where we spotted a nice restaurant offering just the sort of lunch we were after.

I never have high expectations when wine is included in the daily special but today's malbec was very good.

Wednesday the 18th of June 2025

After handing our laundry over to the staff my next chore this morning was a visit to a Western Union agent. Then a SIM card at the local Claro customer support center.

This all happened very quickly and efficiently so we headed off to spend the rest if the morning doing tourist stuff.

The cathedral. Quite new. Built in 1856 after an earthquake destroyed the old building with services beginning in 1858 but only completed in 1882. I love the optical illusion of the tesselled floor, visible in the photo as well as in the cathedral itself.

The exterior is less attractive than the interior looking more like an ostentatious colonial era administrative building than a church, until one spots the large dome (not visible in this picture).

Afterwards we visited the Basílica Menor y Convento de San Francisco en Salta, an older church with an attractive exterior but a gloomy interior. What struck me was that both churches held lots of devotees - mass ended just as we entered the cathedral but folks kept queuing to enter side chapels to make special prayers.

The main museum we wanted to visit, the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology, was unfortunately closed today so we spent some time at two lesser museums close by, enjoying the nineteenth century colonial style buildings more than their contents.

Then we repeated yesterday's lunch, not at the same restaurant but at a nearby wine bar, getting a taste for some wine from Cafayate to where we are heading over the next few days.

Our brief stay in Salta has been very enjoyable. Its center could be from anywhere in Europe, Spain in particular, and in that sense is much like Buenos Aires. A nice change after the more South American feel of Peru and Bolivia.

Our laundry is only expected to be ready by nine o'clock tomorrow morning. This shouldn't be a problem since we have a shortish ride to El Carril planned, less than fifty kilometers and mostly flat although I suspect the road might be quite busy. Both of us could quite happily spend another day in Salta in our comfortable apartment but at the same time we are keen to start riding again.

Today's ride: 26 km (16 miles)
Total: 1,490 km (925 miles)

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