Day 11 - Transit day. Arrival in Salta

Today was all about travel. We flew from El Calafate to Buenos Aires, had just enough time to spray ourselves with the latest Davidoff and for Mia to sample the hand creams and then we got on another plane to Salta.
The highlight for Brendan today was taxiing on the runway adjacent to the main motorway when all the South American Presidents were given seriously heavy escorts into the airport to their waiting fleet of country jets, all guarded, again heavily, by Argentinean military forces and respective national secret service outfits.
We arrived at our very nice hostel, planned a few things for the morning and crashed.

Day 12 - Salta, the sandwich city.

Today was about touring Salta, enjoying some of the north Argentinean sun and organising / researching the next few parts to our trip into Chile and Bolivia.
Off to the bus station first where we booked our bus to San Pedro in Chile as well as meeting a Canadian guy who reports he went out for a few beers in Santiago a few days ago and woke up in Tucuman some two days walk from Salta with no money or anything. Hmmmm, nice one buddy. We politely suggested that he go talk to the information desk and the police and wished him well.
Seeing as though it was 26 degrees we decided to walk the 1070 steps up to the top of Mount San Bernado to see the view of Salta and the surrounding mountains. Within minutes we were sweating but were loving it after days of being rugged up like Eskimos. We got to the top and wandered around the immaculately kept gardens and contemplated taking the gondola back down. After realising that we could save yet another $6 we walked back down the 1070 stone steps and back into town.
We have never seen more sandwich, hotdog and ice-cream shops in one town before. At every corner there is another sandwich store or peanut station. People are walking the streets eating these long sandwiches or hot dogs with more accompaniments than you could ask for. The hot dogs were too high on Mia's mystery meat scale to even warrant a look but Brendan was ready in a second to try one. However, budget and cooking within the hostel won over the dogs.
After dinner and a Salta beer, we headed out to experience the beautiful city at night. The main square is surrounded by big old colonial buildings with pebble stone streets and cafe umbrellas out the front. We walked into the big old Basilica of Salta just as Mass was going on. It was like a scene from the "Hokey Pokey" Mia not knowing whether to touch her nose, toes or elbows and being the only 'whities' in there, we thought it would be best to move onto the next beautiful old building, brilliantly lit up for us to see. We wandered the streets, looking in some very trendy shops and enjoying the cool night. Back to the hostel to enjoy a little something we picked up from one of the many bakeries.
It was now time to pack away the thermals for a few days and pull out the t-shirts and bathers ready for some fun in the desert and maybe some hot springs if we are lucky.
Onto Chile tomorrow.