the date says 8th but thats a mistake it was 01/05/06

Hola de salta! Ok well we arrived in salta kinda late so it was a mutual decision that ice cream was on the menu for dinner!! Dulce de leche and coconut - yummy!! So the next day we wandered around town looking at the different monuments, the main plaza, and searched for a tour for the following day. One thing we did notice about this town was the amount of pregnant women - we swear there was an epidemic - during dinner which was about 30mins we counted 20!!
Anyway, the next day we got up bright and early for our tour. We wanted to do el tren a las nubes but for some reason it is not in operation anymore, however, the tour we chose followed the same route as the train but obviously broke off in some places. The route was beautiful - mountainous landscape and loads of cacti! Our first stop was the train track then we stopped at some ruins of an ancient settlement - v cool and again loads more giant cacti!! Before we headed towards San Antonio de Los Cobres, a small village, we stopped at an old town and had some tea. In San Antonio we had some lunch and I bought a llama fur shawl - so fluffy! After lunch we reached our highest point of 4100m above sea level before heading down to las salinas (salt plains) v cool vast area of salt - we even tried a bit and it was v v strong! From there we went to pumamarca to see the coloured hills and have some hot chocolate before making our way back to the city. All was fine and we were making it on time when the tyre burst so we had to get out and stand in the spitting rain on the highway while they changed it!! Finally got back to salta about 10pm!! One point to mention was the hilarity of the tour guide - he was hysterical and kept telling us jokes in English!! It was q good that I could understand the spanish as although he gave the tour in english and spanish, he said more about the landscape and the history in spanish than in english.
The next day I had loads of plans to walk around the city etc as my bus did'nt leave til 21.30 but as soon as I walked outside I realized that it was the 1st of May so everything was closed!! So after some hours in the internet and in the lounge at the hostel I made my way from Salta to Cordoba again on the overnight bus.
Salta was a nice city but its just a city, however, the surrounding areas are beautiful and worth a visit - if I had more time I could've gone down to Cafayate as apparently really nice there but can't do everything!
love nikki
xxx