We arrived in Salta after a quick 2 hour bus journey from Jujuy with Flecha Bus ($85 ARS). We walked from the bus station to the centre of town which took about 20 minutes. The bus station is very well set up and you can store luggage here for between $5 and $36 ARS for 12 hours depending on the size of your bag (opening hours for this are from 7am – 11pm). We haven’t been booking accommodation anywhere on our travels but this was definitely a mistake for Salta, especially since we arrived on a Sunday. It took aaaages to find somewhere but eventually we found Hostal Andaluz for $250 ARS a night. It was full of Argentinian backpackers who honestly did nothing but sit in the hostel all day singing songs. Random.

Salta’s main plaza, Plaza 9 de Julio is very pretty and is overlooked by an equally lovely pink cathedral. You can exchange US dollars at the blue dollar rate on the left hand side of the cathedral here, at the crossroads of streets España and B. Mitre. The rate we got here was 13.30 ARS here for 1 USD. Most of our time in Salta was spent meandering around leafy squares and checking out churches. It’s a lovely place to spend some time. The Argentinians are absolutely fabulous too – some of the nicest people we’ve met in South America. We ate in Van Gogh restaurant one afternoon (on the plaza, right hand side of the cathedral) and we had our first glass of Argentinian wine – oh my God they can fill a glass!! No Sydney-sized 4mm glasses for $20 here. We stayed in Salta for 3 days and as we had quite a bit of rain we spent a number of hours utilising the wifi services at Aniceto Coffee Bar and Grill. They have lovely Submarinos here; basically a hot chocolate but they give you warmed milk and a bar of chocolate so you have to so a little work. We had amazing ice-cream at Fili too, an old school ice-cream store (Address: 299 Sarmiento). We tried out dulce de leche flavour, the locals’ favourite. Delicious.

We took a night bus with La Veloz del Norte at 7.15pm on our last evening in Salta for the 12 hour journey to Córdoba.

Next stop: Córdoba