After exploring San Pedro de Atacama for a few days, we left Chile and headed to Salta, Argentina. Since we had to do a border crossing, we took a day bus (we generally try to do night buses whenever possible – long rides go faster when you’re asleep plus you don’t have to pay for lodging for a night!) and were treated to some beautiful scenery! We had to cross over the Andes to get into Argentina and when we got closer to Salta, there were some very colorful hills.
When I studied abroad in Argentina in college, I didn’t make it all the way north to Salta, so I didn’t know what to expect of the city. After so much time in Bolivia, the city seemed very western and the architecture a bit European. There was a nice plaza in the center of town with a cool pink church on one side and tons of cafes with outdoor seating lining the other sides.
We spent our time exploring the different neighborhoods, parks and restaurants. On my list of restaurants to check out was a little place called Patio de la Empañada. It was sort of like an empañada food court with tables in the middle and different restaurants lining the walls. When you walk in, every one of the ladies tries to get your attention to go to her booth – it was a little intimidating! We ended up just going with the first lady we saw and tried a variety of baked and fried empañadas.
There was a hill on the edge of town with a nice park at the top that we went to a few times. One day we took the teleferico up and down but the day we left, we walked it instead – we figured it would be good for our legs to get a little movement before our 25 hour bus trip to Puerto Iguazu.
