Saltan food & drink

Had a lazy morning as I had cramps and Anna not fully recovered. Then the owner of the hostel, Gaby, showed us how to make Yerba Mate. It is a caffeinated herbal tea type drink that Argentinians are obsessed with and drink all day long. It's very common to see them carrying huge flasks of hot water as well as the cups with straws. To make you fill a special cup 3/4 full of a blend of holly leaves & twigs. Then add hot water (and we preferred with sugar) and drink through the metal straw. You can't fit much water in the cup hence the flask to keep topping up. Strangely it's not sold in cafes anywhere so tourists often don't get to try it.

After a quick lunch of noodles & salad, we went for a walk up a big hill - 30 mins of climbing up a lot of steps - to get a view of Salta (you can get a cable car if you're feeling lazy). This seemed to be the local's exercise route as we saw many people in sports gear walking up and to top it off there was a 'sports in the clouds' centre with a surreal outdoor spinning class at the top with pumping music and a lady yelling vamos!!!

After heading down, we walked to the bus station to get tickets for the next day and picked up some alfajores - cake with caramel in the middle covered with chocolate - for a pre-dinner snack.

Dinner was at a posh restaurant - Dona Salta - that Gaby recommended for local food where we were served by a gaucho who tried to teach Anna Spanish. We shared a tamale (mushed corn and mince wrapped in corn husk) and locro (pumpkin soup with corn and chunks of veal). Then Anna had some bizarre strips of cheese with cayote jam, plums and walnuts for dessert. Anna left drunk on the house wine with a very full tummy. Since I don't like floating animals in my soup or desserts which don't include chocolate, I left slightly less satisfied but was nice to try regional food. Cost 200P for essentially one person as we shared each course.

ATMs: all charge in Argentina and can only take out a small amount at a time, grrr! Most hostels prefer cash so racks up the charges.

Planned to do a tour south to Cafayate from Salta but didn't due to Anna's food poisoning which we are blaming on the chicken on the bus that I didn't touch.Read more