Salta La Linda

Weather: Sunny, but the Argentinians are complaining its cold. In England this kind of weather would be the signal for all unattractive men with beer bellys to remove their shirts...

Llama count: We have a stuttering lift off on the llama metric... 0.5 (I saw a stuffed one in a craft market.)

I arrive at Salta in the late afternoon, just in time to see some nuns struggling to take down a tent. An argument in fast staccato spanish had errupted between two of the sisters, and the mother superior figure (who looked very superior) watches in amusement. The town is packed for the religious festival, with a motley collection of pilgrims, some hispanic, some quechan from the nearby mountains (in national dress), and the odd enterprising pickpocket taking advantage of the general religous trance.

After a dinner of steak and chips (where the steak cost less than 5 pounds) I sit around drinking fermet and coke with the hostel owner called Mathios, who has more opinions than piercings (its a close competition).

The next morning...

I find another girl who is travelling alone called Anika. She is about to start training to be a CBT therapist, we decide to go and climb the nearby mountain. Relief hits when we get to the bottom to discover there is a cable car to the top. This cable car is very agricultual, I´m suprised there wasn´t bailer twine pinning the doors together. However, we get to the top in one piece (just). Then the guilt hits, at the top there is a gym, for all the fitness fanatics of Salta, who regurlarly run up the hill. We decide we need to walk down the hill, this turns out to be an awful lot more difficult than it appeared. We reach the bottom with jelly legs, and an admiration for the Salta fitness fanatics.

Next stop on the tour is the market, but this turns out to be closed. The area is full of people sitting quietly in the street. At first we think it might be something to do with the religious festival- but it soon turns out to be a homeless protest. The most peaceful protest I have ever seen, but a worrying problem for a town where the street dogs are obese, and the street children emancipated.

Later in the afternoon we head off the beaten track to an artisan market, before deciding that everything will look the same, but be cheaper in Bolivia. The evening concludes with empanadas in the main plaza, whilst the mass is televised outside the cathedral. Pilgrims sing as I eat ice cream, and street children go round the tables stealing bread.

However, the days highlight has to be spotting a lingere shop called ´touch and go´....