Salta

Salta is the biggest city in the Northwest of Argentina with a population of roughly 500,000. It is sited at only 1187 metres above sea level so has a warm spring like climate all year.

We’ve been to quite lot of towns that are described as having a ‘spring-like’ climate and I can assure you that they do not mean a British Spring but I think more of a Mediterranean spring where it’s hot, doesn’t rain too much and has somewhat cooler nights.

Salta is the start of the wine region of Argentina and is famous for having the best empanadas in Argentina so we were looking forward to trying a few.

The place to stay in Salta, for overlanders, is the Municipal campground which is a short bus ride from the centre of town. It is notable for its absolutely enormous swimming pool – at least 300m long, unfortunately it was being refurbished when were there and was empty.  It is said that it takes up to a week to fill it.

We ended up surrounded by Germans in this campground and we met a lovely older German Couple called Walter and Getti, in a little Fiat Ducato camper.

Our first day in Salta we headed into town and our first port of call was finding some of the world famous empanadas for lunch. We headed to the Patio de Empanadas – according to our guidebook the taxi drivers favourite. We figured that taxi drivers must know their empanadas.

On arriving in Salta the previous night we had learnt an important empanada lesson at the bakery next door to the campsite. We had ordered 4 empanadas for dinner thinking we would have a feast (as usually we would eat just one each).  We waited patiently for 40 minutes as they made them and packed them up in a little box for us to take away.  We probably should have paid more attention to the size of the box but we were hungry and hurried back to the campsite to gorge on them while they were still piping hot. However when we opened the box we were greeted by 4 tiny ‘canape-sized’ empanadas that wasn’t enough to satisfy one person let alone two!

Having learnt this valuable lesson we ordered a massive pile of the little pastry parcels of Cheese, beef and chicken at the Patio de Empanadas, half of which we had fried and the other half baked.  There is no denying that they were good but not the best we’ve had. This accolade goes to the Empanada lady in Rio Verde, Ecuador whose freshly made, and big, empanadas were truly awesome.  The empanadas from the bakery by the campground, although small, were excellent.

The centre of Salta itself was not that impressive. There is a really big shopping area and we saw things for sale that you would only dream of in Bolivia, however the old colonial centre is very small and really not much to get excited about.

What we did get excited about was our first big supermarket since Arequipa in Peru – we seriously stocked up our fridge and cupboards.