Purplelake: Day 12 – Jul 3, 2019 Salta, Argentina

Salta is the provincial capital and the largest city in the Salta province. Its location near the Andes and its long distance from Buenos Aires makes it belong more to the Quechan and Andean culture rather than to the European culture in the rest of the country. We saw similar city layout and colonial architecture in Salta as in other Andean cities like Sucre, Potosi, Cuzco, and La Paz.

We started our first day of city tour at the Catedral Basilica de Salta (Cathedral) and the Cabildo Historico de Salta (Old City Hall), both located at the premier town square, Plaza 9 de Julio. Despite the brisk and cold morning air, there were groups of dancers performing traditional cowboy courting dances for donations there. The shopping streets surrounding the plaza were bussing with activities and shoppers. We walked to Teleferico San Bernado to ride the cable car up Cerro San Bernado, a popular hill top park for locals to go. The views from the hilltop were spectacular, giving meaning to the scale and size of the whole Salta city and suburb areas. We made friendly conversation with a young mother taking her toddler son and two nieces to picnic there in broken Spanish (us) and broken English (them). We surmised that the reason why the cable car place and the park was jam packed is that July is their winter vacation time and school is out for two weeks.

Catedral Basilica de Salta

Beautiful building in the morning glow of sun

The floor tiles were arranged in a 3D pattern

Inside the Catedral

You are almost guaranteed to see a line up behind any ATM machine in Argentina

Plaza 9 de Julio

It is the heart of Salta

Street performers everywhere dancing or singing to make some money

The Cabildo of Salta (Old city hall)

Inner courtyard of Cabildo Historico de Salta

The young family that we befriended while lining up for cable car up Cerro San Bernado

At the top of Cerro San Bernado

The lookout offers a great view of the whole city

Salta is very big looking from above

Salta has a population of 0.7 MM

Panoramic view of Salta city

We followed locals and walked down the hill on a stony path, impressed with all the locals who were so health conscious that they either walked or jogged all the way uphill! The walking path uphill starts at a totally different place than where the cable car is located, almost 1 km away. There was this huge memorial park and wide boulevard near the start of the walking path that were dedicated to General Martin Guemes who was a war hero for Argentina independence.

Convento San Bernado is the one of the oldest building in Salta and we went there next but they only opened at 4p so we walked to Basilica Menor y Convento San Francisco instead. This church had a very colorful façade and tower. The curtains at the entrance doors were actually sculptured from stone and they looked so real! Afterward, we walked back to Convento San Bernado and waited for their opening outside. We waited and waited and finally at 4:15p, the door was suddenly unlocked. We walked in and to our surprise, there was no one there, just a small room with some shelves of baked goods and other merchandises. There was a window with a rotating shelf and a surveillance camera on top. We left in puzzlement after concluding no one would be coming out to greet us. Only later did we find out that the nuns inside the convent all took a vow of silence and would not speak or talk to anyone. There was no tour and they only sold their baked goods for fund raising.