Lovely Salta

Hello everyone. We join you from an internet cafe in Salta, where Sam is trying to upload the latest photos, accompanied by lots of banging of the keyboard and some swearing. It seems things are a bit slow in Salta or "Salta La Linda" as they call it here, and it is indeed rather lovely. Much better than the uninspiring city of Tucuman where we spent a rainy couple of days earlier in the week and didn't do much of any import apart from a short walk in the hills followed by a quick dip in a rather chilly waterfall, brrrr. Unfortunately as we are sin guidebook now we're having to make rather random guesses about where to go. Oh well, you win some you lose some, and Salta is jolly nice. They've done especially well with their churches, great pastel-coloured affairs that look a bit like ice creams.

We did a trek today, up to the cloud forest in the hills above the city. It was rather green and steamy with a few too many spiders for my liking, but it was much needed exercise after all those enormous steaks. And I shall have to become immune to far worse beasts before we get on that boat down the Amazon. We watched "Anaconda 2" the other day which perhaps wasn't the best idea as it means you know who will be trying to scare me the whole way by pretending to be a giant snake.

I think we're going to have a final "hurrah for Argentina" parillada tomorrow night and then it's back to Bolivia and their not quite so tasty "unidentified boiled meat with boiled potatoes" style cuisine. Sigh. Still, we have dined exceptionally well here and have guinea pig and other delicacies to look forward to in Peru. I do really fancy some hot buttered toast though.