SALTA, ARGENTINA

Another one of the places I really wanted to see on my trip was the town of Salta, or more importantly the main tourist attraction there which is the "El Tren las Nubes" or Train to the clouds.

The train runs on Saturdays and leaves very early at 7.05am. So I had to be at the station by 6.30am for check in. I think this was the earliest I had got out of bed the whole trip. I made my way down to the station in the dark to find hundreds of people already there.

I found my way to my carriage and then to my seat. Luckily I had a window seat which was perfect for taking even more photo's. My seat was also facing forward and each group of seats had two forward and two backwards facing seats.

Across from me was two guys from Argentina who have been friends since the went to kindergarten. There names were Sebastian and Martin. The last person to join us was a travel guide travelling with some French speaking tourists.





The train travels about 300km through a series of mountains which it has to climb. They do this by making the train do switch backs where the train gets to a certain place, they move a part of the track and the train goes in the opposite direction to go up a small bit of hill before doing the same thing again to go up another bit of hill, sort of like a zig zag motion.








There was also a lot of tunnels through hills and even two sections where we went around the hill and back over the top of the track below across some bridges.




We had lunch on board the train and there was a carriage for snacks and drinks. The journey to the final destination was about 8 hours.




















The train went through a few different types of scenery, first was like forest, then some mountains, across a river, and then in the plateau there was desert.











Our final stop was at a bridge which was designed by the man that designed the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It was designed and built in France and then disassembled and transported on ships to Argentina and then rebuilt at its current location. This was all done back in the 1930's and 1940's.








The bridge is at an altitude of 4220mtrs above sea level. This is the highest I have ever been while still on the ground. The air was very thin and you only had to walk a few meters to be out of breathe.



They stopped the train at the bridge for us to get out and walk around to take photo's. Some locals were there to sell hand made crafts and there was also a couple of Llamas there that we could have our picture taken with.



So then we all got back on the train and it was time to head back..... all the same way we came! We made one more stop at another very remote town which was at 3750mtrs above sea level.





The trip back seemed to take longer as we had already seen everything and had stopped taking photo's by then.



It was a very fun day and I thoroughly enjoyed it but was very glad to see my bed that night when I got back to the hotel at 11.30pm.....

The next day I spent the day having a look around Salta and went to the top of a hill just outside the city centre.

to get to the top I had to take a chairlift or as it is called here a telerifico...?!

At the top of the hill there is a park whith a man made water fall and there is a cafe and viewing platform.