Salta

Yes.

She was sold to private collectors, passed around as a macabre curiosity for decades, and suffered significant degradation before finally ending up in a museum in Salta, Argentina.

That is just so sad.

And the Kewar mummy story is even worse.

So I had my mountain bike and I was like riding north and south in Chile, in Argentina.

So I saw like Patagonia, Mendoza, Bariloche, Salta.

Nice.

And did you like it?

Then we cruised back up to the eastern border of France, Alsace, to check out its amazing wines and history and its storks.

Today, we're on the other side of the world, high up in the Andes in Salta, Argentina.

We're going to talk wine, altitude, and hummingbirds.

But first, let's talk geography.

And as we round the northeastern tip of Argentina that extends into Brazil, we find Uruguay at about 2 o'clock.

The Atlantic Ocean is most of the west coast of Argentina, right on down to Tierra del Fuego.

Salta is the second most northern of the wine regions in Argentina, with Hoi Hoi at the northern tip of the country snuggled up against Bolivia.

Salta is part of the Calchaquí Valley region, along with Tucumán and Catamarca.

Hmm.

Salta.

Metro area.

S- S-A-L-T-A, Salta?

This makes me so nervous, okay.

Did that hit?

[laughs] Let's go.

I would've-

Um, but I think if there's one person I- Choose, it'd probably be Baltha Thabo, the, the Vrac 10.

He's, uh, yeah, funny enough, um, he's from Salta in Argentina, and my club back home is called Llandudno RFC.

So I played there when I was like 17, 18, um, for senior rugby for the first time.

And there was actually a guy called Santiago who came over on an exchange to play, um, and he's from Salta as well.

And then when I went to Vrac, I was, uh, I was chatting to him, and he actually knew this Santiago that had been to my club, and I was like, "Whoa, that's a, a real moment," you know? And, uh, yeah, he, um, well, first and foremost, he's a really good guy.

He was really welcoming the way I spoke to him a bit before joining there, and he sort of made the move, uh, seamless really, and was really, um, yeah, just really welcoming and helpful during my time there.

Do you think Argentina has a durable brand for that person who says, "I'm gonna go and buy that land for seven cents a meter.

I'm gonna do something"? I mean, certainly Salta is the food place and Mendoza is the wine place.

You were involved in that.

Is there a brand?

So the infrastructure in Jujuy is fantastic.

In Salta, some of the roads need to be improved for sure.

You have the Rincon project with Rio Tinto, you have Aramet and Centenario, and then the PPG project for ours.

So we're working closely with those other groups.

It's not insurmountable.

It's about, you know, ensuring the roads are in adequate condition so that they can, you know, they can safely transport materials.

But if, I mean, if you add it, if you add it all up in terms of how many reagents are going to going up to the puna how much product's going to come down you know i i think with modest improvements the safety conditions of the roads in salta i think it's pretty fine um the road from kind of the puna down to san antonio de cobras is probably the area that needs the most um most work from there it's a it's a paved highway right down into right down into the Sorry, Salta and Guemes, which you can get onto rail if necessary or truck down to VA if you're going to go that route.

So, you know, it is an issue, but it's not, you know, it's it's it's it's it's addressable with relatively little, you know, catbacks.

But if you're in a position to go to this event, you're somehow in the lithium space as a participant and have thought about it, I really think that you might want to put this on your 2027 schedule.

The event alternates between Catamarca, Jujuy, and Salta.

It will be in Salta next year.

They have a great venue for it.

They have a convention center that accommodates a lot of people, a lot of great food in this area of the world, nice hotels, things to do if you want to plan a trip around it in addition to just attending the event.