Salta!

Hola!

Just arrived back in Buenos Aires yesterday after a great trip to Salta- a city about 20 hours outside of Buenos Aires home to beautiful colored mountains, an abundance of rock formations, cacti, and of course vineyards. When traveling to Salta it's important to block off a good amount of time considering the bus ride alone is almost a full day on either end of your trip. (or if you had the same experience as we did on the way there some bus rides take upwards of 24 hours). Luckily, even though only 2 ham and cheese sandwiches were served the whole bus ride and every muscle in our legs were at risk of atrophying...we made it there safe and sound with some good stories to tell.

Salta at night

After leaving Buenos Aires 2 hours after scheduled departure, we rolled into Salta around 10 pm on Saturday evening which allowed us to see the city all lit up- pretty neat. After finding our hostel we did what any college kid would do- head out in search of dirt cheap eats. I am not embarrassed to say that for the next 4 nights almost every dinner was eaten at the same food court located in a local mall 4 blocks from our hostel crawling with tweeners and families alike. I guess food courts here have a different appeal considering your tables are cleared for you, alcohol is served, you can smoke and in some cases real plates and silverware are used....classy.

Los Cardones (cacti)

Sunday we ventured out for a 12.5 hour long tour of the mountains and some surrounding villages. Our tour guide Pablo pulled up to our hostel in style (a gold hyundai minivan), we introduced ourselves to the other tourers (a retired couple from Barcelona), and we were off. We were able to stop at several villages and points along the way seeing everything from 500 year old cacti to the beautiful colored mountains, some indigenous land and cemeteries, and of course Las Salinas. Las Salinas are natural salt fields that sound pretty bizarre but are truly neat. Once you pull up to them for quite a distance all you see is the grayish color of the hard salt formed in some pretty interesting arrangements with the occasional hole filled with pure salt laden water. For lunch we stopped in a small village- San Antonio de los Cobres. Pretty creepy if you ask me (see picture below) and although it resembled some sort of prison development and featured a bumping stereo system in its main restaurant (priorities?) it was an interesting thing to see. After visiting a few more towns (one was home to only 12 families and a whole lot of rocks...) we were back in Salta safe and sound.

Main Plaza in Salta

Monday marked a free day which was welcomed by all. I was able to take a run up a few hills (unfortunately) until I reached Plaza Guemes (if you haven't noticed every city in Argentina features the same names for plazas, streets and even restaurants so things can get a little confusing...) which sat on top of the town, giving me a pretty nice few of the modern 'Spanish' style homes and bustling city aspects alike. We ventured into the main square (9 de Julio Plaza) which was full of people preparing to celebrate the feast of Guadalupe (the patron saint of Salta) on Wednesday. Once a year a few days before the feast, people from Salta and surrounding areas as far away as Bolivia (500 km) make a pilgrimage to the city of Salta. However, this pilgrimage isn't by bus or train or car....it's by foot. For between 4 and 5 days hundreds of people walk in groups with their families, churches and friends to Salta. Local hotels and families donate unused rooms to the pilgrims, restaurants give food to the cause and tour guides talk turns walking side by side with the people, encouraging them every step of the way. Pretty amazing stuff if you ask me. We were able to also see the inside of the beautiful Iglesia de San Fransisco which featured amazing 3D like paint details throughout.

Tuesday marked another 12 tour this time to Cafayete- home to the best vineyards in the Salta region. Once again our tourguide Guadalupe picked us up in a pimped out minivan of sorts where we began the tour with 8 other people from all over the world. There was a couple from the UK in their twenties traveling the entire world for a year (they had just entered South America and would end up in Fiji, USA, Sydney...), another couple from Asia, a German couple on vacation and a couple people just backpacking around seeing what they could. On this trip too we stopped at many points throughout a narrow, mountain road to snap photos of rock formations (everything from one that resembled a frog to one named 'the Titanic') and La Garganta del Diablo (the Devil's Throat- a magnificent rock structure with a fitting name). Eventually we stopped in a small city for a couple hours where we lunched on some local cuisine ( I chose to sample 'locro'- a traditional white bean and meat stew...probably not the best pick for an 80 degree day...) and ducked into just one more church. The second half of the trip was dedicated to visiting two local wineries where we got tours of each individual vineyard's process from vine to bottle and of course got to sample :) Once we got back to our hostel we were tired but decided to venture away from the food court and instead try a local parrilla highly recommended by the hostel.

We arrived at La Monumental a little after opening around 9 pm and it was already starting to get busy. As we each began to order a different cut of meat our waiter warned us that they were to share....sure, sure he just thinks we're not that hungry...boy were we wrong. As if bringing out a cut of meat covered in ham and cheese isn't bad enough La Monumental's cuts of meat would have put Fred Flinstone over the edge. Even though there we probably should have headed to the advice of the waiter it was nice to venture outside of the walls of the food court....

Wednesday came and after one last run through the city to attempt to remind my body that I do use my muscles sometimes, it was back on the bus for another 20 hours. Back safe and sound in Buenos Aires with lots of pictures, some pink cheeks, a salt tablet from Las Salinas, and a cactus thorn it's back to reality...at least for a little while:)

xo

Per