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domingo, 2 de mayo As seems to be customary these days we arrived in Salta early doors and slept through at our hostal (Hostal por Siempre) until lunchtime. Salta itself is not especially large and is mainly used as a port for day trips to Cafayate and other surrounding mountainous excursions. These mostly start before the sun rises so today we climbed Cerro Bernardo, a 300m high mount (total 1500m as we are 1200m above sea level already) displaying the city before us.
Climb is perhaps the wrong word. Wrong because we caught the Teleferica. What? We climbed all the others. After 5 minutes in the Teleferica we wished we had this one too. We initially enjoyed the translation of the safety warnings telling us not to "extract our arms" and that the "cabin is yours" but that ended abruptly when a great big flying orange b*st*rd came in through the slit in the window, and you know those things are too stupid to find a way out. At least it momentarily distracted from the fact we were swinging 50m above ground from a single wire in ARGENTINA.
At the top the whole of Salta can be seen, which
is much bigger than we thought from our five seconds walking around. The main scenery being football stadiums and churches; the two religions combining once again. There was yet another Christ statue but not a lot else.
The hostel has it´s own bar and table tennis/table football where we waxed lyrical with some other hostel inhabitants (AMARDEEP/SEB).
lunes, 3 de mayo As has become customary with our shoestring budget and fairly relaxed timescale we devoted a day to town exploring. Our hostel is around 8 blocks outside of the main town but with the relatively small size of them it´s just a five minute walk to the main Plaza - 9 de Julio. The temperature is hot enough to split your skull and leave a bloody mess on the pavement, though you wouldn´t probably notice amongst the watery run-off of street vendors, so we sat in the the plaza and watched people - usually good for a story or two.
At lunch it´s hard to move for all the schoolkids. No dinnerladies or makeshift football games with tennis balls inside rolled up socks here. Instead...fireworks. Well, firework but a twelve year old with one of those only
Hayley
In case you forgot what she looked like.really needs one.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. Yep he set it off. Right next to a dog. And us. Sounded like gunfire, which all the policias have, stupid kid. Another stupid kid was covered in flour and eggs. Argentine school system working wonders clearly.
The plaza in Salta is the classic backdrop of all Argentine cities (Mendoza excepted). All the garish buildings (especially churches - how much do they put in that collection plate?) are found here whilst the ones falling apart are left for the actual inhabitants of the city. Still, it´s nice to be outside abject poverty for an afternoon or so.
Apparently (so an Argentine said) Argentina has the record for car accidents in a single year. It´s not difficult to see why when a city is based upon a grid system and has no traffic lights...watch your step.
The evening was similar to yesterday - chilling out on the patio with a litre of beer for 1.60. Just a quick note on Seb. Clearly from higher class stock the man has the kind of scandal that only silver spooners can. Twice from completely innocuous topics of conversation did he amaze us:
i. Started off a conversation
about Skype, Seb turned it into one about how his Dad´s company explored Zimbabwe for diamonds, found LOADS, then got everything taken away. The link here being that his Dad was trying to Skype Mugabe personally!
ii. Another story, can´t remember the original topic (stupidly writing this ridiculously retrospectively), turned into one about how he went to visit a long-lost second cousin who was actually his half-sister since his Dad had had an affair forty odd years ago. Apparently the family resemblance was uncanny.
iii. Something or other about sleeping with a different cousin...
High class entertainment indeed.
martes, 4 de mayo Another day hanging out in the sun. Why not another list? This time since we are back in Argentina the key differences between them and Chile:
1. Chileans don´t constantly apologise for poor English.
2. In Chile, Dulce de Leche = Manjar.
3. Pinochet knows EVERYONE.
4. Argentines are less likely to say hello, miserable f**ks.
5. Chile feels much more European.
6. Chileans love hot dogs - they have 2 major chains like McDonald´s solely for them (Doggis/Don Pepe). Move over, Starbucks.
miercoles, 5 de mayo Since we had done next to bugger all the
The Guemes Monument
Literally all there is to do in Salta last 2 days we decided to rekindle the adventurous flames that had been slowing extinguishing in our belly under a torrent of red wine. Today; white water rafting. Both of us have done it before in Australia (I had fallen out twice on my trip which doesn´t bode well) but not for a while.
The 2 hour bus ride to the river was (as always) through the Andes. The climate is much dryer here as could be seen by the volume of cactuses/cactii/cactimundi - who gives a sh*t? - and rocky roads. Since it was early it passed by quick enough and we were receiving our instructions in boatsmanship before we knew it. Before we knew it since the instructions were in English more broken than Steve Bruce´s nose. Adelante is forward right?
No waivers to sign. Good, but does travel insurance cover this? No 'watch out for the oars of the guy in front'. Okay, but we definitely don´t have dental insurance (I remember a time I nearly took the head off of someone in Oz).
Our English speaking boat had us, 2 Dutch (the tandem homos - actually not and also really funny, you just
San Fransisco church
They just do them much better over here can´t hate the Dutch unless you´re Austin Powers´ father), and 2 Danish. We rafted down through grade II and III rapids passing the bright red Andes and also cliffs created by tectonics. Sadly nobody fell out but it was still amazing and everybody got wetter than an English summer. There was a huge asado waiting for us at the end (BBQ) which we absolutely devoured.
On the return there was a huge boulder in the middle of the road that most definitely was NOT there in the morning. Sh*t the cliffs are falling, those signs aren´t for show. Cue duck and cover position for the remainder of the journey (not really) though that would have been about as useful as t*ts on a bull.
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