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Published: January 18th 2012
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Plaza 9 de Julio We got into Salta at 9pm on the Friday and took a taxi to the hostel we had booked. Unfortunately, and rather annoyingly, there were no beds for us as some guys had missed their bus and so needed to stay an extra night. The hostel guy, to give him his dues, rang a place around the corner for us called Exxes, who did have space and a better deal in fact, so we wandered over, got showered and went out in search of dinner. The area we had to walk through to the centre of town seemed a little on the dodgy side – a sketchy park, badly lit, random groups of people hanging around watching your every move – but as we moved north of the park, it became much more pleasant with low colonial buildings and a beautifully lit pink and yellow church. We found a cheap pizza and beer place, Gasoil (nice name for a restaurant), where the food was surprisingly decent and they handed out free crisps and nuts. So with satisfied bellies we walked home to catch some zzzz’s.
The next morning we awoke to the best brekko so far – cereal, facturas (like
Danish pastries) and fruit. Yum! The sun was also shining so we happily cruised around town, to Plaza 9 de Julio where we saw the cathedral and went into the contemporary art museum – not the best art we’ve ever seen on the ground floor as it looked like a bunch of pre-schoolers had done it and there was some weird bondage style pieces – but upstairs there was an impressive photography exhibition which Lisa loved while the boys managed to identify hilarious famous look-a-likes in the photos. We stopped for lunch in the Mercado where we enjoyed good, cheap food in huge portions – chicken and milanesa a-plenty. We had then wanted to look around the shops but being the north of Argentina, siesta time ruled and everywhere shut up shop, so we went back to the hostel to find out about buses for our respective onward journeys. We were heading off to Resistencia to make our way into Paraguay and could only find bus tickets for double the price we had budgeted for. The company we had found cheap tickets through a month before had apparently gone bust and the 2 remaining companies were now in cahoots and
price fixing. Ian was of course not best pleased but we put a positive spin on it by realising we had actually managed to see more than we had expected to and had paid less than we had budgeted for so paying a little more now wasn’t so bad. Tickets bought, we met TC for some retail therapy – presents for Leo for him, presents for Lisa from Ian – and then headed back to the hostel ready for some Saturday night Salta action…which was not to be. The following day was an election day and so no booze could be sold from midnight that night until 8pm on the Sunday as the government didn’t trust their people not to get wasted on a Saturday night and still come to vote – there’s confidence for you! So all the bars and penas in town were closed too – a bad weekend to come to town. Luckily we had the option of cooking up a storm on the parilla at the hostel and so went to the supermercado to stock up…as did the rest of Salta apparently! But we had no choice if we wanted to eat, drink and be merry
so we collected a ticket for the meat counter – number 85 – just as we heard the butcher calling number 45! A long wait lay ahead.
But it was worth it as the meat was great quality and a guy at the hostel offered to cook it for us meaning we got to sit back, drink some of our final Argentina cervezas and set the world to rights. We went out in style that night with our last Argentinian parilla feast – vacio, asado, tomato and onion salad, corn, avocado, barbequed onion and bread, enjoyed with some fab vino tinto. Oh how we’re going to miss this life! We got chatting to Grace, an Ozzie girl traveling solo, and the night turned more raucous, which in turn made the hostel guy more arsy as the volume increased on the stereo and from our mouths. The fernet made an appearance of course, another farewell to be said, although this one we weren’t so sad about, and we crashed out at about 2am dreaming of the best of Argentina…until a few hours later when Ian fell out of the top bunk and gashed his head open, resulting in an ambulance
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Salta street scenes ride for him and Lisa (first time for both of us), a head x-ray, a 5-hour wait in the hospital (which was super busy considering the time of the day and no one looked like they had any visible ailments…maybe they were all there trying to get out of voting), all to be told that his head was fine and here’s a plaster! Nightmare.
So Sunday turned into a lazy day as we stayed in bed till 3pm, said farewell to Joe who was off further north to Bolivia, headed out for some food (the worst pizza ever with even more diabolical service), and feeling knackered and ruined we stumbled back to the sanctity of the hostel for a movie, reading and bed. Luckily we were in a comfy shared room with only the 3 of us now and so felt fine just vegging out. At midnight TC then decided he was going to leave with some others who were catching a bus to the border at 5am, meaning a very unemotional, sleepy goodbye at 4am, which was a shame as we weren’t sure when we would see each other again and the goodbye didn’t justify the time we
had spent together. Although saying that TC is not the most emotional of people and it would probably only have been Lisa with the tears had it been at a more reasonable hour! Sadly, but not forever we hoped, the fellowship was finally broken…
The next day we awoke to more rain and so decided to pay for half a day at the hostel and stayed in bed after brekko, writing and checking emails. We did go for a little wander round the town once the rain eased off and sat and had lunch on the plaza where a girl came up to our table and asked if she could have the salt shaker…we kind of looked at her strangely and then she just took off with it. Bizarre. Maybe she had a bottle of tequila tucked away somewhere we thought. Then after showering and packing up for the final time in Argentina, we cabbed it to the bus terminal and got comfy seats at the front of the bus up top next to a couple of French girls, who Lisa ended up singing some cheesy songs with much to Ian’s delight! We watched the world go by, lush
green, tree-covered hills and chowed down on a dinner of sandwiches before watching a movie and falling asleep. It turned into a bad night for Lisa who spent a lot of time getting acquainted with the toilet, which was thankfully clean and not smelly. Ian slept like a baby as always.
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