Salta, or am I in New Zealand

---

I´ve decided I like Argentina, and in particular Salta. I menat to ship out of here pretty quickly, but the hostel i´m in is great, randomness is high, and despite a truely horrible and baffling Spannish accent the people are all jolly friendly also. Mainly my activities have centered around the hostel, Salta beer, learning to make empañadas, going to BBQ´s, speaking a shed load of Spannish (my current travel buddy is still the Frenchman with no English and a fondness for sleeping outside under a bench in the hostel), and wandering with little intent around lovely Salta.

Pretty European in looks and feel, Salta doesn´t really have any major sites of note. But it is a nice enough place to carm down, realise that its not what you see but the people you meet, and spending lots of time..well doing very little , but in a way that makes you feel you´re achieving a lot. As you can see from the photos though, Salta has provided some excellent pictorial potential.

And so to the title. I was quite annoyed that I didn´t get to see the All Blacks play rugby whie i was in New Zealand, but had put it out of my mind with all the craziness of South America. Just when you least expect it, alongs comes the chance - in Salta, Argentina. Yep, by another coincidence (i seem to collect them) New Zealand were playing Salta in the local stadium the day after i arrived here. So after buying my ticket from a pharmacy (as you do) i went along last night to watch the (as it happened not so mighty) All Blacks.

The match itself was highly entertaining. I have a feeling it wasn´t the first team that was playing as Salta dominated most of the match and went in at half time 16-10 in the lead! However, I think in the second half they tired a bit and little by little an unimpressive New Zeland inched back into it and ended up winning 23-22. About 5000+ people showed up too - rugby in Argentina seems to be alive and kicking.

I was strange to see New Zealandy stuff again. They had the flags around the stadium. Occasionlly you could here shouts from the players in the familiar Kiwi twang, and by the end i felt homesick and realised i do miss New Zealand a awful lot.

Still there is still much to do out here, and today i get an overnight bus (with accompanying action movies - they love action movies on buses in a badly dubbed style over here) to Rosario, about 4 hours North od Buenos Aires. Apparently its full of artsy types and music. Another nightmare for me.

marc

---

Photos

At the All Blacks game
ace

The Lovely City Of Slata
From the top the cable car accessed hill

Flying in the face of public opinion
The hospitable side of Argentina

Really...ahh
The (less) hospitable side of Argentina

Inspirational Tree
A should take a ´leaf´(get it) out of its book. oh the hilarity