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We are enjoying and getting to know a very different Argentina here in the north of the country. The scenery, people and food , all are different and very special. You will read the boys' description of the scenery soon. The people are less European and more Mestizo, everyone still as nice and warm as can be. The food, as Ilan said "finally has flavors" - it is much more spicy and richly condimented, and there are unique dishes that are only served here, such as Humitas, Tamales and Locro, all based on the corn and quinoa that are cultivated here.It is all very tasty, although the boys do miss the chocolate and ice creams of beloved Bariloche. The towns are small and quaint, it feels like being in Peru/Bolivia but without the burden of poverty in those countries. We celebrated Amit's eight birthday in Salta, the city which is called in Argentina "Salta La Linda", and rightly so. Maytal amazed us by the courage and joy she demonstrated in her first ride, as you can see in the video above. We then rented a car again, to see the scenery in the southwest. Here are the boys' stories:
Amit:
"Monday
May 17th was my birthday. I asked my mom if we could go to a buffet. She said certainly. At 12:00 we went to lunch at a buffet. I thought it was going to be good, I was wrong. It was super. I ate so much I couldn’t stand up when I tried. In the evening, we went to a mall. There we did bumper cars. The first time, Shakked beat me. The second time I beat him. We had a wonderful supper. Two days later we set out on a 6-day trip. First, we went to Cachi. The road to Cachi was about 5 hours. After one hour I was not looking at a jungle anymore, I was looking at a desert with cacti. The cacti were tall and old. Did you know that cacti grow 1 millimeter a year? Some cacti we saw were ten thousand years old. Cachi is a nice town in the middle of the wild. It had a nice plaza.
‘The monuments of Cafayate’
After being at Cachi for 2 days we went southward to Cafayate. When we arrived at Cafayate I went into the yard of the hotel and got stung by a
bee. It really hurt because it was the first time in my life I was stung by a bee. Now I am going to tell you about Cafayate. Cafayate is a slightly bigger city then Cachi. It has more plazas and better food.
‘Statues and mountains of the desert’
After 4 days at Cafayate we went back to Salta. Now I am telling you about the drive. The first thing I want to tell you about is the mountains. Our drive was through a desert with statues and stuff on the way. But the mountains were most amazing. I saw red, green and even blue mountains. Now, about the Amphitheatre: It was this vast cave with a semi-circle covered with beautiful carvings. "
Shakked
"The only thing worth writing about in our two-day first period in Salta is my brother’s birthday. A brief summary; we went to a delicious all-you-can-eat buffet and then, at Amit’s request, we went to a mall and did some bumper cars. The morning after that, we drove to Cachi, a little village in the Salta region. It was a drive through a desert, but it was extremely unlike the desert in Mendoza. It was
flat, for one, though there were mountains on the both sides. The other difference was that there were tens of thousands of cacti; cacti of all shapes and sizes. Tall ones, lumpy ones, and weirdly deformed ones. Did you know a cactus grows a millimeter in a year? So, by our calculations, some of the cacti were 10,000 years old. Finally, we arrived at Cachi. It was a tiny tangle of adobe houses by a small river which was Cachi’s main source of water. Our hotel had a little zoo, which boasted llamas, sheep, chickens, brightly colored fowl, and a few enormous wild boars. We stayed two nights in Cachi and left. A long winding road led to our destination, Cafayate. Part of the way, the scenery was the same, but we saw a new and breathtaking view. We found ourselves driving though what seemed to be a stone forest, slabs of rock loomed up vertically, sometimes diagonally, around us. Some slabs looked more like stone hills. Now, we are in Cafayate, a larger, ordinary village. Today, it struck me that our travels in Bariloche, El Bolson, Trelew - they all seemed to be in a different country - Argentina.
Mendoza, Salta, Cafayate, Cachi - they seemed to belong to an alien country. That’s just how different these places are.
Yesterday, we left Cafayate. Driving on the road to Salta, we stopped a few times to see some beautiful places. The sand around us had changed to a reddish-orange color and some of the rocks were the same bright shade. It was the stone forest on the way to Cafayate, only with stranger shapes and all vividly colored. We saw twisted rocks, leaning rocks, small lumpy rocks, and massive, towering rocks. We also saw rocks shaped like a priest and a toad. Twice we entered stone caverns without roofs. Sheer rock walls loomed up on three sides, and a narrow passage was the only entrance. Once we found ourselves looking down at a lush green valley, through which a river flowed. Thus, we arrived at Salta. Oops! I forgot to mention that in Cafayate, I tasted my first wine-flavored ice-cream. It was delicious, tasting exactly like the real thing."
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