Salta: Steaks, Religion and Staying up late.
Trip Start
Jun 12, 2008
1
20
28
Trip End
Nov 20, 2008
Salta,
Northern Argentina,
Argentina
Monday, September 8, 2008
We suddenly remembered the time change and realised that we had virtually no time to get our bus. We raced to the bus stop in a taxi and managed to grab a couple of pastries for the 7 hour bus to Salta
Cathedral
. We sat back and congratulated ourselves on another successful border crossing and generally making it through Bolivia. We had gone about 2000m when the bus stopped, we could not believe it when we looked out and saw a road block!! We had made it all the way through Bolivia without running into a road block but we got hit with one as soon as we were in Argentina! We sat there for THREE HOURS! Every now and then the driver would go out and talk to the police and then come back and nothing would happen. I could not believe that there was only one road out of Villazon. Eventually the bus turned round and we started to head back to the bus station. Villazon is a small town and no-one stays there because everyone gets a bus as soon as they cross the border. So we were beginning to panic about whether we would find a place to stay if everyone was stuck in the town. However to our surprise we drove past the bus station and then appeared to be taking another route out of town! So why didnīt we take that route 3 hours ago!? I was a mix between being cross that we had sat at the block for 3 hours but also pleased to be finally on the road to Salta. We made it into Salta at 7pm, having had to go slowly for the last 45 minutes because the bus kept overheating! We were really tired and headed straight for the hostel, only to find it was the wrong one! There are 2 hostels of the same name but only one in our book which I didnīt realise
Main Square
. However they were really nice and said we could stay there and move to the other hostel in the morning. We went into town to get some dinner and found the whole thing a bit of a culture shock. Having been in Bolivia for a month it was very strange to suddenly be in a place with proper paved roads...they were even painted! The houses looked amazing and there was a huge variety of more modern cars. There were no indigenous people but lots of people everywhere and it really felt like we were in Europe. We wandered around for a while and found a restaurant which seemed expensive but after the day we had had we didnīt care and fancied treating ourselves. It was just after 8pm and the restaurant was virtually empty (apart from a huge tour group), we quickly ordered our first steak in Argentina...and what a steak it was! It was huge, by far the biggest steak I have ever seen. It was delicious, like the best roast beef you have ever had. We washed it down with absurdly cheap, but great, red wine. We decided that with food of this quality we could forgive Argentina a little trouble with the buses. We left the restaurant at about 10pm and even though it was a Monday night the restaurant was only just beginning to fill up!
After a lovely long sleep we spent the next morning wandering around the town in glorious sunshine
Main Square again
. Salta is lovely, the main plaza is beautiful and there is a great feel about the town. It is also the most religious town Iīve ever been to. The cathedral is constantly packed, they even broadcast services on a big screen outside for those who canīt get a place inside. About 250 people regularly stand outside for the services, and thatīs at about 2pm. Everyone has a little prayer book which they read everywhere, standing in the cathedral, standing outside the cathedral, Iīve even seen people reading them in cafes. In the early afternoon we moved to our second hostel. It was gorgeous, one of the best weīve stayed in so far. There was a pool and a great kitchen, TV room, pool table and the room was really nice. We had a lovely long lunch and spent the afternoon relaxing by the pool. We cooked for ourselves in the evening and were just heading off to bed at 10pm (a late night for us!) when all the Argentinians in the hostel were just thinking about starting their dinner (many steaks were being brought into the kitchen!). We realised that we were going to have to change our sleeping patterns in Argentina and stay up later if we were going to enjoy Argentinian culture.
Next day we took the cable car up the mountain overlooking the city and walked back down
Orange Tree!
. It was a beautiful Spring morning and it was great to walk in the warm sunshine. Over lunch at the hostel we met another English couple, Toby and Louise, and got chatting. We all went to a museum together in the afternoon. It was another display of child mummies found at the top of mountains and amazingly preserved because of the cold weather. It was very well done but their version of things (why children were sacrificed) was very different to what we had been told in Peru which was interesting. Afterwards we sat in a cafe in the plaza for a while and enjoyed the early evening buzz (early evening is 8pm). We then headed back to the hostel and joined some other people for a bbq organised by the hostel. We had a lovely evening, sitting outside under the stars, plenty of steak, salad and red wine and great conversation. I also met my first fellow Learning & Development professional, from Switzerland. We were chatting about our jobs and I realised that I no longer have any clue about how I do my job, Iīve forgotten so much....yikes!!! (Aside: I worried about this so much that Iīve been onto the intranet and read Inside Shared Services, the toilet article in the current issue caused me to have a giggle!! And why.... Argh! Stop! This is not the place!)
The rest of our time in Salta was spent mainly relaxing, wandering around town buying things for long lunches and reading and chatting to people at the hostel. So far Argentina has turned out to be a really friendly place. The people in the hostel were brilliant. At the bbq we had some great friendly banter about sport between England and Argentina. My favourite was when the owner, Fernando, said "and what about rugby, youīre terrible, we came 3rd in the last World Cup!" Us: "What?! we came second and won the last one" Fernando: "oh....yeah".
So all in all, Salta was a great start to Argentina. Yes, it is a bit more expensive than we would like but now we arenīt in high season we are finding we can negotiate on accomodation and we are self catering a lot more so the budget isnīt taking quite the beating we were expecting.
Next stop a 24 hour bus ride to Iguazu Falls!
