Day 19: September 2, 2007 In Salta
Salta,
Argentina
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Day 19: September 2, 2007 In Salta
I slept in until 8:30 and then showered. Jorge was eating breakfast when I came out. He left to go hiking in the Río Castellano, north of San Lorenzo. It apparently leads back to a beautiful canyon in the Andes. I wrote for awhile and then told Elena to get up while I went down to the office to continue uploading journals to TravelPod.com. I solved my Icelandic letter problem and started to figure out how to use the map function better. After finishing uploading the Iceland trip, I went back to my current trip and broke the file for the first two weeks into fourteen separate entries so that the map could more accurately reflect our route.
I got really hungry around 1:00 so I rounded up Elena and we took the bus into town, getting off at 25 de Mayo and Leguizamon. We walked over to Belgrano and had a hamburger at the Confitería Munich. It was okay but not great. Next, we walked down to change money. The bank ATM's were closed so I changed $60 at the black market corner. We took a taxi over to the Shopping to buy groceries. There was an ATM there so I got more money, at a better rate than the black market. At the checkout, we introduced Chico Bags to Salta society. I swear, everything here is wrapped in plastic!
I had the cab we used to take us back to Grand Bourg stop by the laundry on 25 de Mayo between Entre Ríos and Alsina where we picked up our mountain of clean clothes. Laundry is much cheaper than it used to be; it only cost 15 pesos for virtually all of our clothes. The cab then brought us back to the apartment. The driver was a good guy. I gave him a nice tip for his patience.
Elena and I hooked up the Mac to a port on the wireless antenna. Lo and behold! It worked the first time! We now have internet access from the apartment. I left her to do her homework research and went down to the office where I uploaded the Galápagos journal. Elena came down around 7:30 and said that the browser on the Mac is too old to accommodate Facebook so I set her up on one of the office computers.
I finished around 8:30 and went up to the apartment to cook a pizza we bought earlier at the Shopping. Jorge was back. He had a beautiful but exhausting day. He said good night and turned in.
For $2.75, the pizza tasted pretty good. I ate, expecting Elena to come up any minute to join me. At 10:00, she still wasn't back so I went to the office and dragged her off of Facebook and MySpace and made her eat some dinner. We did some Spanish verbs while she ate.
I was pretty beat and turned in at 11:15. Elena organizing her school notes and Spanish notes. I told her not to stay up forever and went to bed. I was asleep long before she came in, I suspect.
