Day 77: October 30, 2007 In Salta

  Salta, Argentina
Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Day 77: October 30, 2007 In Salta

After getting down to the office, I got my email and read the list of email addresses for those who will be joining Todd and me in the Galápagos Islands in January. That inspired me to go online and purchase my round-trip ticket from Punta Arenas, Chile to Quito. I was happy to see that the price had dropped $50 since the previous day. I sent the receipt up to ACA so I hope I will be reimbursed before the next credit card bill comes around.

Claudia gave me all of her field data for the Quebrada Chuñapampa area. I was surprised to see that the strata are only 1,000 m thick. That will take much less time than I was allotting for the project. Toyo and I talked about returning to Río Metán to look for some volcanic ash beds for isotopic dating. We did a great magnetostratigraphy project there in 1989 but never finished it because none of the tuffs had any zircons for fission-track dating. Since then, I've switched to Ar/Ar dating which uses other, more common minerals, some of which are surely in the ashes we sampled before.

I worked some more on the proposal, reading about Neogene tectonics in southern Patagonia. I definitely see the direction I want to take the proposal. As I was working on it, my fone rang. It was Lisa Jensen, a friend of my undergraduate geology buddy, Bill Beyer. She is traveling in Argentina for a couple of weeks so Bill put us in contact with each other. She came up to Salta and tomorrow she, Elena, and I will do a two day trip around the Valle Calchaquí and Quebrada de las Conchas, spending the night in Cafayate. She was at the Altos de Balcarce Hotel. I told her I'd be there in an hour.
I caught a cab and was dropped off at the hotel. It looks very nice; I was surprised I hadn't heard of it before. When Lisa came down, I liked her immediately. She is a nurse practioner and former midwife. She's been teaching a course at Dartmouth Med as an Adjunct Professor. She's done a lot of international work in places like Honduras, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, and other places-a very interesting person.

Salta Cathedral

We took a cab to El Centro and went to see the mummy. Unlike my other visits, we were about the only people there. We were even given the salteño rate for entrance!

Interior of the Iglesia San Francisco

Afterward, we walked down to the Iglesia de San Francisco and went inside. It was only the second time I had been in there. We then sat at a sidewalk café drinking some wine and getting to know each other before taking a cab up to the Vista de Cóndor for dinner. Elena was at the apartment so she came over and joined us. We had a great dinner, the most food Lisa had eaten since arriving in Argentina.

After dinner, I had Ramon call Lisa a cab. I told the cabbie where to take her and then Elena and I went back to the apartment and went to bed.