Salta

Salta. Well we´ve been here a few days and seen a few things. Salta is a cute city in the northwest of Argentina, with a charming plaza and many day trips to be had. In Salta itself, Juli and I went to their anthropology museum and saw some really cool stuff, including the findings of a National Geographic expedition into the mountians near Salta in 1999, where they found three Incan children preserved. The museum has a ton of their artifacts and also has, get this, the kids in a cryogenically frozen/old air system and you can freaking look at them. So I feasted my eyes on an Incan sacrificial boy about 7 years old. It was insane. Then we traipsed up a thousand or so steps atop a hill that overlooks Salta and you can either walk up or gondola it, and we compromised and walked up and Gondola-ed down, I think the best choice.

Also our roommates are a couple of guys from New Zealand so I´m basically just Flight of the Concords-ing it all day long.

Near to Salta is Salinas Grandes, which is this enormous expanse of Salt flats, which goes on forever kinda looking like dirt, and if you dig deep there is a water table below and these guys dig out little pools and then spoon the salt out with shovels for 30 pesos a ton, which is about 10 american dollars. Also insane. On the way to Salinas Grandes we stopped in an archeological site that pre dates the Incas, This group of inhabitants leaving in about 1440 and the Incas arriving in 1480, and the terrain is full of massive crazy mountains, enormous cacti, and sepia laden dirt.

We went up really high into themountains too, the highest point being about 4700 meters, which is like some thousands of feet which i dont know, but its high ass high. So high in fact that we were chewed on coco leaves to help ease our stomachs and prevent the altitude sickness, which it did. And mostly tasted like green tea, in a big heap in the side of yo mouth. And such a small amount so the guide put it, isn´t considered a drug, because you need so many leaves to even create a gram of cocaine, she said you don´t call someone an alchoholic if they eat grapes! so there you go Hemp haters! You aint a hippie pot head just cause you like hemp milk. Oh wait, yes you are. haha.

We also ventured to Pucamarca, a town on the world heritage list because of its ancient adobe buildings, mountains of many colors, and general awesomeness. Purples and Sepias crash with copper patinas and frosty blues. It is amazingly beautiful. The pictures cant even capture it in the slightest.

Today we went to Cafayete, a town famous for its vineyards, and drank a little wine, ate a little cheese and even had ice cream that was cabernet flavored. We also drove by some awesome rock formations and jagged, harsh and trecherous looking mountains. Similar to the grand canyon, so we´re told, but with less tourists. We went to another Garganta del Diablo, and saw many large rocks that the locals have named based on their similarity to things such as the mummy, the toad, the titanic, the nail, etc. These people love their naming of the rocks.

The best part of these trips is that we´re in a bus with like 16 people, most of them old biddies, and they just mom us the whole time, telling us to put on ice cream and being generally hillarious Argentinean elderly ladies.

We leave Salta tomorrow for Mendoza, during which we will embark on some wwoof-ing on monday of next week for a week or more depending on how it goes.
http://wwoofargentina.com/what_is_wwoof.htm

i was going to upload pix but this comp sux so ciao