Salta

So since I arrived in Salta at night, we just went to the hostel and went to bed. I forgot to take pictures of our hostel, but it was nice. Even though our room had six beds, we had it to ourselves the whole time. The bathrooms were a little sketch, but the hostel had free breakfast and dinner, so that was pretty sweet.

The next day, we explored the town!

Salta--and Argentina in general--looked surprisingly European to me, both in terms of the people and the architecture. A lot of buildings had that European look (sorry, never took an architecture class) and the people were less Hispanic-looking than I expected (although, the farther north we went, the more the people changed). I didn't realize how strong the European influence was in Argentina.

On Day 1, we ate our free breakfast at the hostel (corn flakes, rolls with dulce de leche or butter), and went out to eat for lunch. We got a lunch special, which consisted of meatballs with rice or salad. We also got seltzer water and a fruit salad for dessert! I love seltzer water so much!

I'm not a huge meatball fan, but these were good! Beccah and I couldn't finish ours, and "doggy bags" aren't allowed at most places, so we secretly wrapped up our meatballs in napkins and put them in our purses. Yeah. Meatballs are oily. My purse knows that now.
We wanted to get to this high spot in Salta so we could see the city from above, which required taking gondolas. These gondolas were less terrifying than those at Ocean Park in Hong Kong, but that doesn't mean they were fun. We were pumped, though!

The top had a nice view of the little city below and the surrounding mountains. There were even rays of light peaking through the clouds and little shops at the top selling souvenirs. We hiked back down to the city. Evil gondolas.
When we got to the bottom, we walked through a park and pretended to be Guermes, some general guy who did cool things for the city of Salta. I really should be a history teacher. I know so many important details.
Then we walked around the town. We saw this cool tree.

And this cool building. I think it's a convent.

The streets of Salta.
Part of a nice cathedral. I love cathedrals. I'm really jealous of Catholics when I'm in a cathedral. Look how cool that is? How can you not want to be Catholic?According to Beccah, it is common for Latin American cathedrals to hold statues of dead saints. This guy supposedly died in his sixties, but his corpse looks awfully young to me.
These are a couple cool buildings surrounding the main plaza (more on plazas later!).

Before dinner, we ate some awesome ice cream.

DELICIOUS. One flavor was chocolate and the other dulce de leche (a rich caramel sauce). Super cheap and super delicious! For dinner we went to the hostel (well, a different branch of our hostel) and had tartas. They were basically tarts full of onions and spinach and maybe beef. My pictures didn't come out very well. They were good, if a bit salty. Those Argentinians looooooove salt! And beef. But they hate spicy stuff---??!?!?!?!

On our second day, we went on a tour to a town called Cachi, which I'll describe in its own separate post. Our third day was spent in Salta again, sitting in cafes, wandering around, and visiting museums. We went to a museum and saw this:
I'm not sure why there's that little box on top of the scissors. Does anyone know?

For lunch we had tamales and humitas, because they're popular in the north and rare in Buenos Aires. Humitas are similar to tamales, but they are sweeter and consist of lots of corn. Both were very tasty!
We had a nice time sitting in a cafe by the main plaza, eating medialunas (croissants) and drinking coffee. These are shots of the main plaza:


Every town and city in Argentina has a plaza. It's basically the town center, with a big park and lots of benches where people make-out hard-core (because most of them live with their parents until they marry, so there's no place to make-out but the plaza). I like plazas a lot, and I'm jealous we don't really have them. It's so much fun to relax and people-watch there! And occasionally take a nap.

One of the museums we went to on our third day in Salta housed four young Incan mummies that they found in the mountains. The fact that they removed them and placed them in a museum is very controversial, but they only display one body at a time, and store them in very cold temperatures with very little light. The day we were there, we viewed the mummy of a young girl--about five years old--who was struck by lightning while she was up there (after she died). Even though the lightning destroyed some of her remarkably preserved body, it also revealed parts of her we wouldn't have seen, like parts of her teeth and layers of clothing. It was pretty impressive. I really admired the respect with which they treated the bodies, presumably in an attempt to compromise with those who were against their removal.

I also learned a lot about the ritual of child sacrifice. My details may be a little off, but this is the jist.

It was quite an honor to be sacrificed. The most perfect children from the wealthiest families were chosen and they believed the child would live on in an afterlife. If they gave the gods this perfect child, the gods would be generous to the people. I don't recall the exact details, but I know that after a child was chosen, the child traveled to different villages, which threw lots of parties. At some point the child would have to walk from one town back to the capital, which was an extremely long journey, and they couldn't ride any animals for any of it. Upon its arrival to the capital, a huge party would be thrown. The adults would get the child extremely drunk, and when the child passed out, they would trek the kid up to the mountain and leave it there, along with some stuff it might need in the afterlife. Theoretically, the child could freeze to death while they were passed out and not feel a thing. But I saw photographs of all the mummies not on display, and by the look of their faces, I'm fairly certain all those kids woke up hungover and suffered as they froze to death. Or died of exposure or dehydration. More than anything, I want to know about the kids' states of mind. Were they convinced that this was their culture's highest honor and they would be fine, once in the protection of their god? Or were they scared out of their minds? That stuff is so interesting.

Well the next day we headed farther north to a town called Tilcara. But first I have to detail our trip to Cachi, and that will be my next post!