After the craziness of getting here, it was a relief to find Salta absolutely LOVELY. Churches? Check. Maginificent Plazas and lagoons? Check. But what´s really striking is how dramatically and obviously Argentina diverges from its neighbor to the north. First there are the faces. 60% of Bolivia´s population is indigenous. Here it´s 2% and walking down the street, the faces are, well, white.
And then there is the bustle. I expected Salta to be a small town, and techically I guess it is. But there are so many people in the street at any given time that it makes Sucre look like
Rip Van Winkle. (Sucre and Potosi shut down by 11:30 PM . . . at that time, Argentines are just having supper.) Yet the bustle seems to have nothing in common with the chaos of La Paz either.
I spent the day wandering with Ratha, a fantastic Cambodian-American girl from Berkely. We went in and out of churches, drank coffee in the plaza, went to the fine arts museum, and chatted with other travelers. And some of those other travlers were - get this - ARGENTINES. Argentina´s prominent middle class actually travels in a way that Bolivians, due mostly to monetary constraints, never would. And despite the fact that
Argentina has a recent history as
bloody a Peru´s, the former seems so much more prosperous than the latter it´s almost shocking.
In what I was sure would be the crowning event of our day, Ratha and I headed up San Bernardo Hill via cable car, wandered through the terraced waterfalls and watched the sun set over the city below. Thoroughly satisfied, we wandered back to our hostel. And then promptly left it again. After all, this is Argentina . . .
going to bed before 10 PM two nights in a row would be a travesty!
Ratha and I joined up with Sara (English), Johannes (Austrian) and Thalita (Dutch) and Thalita´s parents to go to Casona del Molina - the kind of place that makes you want to move to Argentina permanently. It´s a restraurant that specialized in Parrilla (Argentina grilling) and folkloric music. But this is not some musical performance for tourists - its just an organic part of the mood. Guitarists, fiddlers, drummers, sit at corner tables and the people eating there (mostly Argentines) sing along to the folk songs and buy the musicians beer. The food, the red wine and the music were so good, I was convinced, for the second time that day, that the night couldn´t get any better.
But somehow over the course of the evening, Thalita bet Johannes that he couldn´t drink 5 bottles of water in 10 minutes. Johannes, who had claimed to be really thirsty responded that if he did, he expected Thalita to stand up on a chair and sing a Dutch folk song to the entire room. (What can I say? It was the wine talking.) About 5 minutes into the bet, it was clear that Thalita needed to choose a song to sing, and she and her father went to go talk to the musicians in the corner. We waited with baited breath and when the 10 minutes were up, Johannes smashed down his bottle triumphantly and Thalita´s father signalled the band. They began to play right on cue and Thalita and her (very Dutch, very Gentile parents) began to belt at the top of their lungs:
Hava Nagila, Hava nagila, hava nagila, ve´nismechah . . . . I laughed so hard I almost cried. When they followed up with an oncore of ¨
Heveinu Shalom Aleichem,¨I thought my sides might split.
After the craziness of getting here, it was a relief to find Salta absolutely LOVELY. Churches? Check. Maginificent Plazas and lagoons? Check. But what´s really striking is how dramatically and obviously Argentina diverges from its neighbor to the north. First there are the faces. 60% of Bolivia´s population is indigenous. Here it´s 2% and walking down the street, the faces are, well, white.
And then there is the bustle. I expected Salta to be a small town, and techically I guess it is. But there are so many people in the street at any given time that it makes Sucre look like Rip Van Winkle. (Sucre and Potosi shut down by 11:30 PM . . . at that time, Argentines are just having supper.) Yet the bustle seems to have nothing in common with the chaos of La Paz either.
I spent the day wandering with Ratha, a fantastic Cambodian-American girl from Berkely. We went in and out of churches, drank coffee in the plaza, went to the fine arts museum, and chatted with other travelers. And some of those other travlers were - get this - ARGENTINES. Argentina´s prominent middle class actually travels in a way that Bolivians, due mostly to monetary constraints, never would. And despite the fact that Argentina has a recent history as bloody a Peru´s, the former seems so much more prosperous than the latter it´s almost shocking.
In what I was sure would be the crowning event of our day, Ratha and I headed up San Bernardo Hill via cable car, wandered through the terraced waterfalls and watched the sun set over the city below. Thoroughly satisfied, we wandered back to our hostel. And then promptly left it again. After all, this is Argentina . . . going to bed before 10 PM two nights in a row would be a travesty!
Ratha and I joined up with Sara (English), Johannes (Austrian) and Thalita (Dutch) and Thalita´s parents to go to Casona del Molina - the kind of place that makes you want to move to Argentina permanently. It´s a restraurant that specialized in Parrilla (Argentina grilling) and folkloric music. But this is not some musical performance for tourists - its just an organic part of the mood. Guitarists, fiddlers, drummers, sit at corner tables and the people eating there (mostly Argentines) sing along to the folk songs and buy the musicians beer. The food, the red wine and the music were so good, I was convinced, for the second time that day, that the night couldn´t get any better.
But somehow over the course of the evening, Thalita bet Johannes that he couldn´t drink 5 bottles of water in 10 minutes. Johannes, who had claimed to be really thirsty responded that if he did, he expected Thalita to stand up on a chair and sing a Dutch folk song to the entire room. (What can I say? It was the wine talking.) About 5 minutes into the bet, it was clear that Thalita needed to choose a song to sing, and she and her father went to go talk to the musicians in the corner. We waited with baited breath and when the 10 minutes were up, Johannes smashed down his bottle triumphantly and Thalita´s father signalled the band. They began to play right on cue and Thalita and her (very Dutch, very Gentile parents) began to belt at the top of their lungs: Hava Nagila, Hava nagila, hava nagila, ve´nismechah . . . . I laughed so hard I almost cried. When they followed up with an oncore of ¨Heveinu Shalom Aleichem,¨I thought my sides might split.
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