Salta: Pretty normal.

Be prepared to be dazzled by my travel writing!

Salta, in the very far north of Argentina, was a victim of second impressions. It's a fine city, but overshadowed by other places we've been first that do it better. Second city to Mendoza for wines, less Andean influence than Peru, and we've already seen deserts and mountains and colonial Spanish architecture.

So, without the stress of having to hit highlights, we got to take our time enjoying the "mediumlights" and recovering from our hectic travel schedule. Well, mostly.

The exception was a rushed packaged day trip to Cafayate, the heart of the torrontés vineyards, and it wasn't what we expected at all. 3-4 hours by bus through winding mountain roads each way, and the tour was Spanish-only, instead of the English and French our hostel had promised. We thought there were no domestic wine tourists, who knew! Also, the engine fell out of our bus, so we lost an hour waiting for a new bus.

The Torrontés white wine is great, starting sweet with a dry finish, but the winery we went to was underwhelming. We think we were supposed to see another but didn't because of the time we lost. Still not sure of a lot that was going on. We got to try wine ice cream, which unsurprisingly tastes like wine but unpleasantly alcoholic.

But that's all OK, because the scenery made up for it! The road wound through the Quebrada De Cafayate, a desolate gorge with a rainbow spectrum of colored rock formations. Black, white, red, brown, white, green, and everything in between, a Krazy Kat vision of the US southwest. A preview of what's in store for us in the Chilean Atacama and Bolivia. The pictures can't do it justice:

What Salta really brings is the warmth of its people. Gustavo, the hostel employee we spent an afternoon drinking maté with; Diego, energetic curator of the ethnic art museum; the musicians at the folk-music peña we went to (can you make up a name like Hermógenes Quipildor?); even the other Argentine tourists everywhere we went.

Some other notes:

1. We ate lots of delicious empanadas, more than making up for our bad experience in Arica
2. The Pajcha Ethnic Art museum had an amazing display of contemporary, colonial, and pre-contact artifacts showing the blending of the Spanish and indigenous cultures. We were told to report back on the "angels with guns", 17th century paintings of angels in Spanish dress wielding arquebuses.
3. Peñas are restaurants with live folk music and sometimes dancing. Think spanish guitars and ballads, not Peruvian flutes. We went on the night before local elections, so local edict said alcohol wasn't allowed to be served. Instead we had a very nice, um, red grape juice served in a coca cola bottle. Yes, red grape juice...

On another bus now (only 9 hours), briefly revisiting Chile to see San Pedro De Atacama before starting Bolivia!

-Peter