Hippies, French chicks, and perhaps I should have gotten that rabies shot...

Having been dropped off at the edge of town, I had to find my way to a hostal and book my bus ticket for the next day. I knew where the bus station was from our visit in the morning so I stopped there first and got a ticket to La Quiaca, on the border.

The Routard guide recommended a particular hostal on the other side of the town - right on the edge and up the hill (remember what I said about hills?). Well, Tilcara is 2400m above sea level, it´s really hot, and I´m carrying my pack. After what seems like forever, I finally find this elusive place (up a very steep hill), and it looks fantastic - overlooking the town and valley, quiet...ahhhhh. I go in and ask for a bed in a dorm (trying to save money here folks!), those go for $18. The fella behind the counter has long grey hair tied in a pony tail, he yells out to the back and then tells me that there are no more dorm rooms, but I can have a single room for $42. Bugger.  I tell him thanks but no thanks and then drag my feet back outside.

Now what? Back down the hill and back into the village. Now, in Salta there was a hostal every 20 feet...here no such luck. I keep walking until I notice that I´m the only one on this side of the street, everyone else, including the stray dogs are on the other side...oh, that´s the shady side...duh! I cross the street towards the spot where a smallish dog is barking. I step up onto the curb (kerb for my Aussie friends!) and the little fucker bites me! Dogs never bite me. Dogs love me! wtf? Then he has the stones to try for another go! I stick my shopping bag in his face and walk on. Maybe I should have gotten that rabies shot after all....

The view from my bunk

I walk all the way back to the bus station and there, right across from it is a hostal....sigh. There´s a young girl tending the entrance, which looks more like a common room - there's a tv on and there are 2 guys playing darts. I ask for a dorm room and she says yep, $7...now that's more like it! She tells me that there are 3 other girls staying in the room and they're from France...but they're not in the room at the moment.
A note on bunk selection: Check the mattresses - they are not all created equally. I found out after a long sleepless night that my bunk had just a nasty old foam slab...and the other bunks had proper mattresses.
I drop off my stuff and off I go for a proper look around.

At the village square there's an aerobics class going on, complete with shake your booty moves - the dudes manning the stalls around the square are all sitting forwards in their chairs with their mouths open. Next up, the little kiddies doing traditional dances in traditional clothes...awww.

As I wandered around I got a distinct "wannabe hippie" vibe to the place...very weird.

By now I'm getting a little peckish, but it's too early for dinner and as I slowly wend my way back to the hostal I come across a empanada street vendor. An empanada is a cross between a meat pie and a calzone. Street food!!! I'll have one (40 cents)!!

mmmmm - llama empanada....

After a quick chat with the French roomies (all from the Toulouse region) and a short siesta, I go out to a "fancy" restaurant for dinner at 9. I say "fancy" because although the decor and ambiance are chic - the waitress is wearing track pants.  Ooooohhhh can it be another entry for that next food post? I think yes!

The hostal kitchen....oh my.

When I got back to the hostal, things are hopping - its 11pm. The girls had made themselves boiled potatoes for dinner and the people from the hostal felt sorry for them and so had taken over the dinner prep. There were a few people in the kitchen including the girl from the front desk and a bearded dude (Big Lebowski style)...who started chatting me up. He started to talk to me about the cosmos, destiny and I'm not sure what else, and every time I would tell him I didn't understand he would just try harder to explain it to me...in Spanish. He eventually asked if I wanted to listen to some of his music...uh - no. I finally convinced him that he should eat, so we joined the others in the back area where the girls had kindly saved me a single seat next to them - there was some olde tyme Black Sabbath playing for ambiance. The girls told me that the Big Lebowski had hit on each of them as well. Quelle surprise!

We stayed up for a while chatting and listening to some classic metal.

The next morning I had a bus to catch and the girls were going on a hike.

Quebrada de Humahuaca, crossing the Tropic of Capricorn, y Humahuaca

I took a tourist bus through La Quebrada de Humahuaca (pronounced oomawaka), I learned from the Cayafate trip that sometimes taking the tourist bus pays off because you get more out of what you´re seeing. First off, it stopped so that we could take our pretty pictures, and secondly our guide gave us some very interesting insight into this beautiful area.

La quebrada means the gorge and it separates 2 mountain ranges by the Rio Grande. The Rio, however, is not so Grande. In fact, its practically non existent. The river only comes from mid to late December to March...this is the mountain desert after all.

Our first stop was a small village called Purmamarca. This village has the beautiful painted mountains as a backdrop so heaps of tour buses stop there to take pictures. The mountain range from a white (limestone) to red (iron) to green (oxidized iron). The village also has an old church dating from 1778 which has some really cool cactus wood infrastructure..and a fantastic 700 year old tree just outside (well, they told me it was that old at any rate).

Onwards and upwards...The gorge itself is so breathtaking I kept taking pictures and finally had to come to terms with the fact that nothing could convey such massive beauty...(came to the same conclusion on my trip through the Uyuni province of Bolivia...)

That hole is the burial pit

Our next stop was Tilcara - here there were important archaeological digs which unearthed a village of the Humahuaca people, a pre-Inca civilization. At the site they had re-created the village so that we could see how these people lived. The poorer folks lived on the outside and the rich folks, higher up the hill...somethings never change - 10 to 1 the rich folks in your town live on the high points. Entire families would live in 3x2 sq/m with a courtyard outside, complete with family burial pit. The fantastic thing about these homes was that even though it was sweltering hot outside and there was no door on these places, the inside was quite cool. All the doors in the village faced either north or south, never in the direct path of the sun.


15 km outside of Tilcara we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn! WOOT! He had to hustle though because we had lunch reservations in Humahuaca...the bloody Pom and his German friend were 15min late coming back to the bus in Purmamarca...

AHHHHH what we had for lunch is to be saved for my next food update!!!

 

Humahuaca was a little bit bigger and the mountain folks were becoming more and more prominent. There´s an impressive statue dominating the hill here, its a celebration of the liberation of the Argentinian people. It was here that I started feeling the altitude -2 946m above sea level. When you exert a bit too much your heart begins to pound...its kinda like being out of breath but instead of just your lungs craving oxygen, your whole body is.

 

Just outside of Humahuaca there´s a fantastic little church built in 1661. When the Spaniards had this church built, they also commissioned local artists to paint pictures of angels. The locals had no idea what the heck an angel was so when they asked the question the answer they got was, "Well, they look like us, but with wings".  OK, seems straight forward enough. What the Spaniards got was angel paintings of them in all their Spanish glory: stylish fine lace, fashionable brocade, coiffed hair, breeches, wings....and of course guns.
Priceless. Sadly, I was not allowed to take pictures, so you´ll have to take my word for it (I can´t make up stuff this good, I assure you!)

Instead of going back to Salta with the rest of the group, I asked that they drop me back off at Tilcarra....which is where I had my next adventure...

UPDATE

I'm running behind in my posts...too much moving! I thought I would just throw up an update on my where abouts - I need to buy toilet paper before the stores close. (Sorry no pics, my camera is charging)

Alrighty, on Saturday I took a tourist bus through the La Quebrada de Humahuaca, and they dropped me off at a small village called Tilcarra instead of bringing me back to Salta.

This morning I took a bus to the boarder of Argentina (La Quiaca) and Bolivia (Villazon) - PAINFUL border crossing, on foot...complete with barfing children.

Ok...border towns all over the world are dodgy at best, this was no exception. My plan was to stay the night, but as I wandered by the bus station a lady approached me and asked if I wanted to go to Tupizia.....hmmmm why, yes, yes I did want to go to Tupizia. So for 15 Bolivares (about $2) I caught the "express" van to Tupizia (it left an hour late) I got to sit in the front seat with a lady and her 6 year old "baby"...and the driver of course.

Anyhoo, I finally got to Tupizia, found a place to stay and a great price on a tour for Uyuni leaving tomorrow (toilet paper not included). I'll be gone for 5 days and ending in Uyuni, where hopefully I'll catch transport to Potosi and hang out for a few days to recuperate...and catch up on some posts.

Things to look forward to:
Angels with guns
Llama pie and other regional goodies
Staying with Argentinian hippies and some French chicks
Bureaucracy; South American style
and whatever else I come across in the next few days! CIAO for now !

Salta, Cayafate

These past few days have been busy, busy, busy! Well, truth be told I've spent a lot of time on buses.
I arrived in Salta on Wed and checked it out for a couple of days to recover from my awesome bus ride, and give my foot a rest.

Built in 1858

 A wee history lesson. Salta is both the name of the province and the capital city of said province. It (the city) was founded in 1582 at the behest of the Spanish invaders (Francisco de Toledo, to be exact) as a link between Lima and Buenos Aires. It was ok to visit, there's an interesting Archaeological museum (a small one) with quite a creepy mummy of a sacrificed 6 year old girl. The people of the region (pre-Inca), used to offer their most beautiful children (one girl, one boy) to their gods each year. They would be buried alive on the mountains - after being drugged - and the climate being so dry, would perfectly preserve the bodies. This was considered a great honour. 

ANYHOO, Salta has a lovely centre place with its old buildings, notably the cathedral. I tried to go in but there was a service going on, when I tried again later it was all locked up. Apparently, people steal things from the church - apparently nothing is sacred! Especially when you're poor and your local church has the virgin Mary wearing a gold crown...

 

View from San Bernardo

For kicks one day I took the cable car up the hill overlooking Salta. Cable cars freak me out...especially when they pass over the roll-y bits when they come to a post...<shudders> Well, I got to the top, surely because I stayed very, very still while going up, and well, I saw the city from the top. One really weird thing was the aerobics/spin class that was going on up there...and the weight training area...odd. Speaking of which, I noticed in several areas that,what I initially thought were kids´ playgrounds, were actually exercises areas. Games to work your calves, do sit ups, chin ups, stomach crunches...you name it - stuff you´d find at the gym. It is admirable to get your people fit like that...I must say that this is a VERY high carb diet.

One thing I found fascinating is that this is about the same size as Canberra - I went out last night to get some papas fritas (ok, busted, it's french fries...they were fantastico) and the place was packed! It was hard to move around there were so many people - all the shops were open and there was music in the air! Thinking about civic on a Friday night at 8pm....not so much.

Yesterday I caught a bus to Cayafate...known for it´s wine. I thought it would be a nice chill ride through the mountains...nice. No. About 30min after we left Salta we stopped and picked up a bunch of school kids - pre teens...and they had portable speakers...need I say more?

The noisy and annoying kids aside, it was an absolutely beautiful drive. The mountains were spectacular. As we drove into Cayafate, you could tell that the vineyards had had their influence on the place. Everything looked like it was rural Argentina, but it was all sparkly and new. Some place that the rich tourists could go to and feel safe? Dunno. Apparently there is a big American ex-pat community in the area. 

I did make a friend though...he was long and lanky...and German! Poor guy...I folded my Cayafate map into a makeshift bowl and gave him the rest of my water...he was so thirsty - some of the other tourists thought I was crazy for letting such a vicious dog near me. Interesting place to visit for the day.

Gunter





Eating, snacking and lip smacking

Ok, as most of you know I'm not much of a foodie - you may have heard me talk of my human kibble ideas?
Be that as it may, one of the fun things about going somewhere different, is eating new stuff. So I thought I'd tell you about some of the fun places my taste buds have been.

Some old ones from the 1800's
- the long things in the foreground are the straws

Maté: This is THE drink of Argentina. This stuff is like crack and almost everyone is addicted (before you scoff, have you had your coffee/tea/coke today??) I had to try it!! Nina, my lovely Couch Surfing hostess with the most-est, was having some on my first morning (when we went to the markets) - How exciting!! There's a whole ritual on how to make it too, perhaps not as elaborate as the Japanese tea ceremony, but it's there none the less. The maté has to be done just so or else you risk scalding the leaves if you put water that is too hot.You have to put only a little water in first so that the leaves expand slowly...etc, etc I can't even begin to pretend that I got all the tiny nuances. It's a drink to be shared amongst family and friends so you pass the cup around. There's a metal (best if it's silver or plated silver) straw that has a flat round bottom to strain the leaves as you sip.

The ones you see here are made from pumpkin

The containers are traditionally made from pumpkin, wood, metal, or horn (Nina says the pumpkin ones are the best for retaining flavour). Each time you get a new one it has to be cured (well, not the metal ones) again with a very specific process. Nina was in the process of changing over to a new container and was telling me that it's hard to let the old ones go because they have that taste that you enjoy - the taste patina if you will. I know, you're all thinking, get on with it woman! What the hell does it taste like??? Did you know that Ernesto (Che) Guevara was also addicted to maté (he was Argentinian after all) and his revolutionary buddies would get it to him as often as they could?
 It tastes a little like smoked green tea - an acquired taste I'm sure, but one that wouldn't be that hard to acquire...unlike yak butter tea (which doesn't taste like tea at all). You can buy it in tea bags too, but I think that you miss out on the whole ritual thing, which seems a pity.

Dulce de leche - This is like caramel, but from a different galaxy. Caramel that has won the gold medal in caramel-ness since forever. Caramel that has multiple doctorates in deliciousness. Caramel that has reached enlightenment in it´s creamy magnificence. You put it on bread and butter in the morning and your day is bound to be a great one...sadly, it is your hips´ worst enemy :(


Walking with a bung foot sure takes it out of a gal....this is where snacks come in. 

This looked quite tasty in the kiosko - there's chocolate involved...what could go wrong?

This particular biscuit (??) was fun to bite into because I wasn´t sure what I was in for!
So, have you ever had a nice dark chocolate...mmmm yeah, you have. Ok, now add a squishy creamy chocolaty centre...oooo so good!
Now add a couple of rice crackers.

Ok sounds totally weird, I know, and that first bite was, well, curious. But it was quite delightful in the end and I wish I had gotten two!

And speaking of chocolate...On Monday night Nina and I went to a nice restaurant to have a nice piece of meat (a special post on meat coming soon) - Argentina is the place for a nice steak after all! We each had a perfectly cooked piece of meat, a salad, and kick ass Malbec (Uxmal, for those aficionados) to wash it down. Well, I have to say that the dessert is what captured my heart that evening - although the waiter was quite cute...*ahem* Apparently, this delight is a common dessert made at home and is seldom seen on menus because it is considered so banal. If I may say, in common parlance, OMG! The heavenly explosion of deliciousness! It is a layer cake with fine layers of a light chocolate cake, layered with dulce de leche (see above), and cream cheese. Repeat for about 8-10 layers. Ok, admittedly the cream cheese punished me the next day, but it was SO worth it! The name of this wonderful piece of heaven? Chocotorta.

No, I don't only eat sweet things...

Last night I got this delightful salsa to go with my bread instead of butter. It was standard salsa fare, made with tomatoes, onions, garlic, herbs (can´t tell you which ones - the waiter wouldn't tell me....or I just didn't understand him...) the interesting yum factor was the quinoa - simple, but wonderfully tasty!

Locro was the main course to this meal. It is a local soup made with meat, white beans, pumpkin, potatoes, and sausage. Holy stick to your ribs, batman! It was a bit chilly up here in the mountains last night so it was perfect - but I couldn't finish it even though it looked like a small portion. It was nicely seasoned and had a little kick to it.

Stay tuned...there´s heaps more to try!

Magic bus

Forget what you know about long distance bus travel. Unless of course you've traveled in South America - Suite style.


Because the rail system has a tragic history, they have made bus travel the way to go if you can't afford the plane. You have the choice of the regular bus; semi-cama (half bed) where it reclines to 160 degrees; or the full cama suite - 180 degrees...oh yeah, baby! Not only do you get to recline all the way, no, no, you also get your own screen with a choice of movies, music, or tv shows. AND it doesn't end there -They SERVE you dinner on the bus! HOW AWESOME IS THAT??!



Now, as taking the bus is a step down from taking the plane, so too, bus food is a step down from plane food - and that's saying a lot. I really wish now that I had taken a picture of my dinner so that I could share with you...but alas, after the trials of the day, what with the foot and the ATM card...well, I didn't have the presence of mind to do it. I shall endeavour, however, to convey to you this culinary delight.

Initially, the waiter brought us all a tray with 1 slice of ham, 1 green olive, 1 small roll, 1 "jam" roll (hint: wasn't jam), and 1 brownie. Shortly afterwards he came with the piece de resistance...Saffron rice with peas and carrots (I use the term saffron very broadly, the rice was yellowish in colour); a disk of some sort of meat (still unknown) swimming in a gelatious white "sauce". It was remarkably bland but filling. Oh, and that "jam" roll...I'm going to have to say that I think it was rolled with pate. Yes, the doughy part was sweet. It was a bit weird. The brownie was delicious though!

You wish you could look this good after spending the night on a bus...


Breakfast anyone? It was handy too, that they had a coffee/tea station so you could help your self when you had a hankering...but have you ever tried to carry a hot beverage the length of a moving bus - trying really hard not to spill scalding liquids on other passengers? Not easy, let me tell you!


 

For lunch we stopped in a small village and had a hot meal...I had the ravioli con carne...

Overall, gotta say that it was a rather enjoyable trip! I think I´ll sign up for another one Puno to Cusco.

And bad mistakes, I've made a few.

Hey remember that last post about the foot...well, that wasn't the end of the day for me - not by far.
After I got back to Nina's place and took a shower, I thought it would be a good idea to check on the ol' bank account while I was still in a safe environment. Went to my secret hiding spot to get my card...no card. Ok, don't panic...it's got to be somewhere else right? Nope. I tore my bag apart - no card. The last time I used it was at the airport when I first arrived - I don't remember seeing it again after that. No idea where it is. The big problem is that I now no longer have any access to my bank account aka cash. You see, I never remember the PIN on my credit card so that I´m never tempted to take cash out of my credit card. Smart, right? So now what do I do?

I quickly called the bank to see if there had been any other transactions on my account - there were none. K that's one good thing. I cancel the card and then call Loic - hoping he's not off gallivanting. I have a Visa card that's also linked to my bank account so technically I can use that to access the account, but I never remembered the PIN 'coz it's a Visa card. This is where my filing skills are put to the test. I have to guide a teenager through the nightmare that is my paper collection...and it's 8 in the morning for him, and I´m pretty sure he'd just gotten to bed.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's post for the result of the search of the lost PIN.

AWWW no, I won't do that.

My dear, sweet boy, looked and looked. Then looked again and he managed to find it. I think I´ll bring him back a nice poncho.

Crisis averted. THANKS LOIC!!!!

Ahhh I have just enough time to catch a cab to the station so that I can catch that bus to Salta...mmmm 20 hours on a bus, this could be interesting.