argentina: salta

our bus from resistencia to salta arrived in salta in the early morning...in another sign of being viewed as a human atm, the luggage guy on the bus was asking for tips...but he was only asking foreigners, argh...
since salta is in the north, it was colder than we'd dealt with...not super cold, but cold enough...we figured out which way to walk from the bus station, and set about trying to find a place to stay...the first place we checked must've moved, as there was no way it was a hostel of any kind...eventually, we found a place with a double room available already...they even let us eat breakfast straightaway!!!
salta (the area of interest to tourists/travelers) is known for it's colonial architecture, especially in the city centre...after getting a map and information from the guys in our hostel, we walked around, taking photos of course, enjoying the atmosphere...

there are a couple pedestrian streets which were jam packed with other folks out walking, selling popcorn, etc...
now seems as good a time as any to mention my frustration with popcorn in argentina...almost all that is sold on the streets is sweet popcorn!! i really like salty popcorn, we only found it in a couple places in the whole country...it was disappointing to find place after place that only had sweet popcorn...anywho...
the centre of salta is built around the plaza 9 de julio, which of course has a statue of a guy on a horse in the middle...(there are other people in this statue as well)...it's a nice little park area...

one of the churches mentioned in the guidebook is on this plaza, but it was closed when we got there...there are a few awesome churches around the city with specific opening hours, of course we had to wait until later in the day to get into any of them...
lunch was at a tiny place across the street from one of these churches...awesome empanadas, totally local clientele...the best part was when one of the owners/managers/i don't know started singing...AWESOME...we decided straightaway we were going back to that place for another meal at some point during our time in salta...the view, the food, and the man, what's not to love?

while continuing to wander around salta that afternoon we saw beautiful tiling inside a building, and went inside...it turned out to be a federal police station, ooops...they kindly told us to get out :)
we found a yummy alfajores shop in another area of town, the only question was "how many do we buy?"
after the alfajores shop it was finally time to go inside the churches i mentioned earlier...we visited two...both were nifty, but i definitely liked one more than the other...(church decoration and atmosphere are very subjective, i'm not going to bore anyone with names...the churches are close to each other, and if you make it to salta you should visit both anywho)...

i found shops with heaps of pretty postcards, which was good to know...salta is the jumping off point for the area known as the quebrada de humahuaca, so there are touristy goods for each place in that area...
dinner that night was a huge steak...soooo good...i was (and still am) bound and determined to get bo eating steak more often :)...we ate so much that our tummies felt uncomfortably large, so we added a bit more distance to the walk back to our hostel...this extra distance included walking by an old convent, lit up nicely at night...a simple lighting scheme, but it was nice and peaceful...i wondered if we could go inside the next day...

the next morning dawned cloudy...booo...we asked the guys in charge of our hostel where to find someone to change money for bo...argentina has both legal and illegal ways of changing money, travelers almost always use the illegal ways since you get a lot more in your conversion...
the guidebook listed an artisan market a couple kilometres out one of the city streets, and it sounded interesting, so we started walking...the street took us through regular neighborhoods and areas; the areas of the city where people live and work, those who are not associated with tourism...as much as i love seeing tourist sights (they are tourist sights for a reason) i also love seeing 'normal' areas of each city/town/village...we didn't know exactly where the market was, the guidebook only listed a final address...

we ended up not thinking too much of the market...it wasn't bad, but it was clearly mostly for people on package tours who wanted to bring home items made specifically for tourists...some of the artistry was amazing, but i had no desire to spend that money...
on the way back to the city centre we stopped for food at a couple local shacks...YUM...fried empanadas first...eaten off a tin plate!! i also had a 'proper' meal of 1/4 chicken and french fries...(i really wanted the chicken, i didn't care one way or the other about the fries)...bo had a lentil stew, which was super tasty...after the empanadas we didn't really need this meal, but hey, why not?

we walked to the bus station to get tickets for one of the next parts of our journey after figuring out specific details...the tickets ended up being cheaper than we were quoted, maybe there was a cash discount? we never figured it out, oh well...
after the tickets we decided we wanted to see a monument, and hike up a hill to look out over the city...we hiked up a way, but not the entire way...branches were in our view the entire time, while all we wanted was a clear view...at that point the sun was starting to go down, and it was on the wrong side for us anywho...we probably should've done this little hike in the morning...ooops...as we hiked we walked past a number of people carrying portable music players, which annoyed me to no end...i'm all for people bringing music, but why not earphones? argh...

dinner that night was nothing special...bo chose a specialty of the region, a stew called locro...it even has intestines in there...the taste was good, but i wouldn't be able to handle an entire bowl of the consistency of the intestines...
the next morning we were up super early to walk to the bus station for our bus...too bad breakfast didn't start that early at the hostel :)