Northern Argentina continues to surprise and delight. Getting off the bus in Salta I was greeted with something I’d not come across for some time – hawkers at the
terminal flapping on about their hostels. I don’t actually mind this, as it’s
an easy way of find out how much a place will cost without the wasted time of
actually visiting. I decided to take up on one of their offers and walked off
with the dude to the hostel.

It was a fairly decent place with several dorms. I ended with a 4 room dorm to myself the entire stay, and was even invited to their parrilla (BBQ) one night and had some left over pizza another. It was truly a family run hostel, and what keeps
becoming an obvious trend in Argentina is that families stay in hostels more so
than backpackers do. I can only assume this is because how expensive things
have become here and how bad the economy is, but it sure is a strange thing to
see.

Aside from Baroliche, Salta is the most foreign tourist heavy city I’ve visited in
Argentina. This came as a surprised as I would have assumed Mendoza would have taken that crown, but nope, Salta was where I started hearing English speakers again with their various accents and poor attempts to speak Spanish to the locals. I couldn’t help but be a little amused at watching people struggle with
the language divide and I was cast back to the beginning of this trip, some 9
months ago, in Ecuador when I couldn’t even ask for the price of something in
Spanish!

Salta has a chair lift up the nearby mountain top, and it was only now that I realised that every single one of the chair lifts I’ve used in South America are all Swiss made. I guess the Swiss have a monopoly on chair lifts or something, with all their mountains and all. Atop there are great views of the city and the
surrounding countryside, and the park even has an impressive water feature that
pumps water over some man made waterfalls and ponds. They also have an outdoor gym up here, which at first is a little odd, then you understand what an
awesome setting this is for doing exercise.

Once again the feeling of Latin America really comes out in Salta. There’s the colonial buildings, narrow cobbled walkways and beautiful old school churches painted in pastels and lighted up wonderfully at night. And for some reason there are a lot of orange trees, just lining so many streets.

I think the feeling of returning to a more South American vibe was also due to it being hot here. The sun was out and the heat prevailed so much so I could wear shorts again. With the warmth here they do something I’ve not come across before – when you order a beer it comes out in an ice bucket!  I wasn’t sure what to make of this at first, as it’s certainly unusual, but it makes a lot of sense when the beer comes in litres and you want to keep it cold in the heat. This is a practice that needs to be adopted in Australia (although we don’t have 1 litre bottles in Oz!).

I couldn’t but help get a dose of western cinema in Salta and had to watch the new Batman film. Good ol’ Google provided the times when it was playing and I made my way to the shopping complex that had the Hoyts cinema. Unlike cinemas back home, you actually get allocated a seat and I sat down to finally watch Batman in English with Castillo subtitles.

When the weekend rolled around the weather then turned to overcast. The main plaza has several restaurants that were continuously packed with people the previous days, but with the sun barred from the skies by cloud, the tourists didn’t come out to play and it was strangely devoid of people in the plaza. A musician,
Fabian, who would play every afternoon to the crowds was even surprised by the
lack of people and he kicked back with me for an hour or so as we discussed the
various countries in South America and his travels to South East Asian.

The begging crowd was ever present on the plaza. The kids tend to ask you money for religious cards, which seemed to be a hit with the local population, much like trying to collect a set of football cards but with Catholic iconography. A shake of the head and a ‘no, gracias’ and they went on their way, however if someone had finished their meal and left with some food still on their plate, kids and adults alike would grab the half eaten left overs and be on their way. It’s
kinda gross and baffling that they’d be doing this when I’ve seen people in
worse poverty not acting like scavenging dogs.

The only museum I was planning on seeing was one that had a frozen mummy in it. When I visited the museum the place was packed with swarms of young students and I was told I had to wait. After eyeing over the price of admission – 40 pesos – I started to question whether it was worth it just to see another mummy I’d seen countless times back in Peru for a fraction of the cost. After waiting around for 20mins I decided it wasn’t worth it and left.

The prices in Salta are all over the place, as to be expected. In one restaurant you can get a beer for 20 pesos, but across the road they charge 35. I found myself
only eating out and heading back to the hostel for a few beers at only 15
pesos, chilling out with the family and play video games on the arcade machines
they had.

On the day I finally decided to leave Salta the weather was hot and I had reservations on leaving. If the sun was out again isn’t that a sign I should stay! No no, dragging myself away I marched to the bus terminal and caught the bus to
Resistencia – a name I was having a lot of trouble saying properly.