Salta: Land of the Desert and Rainforest and Mountains and Salt Flats and Vineyards

Hola todos.  Just got back from Salta yesterday.  The week in between Svetlana leaving and us leaving for Salta was pretty standard- we had some friends over one night, went to a boliche, hung out, went to class, etc.  Art history is the last class I want to be taking right now- pretty hard, intangible subject matter, boring, long, etc.  Literature is pretty sweet.  My teacher is really young and very cool and we're reading some interesting stuff, plus about 15 of 20 kids in the class are from the States.  I only have class Tuesday through Thursday too :)


We took a bus to Salta last Thursday evening and arrived Friday afternoon (it was a 20 hour bus ride).  Salta is a province in the northwest of Argentina where it borders Bolivia.  The actual city is about an hour or 2 from the border.  Its also fairly close to Chile and the Andes mountain range, so there are a lot of Incan remains, museums, descendants, etc in the area.  Friday afternoon we explored the city center a bit (its considered a city because it has something like 60000 residents, but its just a big town) and went to an Inca museum.  The museum had a lot of artifacts found in ancient Inca ruins and 3 mummified Inca children.  There was a ritual every year where young children between the ages of about 5 and 16 would be sent up the mountain to "be reunited with their ancestors", which in reality meant being drugged and abandoned at the frozen peaks.  Because of the conditions, the children would freeze and die, and because it was so cold, their bodies were almost perfectly preserved until recent times when they were found.  The museum had 3 of these children in sealed glass compartments.  It was kinda creepy, but very cool.


Saturday through Tuesday we took day long tours with a tourism company.  Saturday was awesome.  We first took this long winding road through a semi-arid area filled with dry rivers and wild horses to the mountains nearby (not the Andes, but a smaller range).  As we climbed the mountains we entered an actual rainforest.  We took an extremely twisted road up the mountains and eventually go out and walked for a bit.  It wasn't a typical rainforest with monkeys and crazy bugs and stuff everywhere, just a very wet forest with a lot of waterfalls and tropical looking plants.  The view from where we were was incredible- tons of giant mountains covered in rainforest with clouds covering the peaks.  I believe the land was actually privately owned but open to public (not really sure how it worked), but there are cattle farmers everywhere in the region, and its entirely free-roaming cattle.  So in this rainforest there were also horses and cows walking around all over the place.

We got back in the van and made our way further through the mountains, until we ended up back in a semi-arid series of valleys.  As we continued on, the landscape suddenly turned into full-blown desert.  I'm talking just tiny little plants scattered about, tons of dirt, lots of cactus, and every couple of miles, an adobe hut in the middle of it all where somebody actually lived and worked.  We took a long, straight, flat desert road towards the horizon, until suddenly the ground became completely white.  There is a gigantic salt flat in Salta (hence the name "Salta).  It's not as big as the salt flat in Bolivia nearby (which can be seen from space) but it is huge.  We parked the van in the middle of it and go out to explore.  Our tour guide warned us, "If you don't have sunglasses or sunscreen, this will not be enjoyable."  She then explained that we were at about 8000ft and the sun in the middle of an enormous hard-packed white desert is fairly strong.  She was right.  I hadn't brought my sunglasses, and as I stepped out of the van onto what seemed like a 1000 degree version of Antarctica, I immediately felt my skin burn and my eyes slam shut in the light.  I put on some sunblock and borrowed a hat from a friend (which didn't help because the ground was almost as bright as the sun), and we began exploring.  There were huge lines of holes dug into the salt.  Companies dig holes which naturally fill with water and crystallize the salt, then they drain the water and collect the salt for refining and distribution.  We took some cool pictures then had a picnic on the salt then headed back into the van.


We headed back the way we came, stopping at the highest point of the day at 4200 meters, or about 13780ft.  We then stopped at a small town called Purmamarca.  It was a tiny pueblo in the middle of the desert at the foot of the "Seven Colored Hills", a series of mountains that are super colorful (if you couldn't guess).  The town was made almost entirely of adobe and cactus wood, with a church built in 1648, extremely old for South America.  We explored the perpetual craft fair in the town square (I bought a cool sweatshirt made of alpaca) and then headed back to Salta.


That night we hung out by the pool at the hostel and chatted with other travelers at dinner.  Hostels are so cool.  Ours had a big backyard with a pool, bar, big dinner tables, ping pong, a pool table, a lounge with couches and a big flat screen, a few small other places to chill, a nice comfortable kitchen, etc.  Every night they cook an included dinner for everybody next to the pool and bar.  You can meet some very interesting people at hostels.  A lot of earthchildren who spend months at a time backpacking around the world, all with amazing stories and all very open-minded.


I've been inside for too long today, so I'm going to leave off here for now.  Tonight if I'm around I'll post a few captioned pictures of the first day, but if you're antsy and impatient click here for all my pictures.  I'll also try tomorrow to post about the rest of the trip.  Enjoy the warm weather everybody. Later.