A trip to the north of Argentina, Part 1

Susana and I just got back from a short but packed trip to the northwest part of Argentina. As usual we took a ton of photos, so some of those will be up on my .Mac page as soon as they get downloaded, organized, etc.

But, before I get into the travel stories, let me announce the most important news: we are officially engaged to be married! Yes, I finally officially asked the question, and she said yes! :-) Our wedding date is pretty set for February 26 of 2005. If you are a friend or family member you should be getting an email with more info soon. If you don't receive one soon then get on my case. Okay, on the travel tales:

Salta—wow, there's no dog shit...
I know that a lot of my stories of Buenos Aires have emphasized the positive, but let me break down the rose-colored illusion a little. One of the everyday annoyances here that can really get on your nerves is the great quantity of dog excrement on the sidewalks in residential neighborhoods. Basically, a lot of people have dogs, but just about nobody has a yard, so they walk their dogs out on the street and that's where the dogs defecate. The long and short of it is that you have to watch where you step here, but when we arrived in Salta we were pleasantly surprised that we could wander the streets absentmindedly staring at the buildings and people without worrying about dog poop bringing us rudely back to earth.

Getting the "travel legs" back under me
We spent a lot of bus time on this trip. Eighteen hours from Buenos Aires to Salta on a nice bus, but even so it wasn't fun. It always takes me a while to get my "travel legs" and long bus rides are one of the things that I need to readjust to. Later we spent the day in Cafayate with a four hour bus ride each way, but it was worth it because of the spectacular scenery along the way. The next day we had to get up at 5:30am (we really know how to have a relaxing vacation, huh?) to get on the Tren a las nubes (Train to the clouds, see below), on which we spent 15 hours! The next day we took an afternoon bus—12 hours—to the province of La Rioja. That trip is a whole 'nother travel story in itself which will probably make up part 2 of this blog entry. Anyhow, from La Rioja it was another 14 hours back to Buenos Aires, but on one of the nicest buses we have been on (Urquiza for any travelers here wondering which bus lines are the best), although expensive.

People and Food in the North
The north of Argentina is really different from Buenos Aires and the south. Basically, there a heck of a lot more indigenous and mestizo folks in the north. Susana kept saying how it felt like we were in a different country altogether, and I had to agree, Salta has a very different feel from Buenos Aires. It almost felt like we were back in Peru or Bolivia.

And one of the benefits of this difference is that indian folks have the good sense to have at least a little bit of chile in their food! Yes, there was salsa picante on the table almost everywhere we went to eat. It was a pretty mild salsa, but it was really tasty nevertheless. The other yummy items were tamales, humitas, and locro. I have long ago learned that there exist a wide range of tamale types across the America's and most of them don't taste like my grandma's, but even so I was quite happy to be eating tamales in Salta. The masa was kind of crumbly and they were filled with a salty beef and pork mixture (I think). They were pretty good when eaten with the salsa picante. Humitas are similar to tamales but instead of being made with corn flour I think that they are made with some sort of more freshly ground corn, and they don't really have a filling. Locro is a sort of stew with corn and chunks of meat. Oh yeah, and they serve lots of conejo—rabbit. We had empanadas de conejo, which were tasty, and Susana order a main dish of conejo which pretty much just tasted like chicken.

Let's see: we rented mountain bikes for one extremely long and stressful day of bike riding. Susana crashed twice, which she was not very happy about at the time, but I don't think she will mind me telling you all now because the day after she was telling me, "You should have taken a picture of me when I crashed so that we could have a photo of it." Riding outside the city was one thing, but riding with her amongst the auto traffic made me really nervous. By the way, for my cyclist friends: cycling is pretty popular in Argentina and I saw quite a few serious cyclists on road bikes, especially later in this pretty small town of Chilecito where I saw all kinds of serious looking riders on some pretty dang expensive road bikes.

Wine tasting (and buying) in Cafayate
We were supposed to go to Cafayate for the day on Wednesday. But, after dragging ourselves out of bed at 6am to arrive at the bus terminal a little before the 7am departure time, I discovered that I had left the bus tickets in my other backpack. Anyhow, we went the next day, and here's the hot tip for anyone travelling in the province of Salta: if you want a friendly little town to chill out in with just enough tourist infrastructure to be comfortable but not to be obnoxious, go to Cafayate. Dang, we really wished that we had spent less time in the Salta (the capital city of the province of the same name) and had spent a few days in Cafayate. First the bus ride to get there passes through some pretty spectacular canyon country. Second, theres a nice, tranquil plaza in the center of this little town, and the restaurants around the plaza put tables out in the streets because there is really no car traffic to speak of in this town, everyone rides bikes. Third, there a number of wineries here where you can visit, get tours, and taste and buy their wines. We went to two, but our favorite was Rio Colorado (which apparently exporrts to the US), a small place that until recently made wines for their family members only (a large and I imagine rich family). Fourth, crafts are cheaper and better here than in the capital—too bad we had already done a lot of shopping. Fifth, there's this cool ice creamery owned by a friendly older couple that sells wine flavored ice cream. The cabernet flavor goes good with a nice chocolate ice cream...yum.

The Train to the Clouds—Bring out the oxygen tanks...
The Tren a Las Nubes is probably the most well-known tourist attraction of the Salta area. It was on our list of must-do-even-though-it's-expensive things to do. The train is famous because it is the third highest operating train in the world (the first and second being in Bolivia and Chile, or Bolivia and Peru, I'm not sure), because it passes through some spectacular scenery, and because it some of the tricks it uses to rise from 1200meters to 4200 meters altitude are impressive from an engineering standpoint.

The whole thing is pretty spectacular, and hopefully our photos capture some of it, but it's also a pretty rough ride. Not that the train itself is uncomfortable, but the ride is fifteen hours long. The main thing though is the altitude gain. You basically start at about 4000 feet and climb to about 14,000 before heading back down. That's a pretty dramatic change to deal with, and that's why each train of the car has a large oxygen tank. While most of the passengers were excitedly taking pictures all the way up to 14,000 feet, by the time we started heading back down a steady stream of them were heading to the oxygen tanks. As usual, I felt bad earlier than most and just tried to be mellow and walk slow, then later when everyone was crashing I was feeling better. All in all, despite the great scenery, I'm not sure I'd recommend this trip to everyone. By the time you are heading back at night just about everyone is just dying to get off that train.

That's enough for now. In part 2 you have to hear about our long day and night of trying to get Chilecito and the Talampaya national park...