August 17-20, 2007

 

Trip to Jujuy and Salta

 

            This past weekend we took another adventure. Once again, my friend Russ, Mary Marshall and I teamed up with three other friends, Amelia, Fran, and Jordan and ventured to the far northeastern providences of Argentina called Jujuy and Salta. 

            We left Thursday night (we took off Friday from classes because we are still in a grace period where we are choosing which classes we are going to take for entire semester) from the Cordoba bus station and boarded another double decker bus, for what was going to be our longest over night bus ride of 12 ours (which turned into closer to 13 by the end of the trip). Again everyone met at my house on Thursday night earlier, so we could all go down together. We ordered some pizzas and just hung out with my family for a bit before heading out to the bus station.

            The bus ride was long. We figured out that the bus was traveling about 30 miles an hour for the majority of the trip…or at least that’s what it felt like. We were lucky enough to sit by an old man who snored louder than any bear, or other large mammal I think ever would be able too, and to top it off our seats were not “full cama” (fully reclining) but only went from the 90 degree angle to about a 110..so that made for some comfortable sleeping. I actually didn’t have as much problems sleeping as the others, but this is coming from the kid who can fall asleep almost anywhere if the occasion calls for it…

 Finally about 10am Friday morning, we arrived in Jujuy. Jujuy we knew from the start was going to be a different feel from all the other places we have visited. While it does have some tourist attractions, it has a lot more poverty and a larger indigenous population than the other areas we have traveled to yet. That was something that excited me, because I love seeing different culture besides a…main stream (for lack of better wording) culture. As my host dad told me, many of the things that I saw there and in Salta, especially in regards to the people, music, etc. have not changed in 60 or 70 years, if not longer. So I thought that was really cool.

We went out to lunch at a little restaurant near our hostel, and just relaxed there a little bit. We were able to arrange a half day excursion which was lucky, so we had about 2 hours to kill before that started.

Our tour was really fun. It was just four of us, because Jordan and Fran decided to just hang out and explore the city of Jujuy capital. We rode in a big 1990’s Mercedes van, and our driver was really cool. He knew so much about the area, and the history (which I guess are some good qualifications to be a tour guide…) but I really felt like I learned a lot from him. Jujuy is not on the list of largest towns in AR, it has about 460,000 citizens. On our tour, we saw Los Termas de los Reyes, which are hot spring baths, which the kings and wealthier citizens used to use for baths and hot tubs hundreds of years ago. The water comes from the mountain, and we were able to see how that all worked, as well we had an hour to sit in the hot tubs and relax. 

We also visited a Granja de Truchas, which is a trout farm, and there were hundreds and hundreds of trouts that were being bread and ready to sell. It was such a neat place. When we were walking around though, Mary Marshall got bit by one of the dogs. There are dogs every where here, both wild and pets, and its hard sometimes to tell the difference. We were all a little ways away from here, and she apparently heard a growling from the bushes where she was walking by, and then when she turned around and tried to talk to it, it bit her leg. Luckily she was wearing some decent jeans, so it barely broke through her skin. I think it just scared her (and us) more than anything. It turned out to be the neighbor’s dog.

We also saw Laguna rodeo, where we just got to see some of the most peaceful lagunas; they were absolutely gorgeous. Everything around them was silent. You could hear water trickling from across the laguna, which was probably a good 150 yards away at least.

After the tour we met up with the others, and we decided to go find dinner. Apparently 8pm is still really early to eat dinner in Jujuy, so we ate at a restaurant by ourselves and I think we were the first customers of the night…it was fun though, we got to try some tamales that were known to the region, as well as a few different meat preparations. Afterwards, we went back to the hostel and called it an early night, because we booked a 10 hour excursion for Saturday morning at 8:30am.

Saturday morning came way to fast. We all rolled out of bed sleepy eyed, hungry and still half asleep, once again climbed aboard the Mercedes bus. Our tour guide was this guy named Adrian, who was pretty fluent in English and a blast. We tried to get him to speak to us in Spanish the whole time, since that is the reason we are in AR, but I think he enjoyed speaking English as much as we do Spanish. It was fun because we would talk to him in Spanish, him to us in English, and if anyone ever made a grammatical error or needed some vocab help we were able to help each other. We left the hostel at about 8:30 and traveled for about an hour out of the city. Its safe to say I fell asleep every time we sat down in the van for the half hour to hour stretches in between sights. We saw las montanas de siete colores, the Mountains of Seven Colors, they were really pretty. We also had lunch at a very authentic Jujuy-ian restaurant where we had milanesa de Llama, which is breaded llama meat…it was actually pretty good. We also went to Humhueaca, an archeological museum, las ruinas del Pucara, and a botanical garden, that had a lot of really cool cacti and llamas. Russ and I learned the hard way that they were spitting llamas…

After the long day, we got dropped off at the bus station and jumped on the first bus to Salta. We were lucky and didn’t really have to wait for the bus. But it was a two hour bus ride, and the bus had a..unique..odor, and was about 100 degrees inside. But it we made it alright. We got to Salta about 11pm, so we just hung out at the hostel and called it another early night since we were wiped out from the day’s adventure.

Sunday we slept in until about two and made it a relax day. We went out for breakfast (at 2pm..) and then just roamed around the city of Salta for the afternoon and evening going in and out of shops and checking out the sights. We tried to arrange a four wheeling excursion for Monday up in the mountains, but it was rather expensive. So we didn’t make any plans for Monday. We went out and tried an Irish pub that night because it was recommended in our guide books. It was fun, but kinda costy again so we left and just went back to the hostel.

I love all the people we have met traveling. Whether it is the girl working at the desk in the hostel, a waiter/waitress, bartender, or street vender, we have met some really cool, kind, and helpful people on our trips. Its one of those things that I never really thought about before to much, but they really can set the mood for the area we are traveling in.

Monday we decided to make our own hike, so we hoped on a city bus which took us about 7 kilometers out of the city to the foot of some hills/mountains where we were able to just hike around. After a quick stop for some snacks/lunch at the grocery store, we adventured up the steepest tallest hill we could find. It was cool until we reached the top, and encountered our first wild animals – bulls. They were honestly the biggest bulls I have ever seen. And we had to walk pretty close to them. As scary as it was…it was quite a rush too. Then we found a little town, rented some horses and rode in the mountains for about an hour, then headed to La Quebrada de San Lorenzo, which is a national park with some awesome hiking trails of all levels. It turned out to be a really beautiful day to, so that made it even better.

Afterwards we headed back into town, met up with the others, and headed for the bus station again. We got on our all night bus and called it another good weekend.

Salta and Jujuy were really cool towns, and had a lot to offer, especially as far as nature is concerned, and we were able to see another side of Argentine culture. Now, back in the swing of things for another week of classes….but more importantly anticipating our next excursion to the providence of Tucuman in two weeks! Hope all is well with everyone, miss you all!

 heres a pic…im still working on setting up one of those free online albums…any suggestions…?

riding in San Lorenzo