Salta

Salta

 After drying out from the rafting and having a quick lunch, we drove on to Salta itself.  We were staying in a hotel here, which meant that after a week of haphazard facilities, and lots of sand and dust, we were able to get ourselves fully clean and get some laundry done.  This may seem mundane, but believe me when you are travelling as we are, hot water and clean clothes can no longer be taken for granted!



School wall in Salta

There were no organised activities for our time here, so we did the things we would normally do and had a wander around, taking in the buildings and visiting the churches.  There were a couple of quite pretty churches and a building which is a school but has little sculpted hands and faces, as well as shards of mirrored glass, embedded into the walls.  It looks quite impressive, but also slightly disturbing, as if the children are trapped in the walls with only a small part of them peeping out. 

Strawberry stall in Salta



 

We also took time to sample the food and drink, which is obviously an essential part of getting to know a place!  I like the way that the fruit stalls here aren't normally a mix of fruits, but just a single type of fruit piled high on a cart.  When we passed the strawberry one the smell was quite intense.



Animal masks in Salta



We found a good place to eat on the second night, and shared a starter of pancakes with sweetcorn and covered in caramelised sugar like a crème brulee.  Sounds wierd I know, but it was very nice. The restaurant had a number of animal head masks on the wall.  We have since seen a few of these around and it seems that they were worn by tribes to embody the animal and its strengths.  Anyway, they look good.



Salta



We had bought some stamps for a few postcards back to the UK earlier in our trip and so spent some time in Salta trying to find postcards big enough to take the ten – yes ten – stamps that needed to go on each one!  As we only found some late in the day we wrote them at dinner and then had to find a postbox.   After wandering around for a while with no luck we asked a policewoman who was very helpful and not being sure herself asked three colleagues.  Like many people here, they were interested in where we were from and what we were doing, so we spent a while discussing that, but then between them they directed us to a post office not far away.   So our postcards were duly sent albeit with very little written on them.