Eating Llama in Humahuaca

Last night I ate a Llama. Despite the fact that I have yet to see a llama in South America (sheep, donkeys, horses, cows, dogs, and goats are numerous but not llamas) we were told that it was a local Humahuacan delicacy and that we had to try it. Marie-Claude and I, along with two guys from our hostel (Kevin from France and Andrew from Conneticut), went to a very nice restaurant where the booths were lined with fleece and the tables and lampshades constructed from cactus. The others were keen to try the Llama and each ordered a different variation. I was still feeling a bit queasy in my stomach and decided to try the quinoa and vegetable soup instead. I think I made the right decision. The soup was tasty and it was nice to eat a meal that contained more vegetables than meat. It has been difficult for me to eat enough vegetables here in South America because the majority of restaurant meals consist of meat and potatoes, white bread, cheese, and desserts. In the market one can find vegetables but they are very expensive (Argentina is experiencing problems with inflation and the price of vegetables has increased 17% in the last 8 months) and are often pockmarked and halfrotten.

The llama was well presented and looked appetizing but the meat was tough and stringy and left a strange after taste in one´s mouth. Marie Claude, who had been the most enthusiastic campaigner for llama was unable to finish hers. Everybody was glad to have tried llama but nobody was planning on ordering it again any time soon.

Marie-Claude and I arrived in Humahuaca last night after spending two very enjoyable evenings in Salta. As we near the Bolivian border there is a distinct shift in the local culture. The bus we took from San Salvador de Jujuy to Humahuaca was not a clean uncrowded bus from the south. There were more passengers than seats and the fabric of the chairs was worn from use. Humahuaca is not an urban town. The supermarkets of Salta have been replaced by small corner stores where all of the merchandise is behind the counter and children frolic with lambs in the street. This morning, we sat in the sun drinking fresh squeezed orange juice and coffee and listened to the hymns of the church choir drift across the town. It was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday morning. We had many plans for the day but they all melted away to a lazy day of handwashing and walking around the town. We tried to go horseback riding but the farm was deserted excepted for an old dog lounging in the sun. Tomorrow, we plan to visit Purmamarca (and the seven coloured mountain) and the Salina Grandes. Then, Marie Claude will return to Salta and start her journey south and I will finally head north and make the plunge into Bolivia.

Small Towns in the Back of Beyond (Salta to Iruya)

After being on vacation in South America for over a month and having travelled 2000km across Argentina and Uruguay...it seemed like a good time for a road trip. Our quiet, multicultural hostel had been invaded by a tour group of 32 Brits, Aussies, and Americans who, while nice people, had a different attitude towards travel and overwhelmed the facilities. All of a sudden the computer was always in use and the bathroom was always occupied by girls drying their hair and applying eyeliner. On Wednesday morning, Benjamin, Julie (Quebec), Daniel (Switzerland), and I fled...I mean... rented a car and headed north from Salta. Renting a car in Argentina is not like renting a car in Canada. You do not arrive at the office, pick up the keys and go. Before you leave, every scratch and flaw on the car is documented, transcribed, and discussed at length. Eventhough we had reserved the car the day before, it took us over an hour after arriving at the rental office before we were granted the keys to an elderly, dust coloured Volkswagon.
We drove about 300 kms north from Salta, through Jujuy and Humahuaca, to Iruya, a town nestled in a dry river valley overshadowed by vertical rock faces that rise hundreds of metres into the sky. The approximate population within a 7 km radius? 306. To reach Iruya, one must drive 2 hours from Humahuaca down a gravel track that slowly winds its way up to 4000m before descending into the valley. The mountains in the area shift from rounded grassy humps to multicoloured folded outcroppings to precipitous cliffs eroded into hoodoos. Every half an hour or so we would encounter a solitary adobe dwelling with meat drying on a line and the owner high on the mountainside tending the sheep. The land is beautiful but stark and we wondered aloud how the people could grow enough to sustain themselves in the rocky, grey soil.

We spent the night in Humahuaca and watched a brilliant, fiery sunset over the mountains fade into a night bright with the full moon and hundreds of stars. Humahuaca is a town that follows many traditions from the past. The streets are cobbled and the buildings modest. It is a popular spot for tourists and there is a market where people sell traditional fabrics and knicknacks. The hostel we stayed at was a bit out of town but served fresh squeezed orange juice and fresh coffee for breakfast (instead of the usual hostel breakfast of reheated coffee and the Argentinian equivalent of Tang). We spent our second day trying to find a spectacular mountain that we had heard rumours of. We drove for hours down the wrong back road, continuously wincing as we scraped the bottom of the car on yet another pothole. The scenery was still spectacular and we encountered several local people dressed in the traditional, brightly coloured outfits driving their sheep and cattle (one woman was even walking with a calf strapped to her back like an infant).
I felt a bit weak from the combination of a slight stomach bug (brought on by eating uncooked vegetables) and the altitude and although the mountains were awesome (especially the one with folds of many different colours) I was glad to return home to Salta and crawl into my bed.

Returning to Salta was not as easy as expected. Several times on the road we were stopped for almost half an hour by protesters who (wielding Che Guevera as their mascot) had blocked the road to demonstrate against the lack of jobs available. The north of Argentina is visibly poorer than the south and we drove by huge communities of social housing being constructed with identical 2 room houses as far as the eye could see. By the time we returned to Salta, the car was in rough shape. It was making several unusual grinding and ticking sounds, the bumper was on its way to falling off and the car was filthy. We were fairly certain that we were going to be slapped with a huge fine for destroying the car but even after a careful inspection the rental company told us ¨todo bien¨(all´s well). We were quite relieved but decided that if we were to do another road trip we would rent from a different company because we certainly did not want to be the next people to rent that car!

In the hostel, I met up with my friend from Iguazu, Marie-Claude, and we will probably go to Jujuy together tomorrow.

A Girl Frozen in Time (Salta)

By the time I got around to organising myself today it was too late for any serious outings. Most of my time was spent organising my road trip for tomorrow. 4 of us (Benjamin and Julie from Quebec and Daniel from Switzerland) are renting a car tomorrow and heading north to Humahuaca and beyond. It should be a trip filled with interesting geology, anthropology, and scenery. We are also considering some forays into the national parks nearby but that will have to wait until Friday. Salta is a paradise for those wanting to make short trips to wine country, the mountains, and the plains. I could spend many weeks here.

In Salta, they have an interesting museum featuring the preserved body of a young girl who was found in the high mountains and is perfectly preserved. I saw her today and she looked so like life I half expected her to wake up and jump through the glass horror movie style. The rest of the day was spent in a cafe reading a newspaper (in Spanish) and watching the world go by.

Jungle Speed (Salta)

You can see more photos at
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=56871&l=5b96f&id=802760462
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=56869&l=dd778&id=802760462
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=56866&l=d6014&id=802760462



Way back when I was in Buenos Aires, I decided to purchase a Boca Junior's football jersey. It has been the best purchase of my trip. Not only is it a nice, functional t shirt but it is also the best conversation starter I have ever had. Every time I don the blue and gold, I inevitably get approached by Argentinians unable to contain their curiousity as to why a "blonde" foreigner is wearing the colours of the most popular team in Argentina. This afternoon, it was quite warm and I hiked up a big hill overlooking Salta. I had stripped down to my boca jersey and was sitting eating my lunch on top of the hill when I was approached by a man in his 70's and his wife. Do you like Boca? he asked me in Spanish. Having heard this question many times, I was prepared and replied that I enjoyed watching them play but that I was from Canada and did not follow the game closely. The man seemed very excited that people in Canada had heard of Boca Juniors. "Boca is very close to my heart" he continued in Spanish. He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a gold chain hanging around his neck. On the chain were two pendants, the virgin mary and the boca juniors crest. Then he reached in his wallet and pulled out his Boca membership card. He told me that he had been a member of the Boca Juniors Club for 60 years. His wife pulled out the camera and I thought that they wanted me to take a picture of them with Salta in the background. Instead, she took a picture of me standing beside the man in my Boca Juniors jersey.
The jersey does not always provoke such a positive reaction. In Iguazu, the man at the hostel bar told me that as a River Plate fan he could not in good conscience serve someone wearing a Boca Jersey. Whether the reaction is positive or negative there is always a reaction and often a conversation.

The hostel here in Salta has a very different group of people than in Iguazu. There are people from many countries and instead of conversation in English, the conversation in the common room is a mix of English, French, Spanish, German, etc all mangled into one mess that nobody is excluded from but no one understands fully. Last night, the group of about 10 people shared national anthems, folksongs, and tonguetwisters from all of the countries represented before playing Jungle Speed (a game like uno and speed combined) late into the night.
This is what I came to South America for!

The Long Ride (Iguazu to Salta)

I saw the waterfalls on my first day in Iguazu and spent my next two days soaking in the warmth beside the resort sized pool, playing pick up sports, and meeting people from all over the world. English was definately the predominant language and to be honest it felt like my trip had changed from South American adventure to spring break in Mexico for a few days. I met lots of nice people including a girl from Montreal, Marie Claude, who will arrive at my hostel in Salta in a few days.

My trip to Salta was a long and rather illogical bus ride. My original bus ticket from Iguazu only took me as far as San Ignacio, about 4 hours south of Iguazu, but I didn't even get off of the bus. It was pelting down rain as my bus pulled off onto the dirt (dirt plus rain equals mud) shoulder. There wasn't a bus station and I didn't relish the idea of wandering around the ruins with my big pack on in the pouring rain for a few hours. So, I stayed on the bus to Posadas. It was still raining in Posadas so I asked around at the ticket booths for tickets to Salta *and possibly a bus to Chaco National Park*. No buses were going directly to Salta until the following day but a bus was leaving for Tucuman in 20 minutes. I got on it and rode Semi Cama for 17 hours to Tucuman. Even though it was semi cama and I did not get the front seat (which gives you bonus leg room) I slept better than on any of my previous bus rides. I think it was because I had so long on the bus I could get a full night's sleep without worrying about missing my stop. I quite enjoy the long bus rides and don't find them torturous at all (well except maybe for the choice of movies. In the last 2 days I have watched, or half watched, 7 of the stupidest movies I have ever encountered.) In the middle of the night we passed by some sort of festival. There were cars and buses full of people parked in the dark, in the mud on the side of the road for miles and miles. The crowd was young people, old people, men and women. It was very strange. I arrived in Tucuman at 9 am on Sunday morning. It was raining and cold. I had breakfast (a breakfast completo here consists of 2 croissants, a cup of coffee, a glass of mineral water, and a glass of orange juice) and spoke with some girls from England who had just come from Bolivia. I couldn't find any information in the station on what to do in Tucuman and since I hadn't planned to go there I was a bit at a loss. I ended up buying a bus ticket to Salta *another 5 hours*. By the time I reached the hostel in Salta I had been travelling for 31 hours straight (all semi cama) and felt strangely rested.

The nationalities of the hostel guests in Salta differ greatly from the guests in Iguazu. There are many Argentinians here, as well as, Swiss, Israelis, and Mexicans. I was told when I checked in that there were two people from Quebec staying at the hostel and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they were friends of mine from the hostel in Cordoba. Marie Claude arrives on Wednesday so maybe I will take some more Spanish lessons in the mean time.

Puerto Iguazu

I arrived in the deserted and decidedly closed bus station of Puerto Iguazu at 5 30 in the morning. I had spent the night conversing with an Argentinian soldier learning English and switching buses at 2am. I was not well rested and my options seemed limited. I took a taxi to the Hostel Inn Iguazu where I had a reservation for that evening. The staff wasn´t particularly sympathetic to my plight and allowed me to leave my backpack but told me I was not allowed to check in until 2pm. I considered relaxing on a deck chair by the pool until 2pm (yes there is a pool...this hostel is more like an all inclusive resort with dorms than any hostel I´ve ever been to) but I had been doing so much waiting in the last few days that I wanted to do something. I decided to go to the waterfalls. The hostel has a bus that transfers people to and from the falls but I was informed that all the transfers were full for the day but that if I stood out on the street I could wave down the next bus. So I stood on the street and I waved and waved but the bus did not stop. I knew that the next bus would not be by for another half an hour so I decided that it was time to take some action and start doing some moving of my own. I began to walk. I walked the whole 15km from the hostel to the Argentinian falls on the road. The road itself is very narrow but it has a wide grassy shoulder before the jungle proper begins. To be honest I was a bit unimpressed by the jungle on the side of the road, the flora seemed very similar in type and quantity to that found in abandoned lots in Vancouver. For the first half of my trek I tried to wave down buses and other vehicles but no one stop they just honked their horns at me as I walked. I was at a loss as to what these horns meant. I came to several possible conclusions ranging from a general greeting to what are you doing it is 15 kms to the park, to I would help you if you knew the right signal to ask for it, to stop you stupid tourist girl you are being stalked by a large jungle cat. I dont think I will ever know but I know that I made an impression on the bus drivers, several of whom waved at me and gave me the thumbs up when I finally arrived two hours later at the park. The general admittance to the park was quite expensive , 40 pesos or 14 dollars. I paid it and was admitted into the nightmare of overweight, middle aged, tour group members waddling laboriously along the flat paved path talking on their cell phones and smoking cigarettes. I was put off by the crowdedness and comercialism of the whole thing. I wanted away from the loud obnoxious people so I purposefully headed for the path with lots of stairs which acted as a impermeable barrier for the majority of them. Still, even on the least crowed path I only had a few seconds alone. If the park is this crowded on a Wednesday in low season I can´t imagine it when it is busy. The falls were beautiful but I found that most people came to take pictures of themselves infront of the falls rather than actually look at them and my new camera isnt very fun to take pictures with. I decided to treat myself to The Gran Adventure tour (a tour including a boat up to the falls, along the rapids and then a truck through the jungle) and wished I hadnt. It was entertaining but certainly not worth the money I paid for it. Do not expect to save money in Puerto Iguazu. They know that you are a tourist and they are going to take you for all that you are worth.




Still, the moment that I approached the horseshoe of the biggest waterfall, Devils Throat, saw the mist rising, heard the roar, and looked down into that roiling water all my resentment of the blatant money grab faded away and I was left with awe for the power of nature. The falls really are a marvel and worth the trip.

Iguazu is a one horse town. Once you have seen the falls there is not else much to do, especially if you are Canadian or American and have to pay to go to Brazil or Paraguay. There are lots of package adventure tours available but they will destroy your budget pretty quickly. If you come to Iguazu come for a day or two don´t stay a week (unless you want to hang out by the pool and party...then stay as long as you want)

Waiting out the Rain

My plans to visit the Esteros del Ibera have been aborted due to vehicular impracticalities.
The Esteros are not exactly on the main tourist thoroughfare. The wetlands are situated 150km down a poorly maintained dirt road from the town of Mercedes, itself a remote community huddled on the prairie. There is no direct bus to Mercedes so, on Saturday night, I took the night bus from Cordoba to Pasos de los Libres. Since Paso de los Libres is on the border with Brazil and I was heading considerably north, I expected to awake in a paridisical world of jungle and heat. I did awake in a different world but it was not warm or tropical. The cosmopolitan cities of middle Argentina have been replaced by squat, visibly decaying towns. The bus station parking lot was about the only thing paved in Paso de los Libres and at 7am on Sunday morning it was also the only thing open. The bus terminal in Paso de los Libres has six ticket booths, a mail room, and a cafe. Outside, under canvas tarpaulins vendors hock goods to Brazilians who cross the river for cheap cigarettes and alcohol. In the 5 hours I sat in the terminal (a small excursion to the town was unsuccessful) studying the movements of the ticket booth employees, which consisted mostly of congregating on the central bench in the station and drinking maté, there were 7 customers. My bus to Mercedes took me down a straight flat road past habitations constructed out of scrounged materials and fields of domestic animals.
The hostel in Mercedes is very nice but on the first night I was the only guest. The lady at the hostel in charge of tours came and arranged for me to go to Carlos Pellegrini the next day but she said it would be cheaper if I waited to see if anybody else showed up that I could share my activities in the Esteros with. Mercedes is a town where the majority of cars have large portions of the body rusted entirely away. It is just as common to see people riding ponies, atvs, crammed onto mopeds, and sitting in lawn chairs in the back of pickup trucks as driving cars. The majority of the roads are not paved and after a little rain become an impassable mire. This town of 35,000 is what I expected South America to be but still, it is the first time in my travels that I have encountered a place so different from my own city (and they still have running water, electricity, and icecream).
I waited a full day in Mercedes and was assured that I could leave the next morning for Carlos Pelligrini. It rained all night and the road to the Esteros del Ibera became impassable. This morning I decided to abandon my plans for the wetlands and this evening I will travel to Iguazu Falls instead. I am a bit disappointed that I did not get to see the wetlands after I went out of my way to visit them but at the same time I am relieved since it was becoming a rather pricey excursion.
My tips for people wishing to go to the Esteros del Ibera are:

1) Find somebody to go with. All excursions are cheaper with multiple people
2) Go during the dry season (the road can become impassable and you may not be able to get in...or out)
3) You can reach the Esteros from either Mercedes or Posadas. The bus leaves twice a day from Mercedes but only 3 times a week from Posadas. If you don´t time your trip correctly you may have to wait somewhere.
4) You do not have to sleep in Mercedes. If you are lucky you can take the bus to Carlos Pelligrini the day you arrive.

Rio Caballos

Yesterday, I decided to go for a hike. I went to the tourist office in town and asked where I should go. They weren´t particularly helpful. They gave me a map of the surrounding communities and said that they were all different. I went to the bus station and chose to go to Rio Caballos mostly because there was a bus leaving soon that went there and it appeared to be next to a lake. On the nearly empty bus a woman sat down in the seat next to mine. She smelled strongly of camphor or musty silk that has been sitting in the closet too long. It made me feel a bit light headed for the rest of the day. The town is a very attractive town to walk in and I sat on the side walk drinking orange juice and watching the world go by. The place to hike was about 5 kms out of town at a dammed off lake. I took a local bus to the dam (a fairly hair raising experience) and walked around the lake for a while. Supposedly, you could hike to a waterful somewhere but I never found the right trail. The country there was nice but not spectacular and while I had a nice afternoon I would not insist that anyone else follow my footsteps there. I walked back to the town from the lake and took the bus home. I went to bed as soon as I got to the hostel and probably would have stayed there until morning if I hadn´t had to do laundry and book my bus ticket. When I returned to my room I met my new roomates some teachers from Rio Negro (argentina) who were in town for a conference. They insisted that I join them for dinner and I did. The whole affair was in Spanish and I felt that I did pretty well. I can now easily hold messy conversations about many things in Spanish. I think I may know more vocabulary in French and Swedish but, for me, those are languages of individual words. Spanish is becoming a language of sentences.

This evening I will take the bus from Cordoba to Paso de Los Libres (on the Uruguayan, Argentinian, Brazilian border) and from there take another bus to Mercedes.

The Hills

For the past three weeks I have been exploring the flats and plains of South America, today I found the hills. The hills around Cordoba are not the big mountains of the Andes. They are small sharply cut vegetated rises reminiscent of the hills around Kamloops in the autumn, minus the sage. Today, they were especially beautiful as they faded in and out of the mist of a rainy day. I decided to take a day trip from Cordoba to the town of La Cumbre, 2 hours northwest by bus, and try some horse back riding.The drive itself was worth the trip for me. My bus ride into Cordoba was at night and the horizon of the city has been obscured by cloud since I arrived so it was a delight to twist and turn through the hills on a windy road ( for those with motion sickness Gravol is advised). I had picked up a paper in town to practice my Spanish. The front page story was not the bus strike but the price of tomatos. Or rather the fact that Walmart is selling tomatos for 50% less than anybody else in town. At the bus terminal in La Cumbre I was met by Christian, the owner of the hostelling international Hostel there, he took me to his hostel to wait for my horse guide to come down from the mountains to pick me up. The hostel in La Cumbre is a very nice old English house with a big yard and easy access to the many hills around the town. I wished that I had stayed there rather than in Cordoba.
I was taken in a rugged old car up a bumpy gravel road to a farm with sheep, cows and chickens. My guide, Miguel, didn´t speak a word of English so I was forced to practice my Spanish. I had never riden a horse for any period before and though I enjoyed the experience immensly it was quite obvious that the horse was the one with the control. When we arrived back at the stables after 3 hours riding in the hills, Miguel wanted to show me his farm but my horse knew it was back home and no matter how hard I kicked it it refused to move. Eventually, Miguel took the reins and led my horse over to where the sheep were grazing so that I could see the newborn lambs. It was a wonderful experience. I know the whole thing was very touristy but it did not feel cheesy tourist.
I found both the town and the surrounding country delightful places to be. I would recommend going there to anybody interested in more outdoorsy pursuits.

The Bus to Cordoba

Not all night buses are created equal. On my trip from Montevideo to Santa Fe I was expecting a Greyhound like experience and had stocked up on groceries and packed my sleeping bag in my carry on. All entirely unnecessary on that trip of large comfy seats and magically appearing food and blankets. Expecting my trip to Cordoba to be a similar experience I packed light and was greeted with Greyhound sized seats, no blanket, and no food. When you buy a bus ticket it is important to understand that there are 3 kinds of seats available (although they are not always all available) for purchase: Semi-cama, cama, and cama coche. The word cama in Spanish means bed. Semi-cama seats are standard coach bus seats and do not come with the extras of food, blankets or complementary toilet paper ( a bit of a surprise at 3 am). Cama seats are like business class seats on an airplane. They are wider and they recline to an angle where comfort can be achieved. Cama Coche reclines fully and it appears to have a bit of a booth attached. Both Cama and Cama Coche come with food and blankets. They cost a bit more but unless you are really pinching pennies a good night´s sleep is worth an extra 3 dollars. Don´t forget to bring earplugs (you and your bus driver may not have the same taste in music at 4am and there are inevitably snorers and crying babies) and maybe even one of those ridiculous looking eyeshades to make your attempts at sleep more plausible.
The bus ride wasn´t actually too bad because there was no body in the seat beside me and I was able to stretch out but in the future I will be more careful when trying to sort through which bus to take.
Picking the correct bus can be quite an overwhelming process. Each bus company has a booth in the bus station advertising the destinations it travels to but they usually don´t have any prices or times. You have to ask around at each window to get a price quote and departure times.

I arrived in Cordoba at 6am. When you are a woman travelling alone you have to have certain rules to keep yourself safe and situations manageable. One of my rules is that I don´t leave the bus station in a new city until it is light. I also do not leave the bus station with out a map. I wandered with my backpack through the deserted rows of ticket booths and sat in a bus station cafeteria drinking orange juice and eating ham and cheese sandwiches on wonderbread until the sun came up and the tourist booth opened at 8am. Generally, hostels don´t let you check in until at least 11am but by 9am I was in a bed and well into my morning map. The hostel here in Cordoba, The Cordoba Backpackers, is nice enough. It is located at the edge of a pedestrian only shopping district and on the same street as a rather impressive church. The only thing I can say is that the lockers are rather small and my big back pack doesn´t fit in them.

Cordoba is a very nice city. It is the second largest city in Argentina and is one of the oldest. There are many old important churches here and the architecture is very interesting. It is a university town and there is the energy of young people all around. I think it is the most physically attractive city that I have visited so far on my trip. I spent the afternoon wandering around the town and the evening talking with some French Canadians and an Aussie about where we had been and where we were planning on going. I think I will stay here in Cordoba for a few more days. Tomorrow, I will go on a horse riding excursion and the next day I think I will go for a hike. Then I will decide whether to move on to Mercedes (back across the country) and the Iberia Esteros or stay a few more days in Cordoba.