When we finally wrenched ourselves away from BA, we headed north-west, stopping at Rosario and Cordaba on our way up towards Salta.
Rosario is Argentina’s third largest city and has some gorgeous architecture and what looked to be amazing shopping, but not a huge amount of attractions for visitors to see. The most notable sight is definitely the national monument; celebrating the fact Rosario is where Argentina’s flag was designed. It is an extremely large and grand monument indeed.
Rosario’s other claim to fame is that Che Guevara was born there. Apparently there is a small plaque of the wall the office block where his house once stood but other than that, the city is remarkably Che-free.
Cordoba (Argentina’s second largest city) has loads of museums and galleries and is known as a culture-junkie’s paradise. We didn’t visit many of the museums but enjoyed the guided tour through the Jesuit University and a day trip out to Alta Gracia to see the house Che Guevara grew up in (which, unlike his home in Rosario, has been preserved and turned into a small museum).
From Cordoba we caught an overnight bus up to Salta. Salta is a cute big town/small city with lots more colonial and Spanish-style buildings than we’d seen elsewhere in Argentina. While the town itself has a few interesting places to see (mostly gorgeous old churches) it’s real appeal is as a base for day trips out to the Humahauca Gorge and the small villages in the north, near the Bolivian border.
We thought the best way to see the gorge and all the beautiful scenery would be to join one of the many mini-bus trips for a day. We went with a company called “La Quebrada” And for the most part the tour was pretty good; the guide was interesting and made sure to re-tell everything in English for us, even though we were the only non-Spanish speakers on the bus. The places we stopped along the way included; Jujuy, the provincial capital (where I had to rush around madly to find somewhere to buy an SD card for my camera, having forgotten to bring one!), Purmamarca, a small tourist town set against a back drop of the vivid “Hill of Seven Colours”, an obligatory ½ hour stop at a roadside tourist souvenir shop (ostensibly to see a big lama monument out front but we weren’t buying it), the pre-Incan ruins at Tilcara and the town of Humahuaca, where we stopped for a fairly average lunch at a “Restaurant Turistic” before being left to our own devices for an hour while the rest of the group had a Spanish-only guided tour of the town. Sadly, the end of the day was ruined for us when we stopped to see the “Painter’s Palette”; the incredible coloured hills along the Humahuaca gorge. This landscape was the sole reason we had come on the tour in the first place and we were exceptionally disappointed when the bus pulled up outside the town on Maimara, at a spot where an (admittedly quite interesting) cemetery blocked our view of the best of the hills, and then we were given less than 5 minutes to appreciate the view, and when a few of us started to walk along the road a ways to a better viewpoint, the driver started flashing his lights and blasting the horn for us to return to the bus immediately; clearly in a hurry to get back into town. We were so disappointed. It ruined what had otherwise been a very pleasant day for us.
However, this disappointment was not without its silver lining; as we felt so annoyed at not having enough time to enjoy the scenery, we ended up doing something we wouldn’t have otherwise considered and hiring a car to drive nearly the exact same route ourselves the following day, stopping to take photos and soak in the atmosphere for as long and often as we chose. It ended up being one of our favourite days of the trip so far.
During our stay in Salta, we also went horse riding at Sayta Ranch for a day. These tourist trekking outfits are always tailored towards inexperienced riders and this was no exception but it was still lovely to be on horseback again. The trek was through the local farmland; not the most stunning scenery but still interesting and it was fun chatting away to the other people during the ride, and again afterwards as we devoured copious amounts of asado and slightly sketchy sherry-like local wine.
Overall it was a very pleasant day. Even Brad seemed to enjoy himself and got the hang of rising to the trot fairly quickly (kind of essential for a guy!) The horses were trained and clearly well cared for and in good condition but I did find it frustrating that the guys leading the ride were so insistent on doing things “the gaucho way”. I understand neck reining and using the commands the horses have been trained with but I really didn’t like it when they wouldn’t let me dismount the usual way; insisting instead that I step down with one foot still in the stirrup. They tried to tell me that my way (ie: how the entire English-riding population dismounts) was dangerous but it just felt a bit petty and I’m certain that a huge percentage of horse riding world would argue their method was far less safe. Anyway, annoying but it certainly didn’t ruin the outing.
After we were dropped back into town and had showered and recovered from the BBQ a bit, we met back up with a few of the other people we’d met on the ride plus a couple more of their mates and ended up spending a fairly amusing evening sitting boozing in a park, recounting all the terrible and embarrassing things we’ve ever done when drunk – classic backpacker chat!
Eat The World 