Salta - gaucho country

Folk dancers in the main square
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We left Puerto Iguazu at 9pm and arrived in Tucuman at 7pm, 22 hours later.  Then we boarded another bus at 8.30pm and 4 and a half hours later, just before 1am, we arrived in Salta.  We were tired!  We managed to book into a hostel in Tucuman so straight to the bed we went.

The following day after moving to Corre Caminos hostel, we took a stroll around the city.  Salta is surrounded by mountains and holds 550,000 people.  The city is fairly nice. We had lunch in the main square, where a little music festival was taking place.  The music in the north of Argentina is folklore and they dance folkish!  There´s no tango here!  There were some folk dancers in the square, followd by some Indian-style dancers.  One thing we noticed about the north of the country is the people.  There are a lot of Indians in this part.  They look more indigeous, compared to Patagonia.

an actual person from 500 years ago!

Indian dancers
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That night the hostel was cooking up a BBQ so for 25 pesos (6 euro) we had`all you can eat meat` and àll you can drink wine`.  It was good!  One of the guys from Florianopolis, Justin, whom we got to know there was also at the BBQ, which was a nice surprise.  We ended up going into town at about 2sm, to bar central.  We finally staggered home at 5am!

Feeling rough the next day, we didn´t do much.  We had lunch with 2 of the girls, Neisha and Kate, form our hostel, where we all barely ate anything as we were really feeling worse for wear!  We wanted to do one thing with our day though, so we went to the museum of archeology, where we heard some mummies were kept.  In 1999, a ream of archeologists scaled Volcano Llullailaco, some 6700m high.  They found 3 Inca children who had been sent to the top of the volcano as an offering to God, 500 years ago.  There was a 15 year old girl, an 8 year old girl and a 7 year old boy.  Over the 500 years, the bodies had been virtually perfectly preserved due to the high altitude and low temperature.  They were frozen solid. Aroudn them were tiny artefacts, namely dolls, which all had a meaning and they were all placed in a certain position.  This was a sacred ritual.  The children were given some beer, which pit them to sleep and they dies on top of the mountain.

Massive head dress!
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In the meuseum, only the little boy was òn display`(that sounds terrible).  He was being preserved in a low temperature container.  You could see part of his face and his half-opened eyes.  The skin on his arms looked rubbery but i couldn´t get over how well the bodies were preserved.  An actual human from 500 years ago!  It was quite amazing.  The 2 girls were being kept ina lab so we didn´t see them.

We did nothing that night as we were still recovering from the night before.

The ranch
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The following day we had booked to be a `gaucho`for the day.  Various people we had met told us to do the horse-riding with Enrique (not Ingelias!)  So we got picked up at 9am and driven 40kms outside Salta to the ranch.  the ranch was a lovely whote-wash stone house.  We were met by Melanie, a Swiss girl living on the ranch to learn spanish.  Breakfast was ready for us.  Bread pudding, fresh bread and `dulce de leche`of course.  Only myself, Rob and Luci, a girl who worked in our hostel were riding in the morning.  More were to come in the afternoon.  After brekkie, we got kitted out and climbed on rop of our horses.  Mine was brown and called `Cabrero`or somethign like that!  We started walking along the paths that led around the fields close to the ranch.

Gaucho number 1
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After about an hour of walking in the sweltering heat, our gaucho asked us if we wanted to gallop. Of course!  So we were led into a field where we had to gallop about 70 metre.  My first attempt was abismal!  He told me i was pulling on the reins (which makes the horse stop) and i was too tense, hanging on for dear life!  My 2nd go was a little better.  The guacho kept saying es como el sexo!`` You have to move with the horse.  After 3 or 4 gos i got it!  So did Rob.

on the horses
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We were back at the ranch by 1.30pm for lunch.  We had heard the food was good and it was!  We had as much organic wine as we wanted and they cooked a good old Argentinian BBQ with as much cow and sausages as we liked!  With salad to garnish, i was happy!  We had lunch until 3.30pm when we got back on the horses.  3 guys and another gaucho joined us for the afternoon.

We walked a different route in the afternoon and galloped a lot more.  We actually found galloping a lot easier than trotting, which Rob found particulary uncomfortable!

IMG_7059
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We got back to the ranch about 6.30pm, in time for tea and bread.  All in all the day was a ride!  Great fun!