Salta, la linda católica

It was raining cats and dogs the day we left Puerto Iguazú. We spent most of the day practicing Spanish and eating pastries under the plastic roof of a cafe, waiting for the time to take our night bus while the water fell, and fell, and fell.

Sadly, we thought, there was no straight way to make it to Bolivia from where we were. The only way was through the Argentinian North-West (so, across the country, because we were in the North-East).

The bus took us through loads of lonely and ugly places. The sort of place you see from a bus and makes you feel so grateful you don't live there.

Pigs chilling by the road in one of those ugly, middle-of-nowhere towns.

In the afternoon of the following day we arrived in Salta, a colonial style city that is truthfully called by the tourism people "la linda", which means "the pretty one".

After a good and well deserved nights sleep in a proper bed, we got up to go see the city.

To be one of the biggest cities in the country, Salta is pretty conservative. None of Buenos Aires' craziness has a place here, in the big catholic haven of Argentina.

You see saints, the virgin Mary and Jesus everywhere. Street names, place names, statues, you name it. And of course, churches.

A church being restored.

Towers of another church that looked like a wedding cake.

Randomly walking down any street: "Hail, Mary. Pray for us".

Another view of the cake-church.

And more!

The other side of the religious obsession of this place: protest art. This one
says "free to choose", and it depicts a pregnant woman.
 Of course in Argentina, a country where church and state are  heavily
connected, women are not "free to choose" and abortion is illegal.

As uncomfortable as the religious feel makes me, we couldn't help but enjoy the quiet beauty of the colonial architecture and the general feeling of relax the North has.

"Today's menu: Savage and furious Locro (a typical dish)"
I'd love to know what makes it savage and furious.

A local man selling crafts.

Sun and old buildings.

The colorful "aguayo", an Andean woolen cloth that was to
 become the default pattern during the rest of the trip. 

A banana selling cart.

Don Quijote on a wall.

Cute weird flying sausage dog.

Colonial stuff.

Later, after some empanadas we went up to see the city from up high with the "teleférico", a cable car that takes you to a sweet hill that overlooks all of la linda.

The building where the "teleférico" works.

Looking at the view as we ascended.

Teleféricos going up and down.

The view from the top was pretty amazing.

And there's a little park and a cafe where you can chill
while enjoying the view and a coffee.

The little park has this fountain, that we found hilarious after being in Iguazú.

After a wild party, Jesus gets carried back home fully drunk.
Notice Mary's face, she's so done with it,
"Oh, not again..."

The outside of the teleférico building on top of the hill.

We finished our day watching an insanely beautiful sunset and going out. The city is maybe prettier at night than it is during the day, with all the buildings beautifully lit.

Gorgeous sunset and water tanks.

Colonial buildings at night.

Night church.

More pretty night stuff.

We found a nice restaurant that of course was still empty, because it was only 9 PM (too early for dinner). They had all sorts of old things hanging on the walls. Radios, phones, street signs...

The empty restaurant. All of the staff was watching the soccer game.

We ordered a very typical dinner: humita en chala (corn and cheese cream cooked inside the corn leaves) and a fine Torrontés wine from the region of Salta.

Our dinner.

The wine made us all fuzzy and lazy, so we headed back, all ready for sleeping and heading to our next destination in the morning.

...

A little note: the first morning I took a picture of our stuff, just to have proof of our mess. Well, I actually wanted to state that Chey is messier than I am.

My mess

Chey's mess

But once I looked at the pictures again I noticed my little backpack and flowery bag on the bed with Chey's mess, so... I guess it's a tie.

The ridiculously beautiful Iguazú falls

The border crossing into Argentina (again! our passports started to look like we were smugglers) was surprisingly easy and quick.

After two bus rides, the aforementioned easy border crossing, and two very long waits in bus terminals, we got to Puerto Iguazú, a small city full of reddish mud, tropical plants, tropical humidity, and three times more tourists than locals.

Puerto Iguazú.

After we figured out where and how to get some local currency again (remember Argentina makes you really work to get the money you already had worked for), we got to our previously booked hostel pretty easily, dropped our backpacks, and left for a mid-day beer.

It's so hot they have to give you the beer in a bucket of ice!

The rest of the day was spent leisurely strolling around, doing some laundry, getting food and organizing our visit to the waterfalls.

Now looking at it in retrospective, it sounds almost ridiculous that we were actually going to skip the falls to go to Bolivia through Paraguay.

I mean, I'm not denying (or confirming, because I didn't get to see it) that Paraguay must be worth the visit.

 But the waterfalls!

I had been told by pretty much all of my gringo friends who came to Argentina, that Iguazú was a must-do. Everyone says it's amazing. It features in so many postcards of Argentina... and still I didn't even think about it until it sort of fell into our hands.

We took the advice of a nice guy a the tourist info place, and said no to booking an organized tour. We say no to them most of the times, by the way.

Instead we took a 100 pesos (something around 15 AUD) bus to the waterfalls, and had a full day to explore the beautiful jungle, walk along the green-surrounded paths, frolic with the butterflies and sweat profusely.

There were SO many butterflies.

All colours and patterns,

Chey says these remind him of the movie Saw
(it instanly takes them from "sweet" to "creepy")

Seriously. So. Many. Butterflies.

And they don't care about insect repelent. I sort of think
they like it.

.

Every person in this world deserves a Disney princess moment.

Ah! and of course we also got to marvel at the insane amounts of water falling in the hundreds of waterfalls on the Argentinian side of Iguazú (the falls are between Argentina and Brasil).

To move trhough falls you can walk or take a little super
cute train. We did a little bit of each.

And from the train you start getting watery views.

Curious bird (or threatening?)

Approaching the biggest and most insane fall.

Garganta del diablo (devil's throat)

One of the many other falls, that sort of looks like
out of The blue lagoon, or one of those cheesy movies.

It's actually really hard to do it justice in pictures. The
feeling of being there, the sound of the water, the subtle
mist that surrounds the falls and gets you soaking wet...
And the grandeur of it all. You´ll have to imagine. Or better yet: GO!

We got some nice tourist to take our picture
 with the rainbow in the background.

 On a random side note, among all the cute wildlife in the park, there's one that takes the price to the most funny and ridiculous: the coatí.

When we saw the first one we were walking a jungle path and it was a mother with her babies in a tree. We felt so lucky with our Nat Geo moment, and took dozens of pictures like this one:

Cute coatí mum.

 ...only to then discover, as soon as we made it to the food court, that they're actually some sort of plague.

Signs all around the park.

 They are not as innocent as they look: they have sharp teeth and claws, and they will not hesitate to use them if you're carrying any sort of food.

 They'll transform instantly into mad fluffy raptors.

We actually saw a gang of them scare the living hell off a couple with a pack of chips. The guy threw the pack as far as he could and yelled while the coaties surrounded them in what looked like a Jurassic Park scene.

They of course don't mind you if you carry no food.

 So to sum up, the not-going to Paraguay ended up having a hell of a silver lining, and we both agree that the Iguazú falls were one of the highlights of the trip.

 Of course right before we were leaving I was bitten by a vicious insect that left a mark that didn't fade for months, and hurt as if I was going to die.

Which is good, because it was such a perfect day otherwise, that I just feel the insect brought balance to the force.