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.