I am finally getting around to publishing some photo diaries of Argentina.
My family moved here 6 months ago. My husband is currently an exchange student in a program between the US and Argentine governments. We live smack dab in the middle of Buenos Aires in the barrio of Palermo.
This last Easter, we took the four day long weekend to travel to Salta, the capitol city of the Province of Salta in the far north of Argentina, and take in the sights.
The trip from Buenos Aires to Salta isn't a short one. This country is absolutely huge. If we had wanted to drive, it would have taken us approximately 17 hours to get there. With only four days, we decided it would be better to fly.
We arrived in the middle of the night due to delayed flights. But never despair, there is always something going on at night in Argentina! We checked into our hotel at about midnight and proceeded to head around the corner to get some dinner. We were apart of the early crowd. Note the sign at the restaurant - 4- does mean 4AM.
Didn't get my kids to bed until almost 2:30am. But we were up and at 'em the next morning. With only a single day to explore Salta, we didn't want to waste a moment.
Our hotel was in a quiet part of town (in the early mornings) and we could see the clouds drifting away as we went to breakfast.
The street corner where we had eaten the night before was empty and silent in the bright day... the complete opposite of a medium size town in the United States.
Lots of buildings in this part of town had personal character. We learned later this visit that the name Pachamama is very important to many indigenous Argentines - it is the name of the earth mother. Her name appears everywhere in this part of the country.
We chose to walk downtown to the Colonial Center. We see more stuff when we walk. We saw an old colonial building that is the head of the Provincial Government.
Before hitting the main plaza and seeing the beautiful buildings. The cathedral is stunning, both inside and out. We were lucky to visit both during the day and to come back and see it at night... the crowd inside is from the Good Friday service.
Like many a European plaza, there is a park in the middle, a cobblestone road going round, and cafes tucked into the crevices between the old buildings.
We saw lots of green - tons of citrus trees and hibiscus grow very well in this near desert climate. Remember, Easter time in the Southern Hemisphere happens in the Fall, not in the Spring, so seeing all this beautiful green was doubly pleasing for us.
After the plaza we walked over to Iglesia San Francisco. Again, we were fortunate to see it both at day and night.
We lunched on local fare - locro, a stew of corn, beans and usually sausage, ham, or other cuts of pork. The recipe changes from region to region but it is a staple in Northern Argentina, empanadas in the style of Salta (baked crust instead of fried according to Wikipedia), llama (in the form of a steak), and a dessert made of fresh cheese and molasses.
We spent the afternoon in a local museum dedicated to three mummified bodies found at the top of a mountain peak.
These children had been offered as sacrifice to the Inca deities along with a fantastic collection of over 100 objects.
Gold and silver statuettes, textiles and spondyllus are exhibited in the museum today.
The museum link provides the photos that we weren't allowed to take.
That night, we ended up back in the restaurant district near our hotel... hours earlier and we dined with few other people. We wanted to get an early night so that we were ready to tackle a drive out into La Puna the next day. Those photos will be in the next diary.