I moved out of mamá's house on Friday and made sure to say goodbye to each room individually. Silly perhaps, but I cried when I said goodbye to Toto, my best friend on Charcas street who has always been there for me. I am definitely getting a cat when I have a house. I also cried when I said goodbye to my doorman Roberto; I think I was really falling apart at this point. But then I was off to the bus terminal; mamá insisted on meeting me there to send me off to Salta. She said all sorts of mom-like things like "Don't drink anything anyone brings you" and "Not everyone in the world is a nice person". It was very sweet. I chose to sit in a double seat because I thought it would be more fun to sit next to someone for the 20 hour ride rather than be alone. I sat next to a man named Mateo who ended up making my long trip a lot more manageable. He didn't speak more than 3 words of English so we spoke in Spanish the whole time. He is from Tucumán but is working 3 hours from Salta for the company Monsanto. I've only heard bad or controversial things about this company in the past from environmentalists, but he pointed out that a lot of people don't realize that without their usage of chemicals on plants, there would be a lot more starvation than there is right now. This doesn't justify all of their practices but it does show the complications of the matter. We talked about crop rotation and a bunch of other scientific things that I had never discussed in Spanish before, so he had to teach me new words. He was aghast when I told him that I was a vegetarian and had never tried an Argentine asado (basically a huge family gathering/meat fest). I understand how odd this might seem to someone with this tradition so deeply rooted in his or her culture. We were talking about drug usage in Argentina and then he pulled out a bag of leaves from his backpack. My initial thought was that they were definitely drugs. He told me not to jump to conclusions and then explained that it was what people from the North call "coca". If you take a ton of these leaves and add certain chemicals, it becomes cocaine. But coca by itself is not dangerous nor extremely strong. He said you suck on the leaves and they can quench your thirst, satisfy your hunger, cure your elevation sickness.. It sounded magical and pretty sketchy to me. After talking for five hours, he told me that he could tell I was a very sincere person with a corazón grandísimo (huge heart) but that I should be more careful when talking with people I don't know because there are a lot of people out there that take advantage of people like me. He had a good point and I think I don't have as many reservations because I have met almost all good-hearted, kind people in this country. I am working on finding a way to keep in mind that not everyone has good intentions while maintaining my optimism.
I arrived in the city of Salta on a gorgeous, sunny afternoon. On the walk to my hostel I saw tons of shrieking and laughing children running around on swing sets. There were palm trees and there was a pond filled with row boats and ducks. Salta is a very touristy town, but most of the tourists are from other parts of Argentina or Latin America, so I was still surrounded by Spanish. There were artisan fairs and vendors on the streets selling cozy hand-knit sweaters, mate, colorful purses, and mittens. I went to the teleferrico (cable car rental place) and banked on jumping in a cable car with random smiling people since you can't ride them alone. I found a girl who looked my age and 3 boys who looked a bit younger standing in line next to me and asked them if I could accompany them. They said "claro que sí!" They were visiting from Rosario and there names were Soledad, Juancho, Daniel, and Ezequiel. Three of them were siblings and they were all super nice and fun to be around. We took the cable car to the top of a mountain and looked at beautiful Salta from afar. We all had fun taking pictures near the trees and waterfalls at the top. They introduced me to their families, who were all very welcoming and gave me kisses. Afterwards, I met up with Miriam and Sarah, two girls from IFSA who were staying in the same hostel as me for two nights. We walked around in the sun and passed the cotton candy stands that lined avenue San Martín. People in the provinces of Argentina are much more relaxed than in the capital. A lot of people from the North and other parts of "el Interior" (all of Argentina that isn't Buenos Aires) have a negative impression of porteños; they think they are always rushed, unkind, and have a superiority complex. While I have had wonderful experiences getting to know porteños, I understand how busy city dwellers can be stereotyped in this way. I feel really lucky to have been able to visit all over Argentina because all of the regions are so different. Everyone in the North seemed very friendly and I never felt unsafe during the day or at night, very different from how I feel where I've been living for the past 5 months. Often times when people from this country find out that I am from the States, they ask me why I chose to study abroad in Argentina of all places. "Los Estados Unidos son lo más" (The US is the best). I look around and think about everything I have experienced and I reply, "Why would anyone NOT want to come here?"
Sarah, Miriam and I woke up bright and early for an excursion Sunday morning. We realized that the day before had been the 9th of July, the day that Argentina gained independence from Spain. Other than the bank being closed, there had not been any visible festivities. Our tour guide was Hassan, a very friendly, tall man. He drove us around the windy mountain roads for 12 hours in a tour van with two men from England, Kevin and Antony. They were traveling on a fútbol tour around Argentina and doing sight-seeing in between. We had a great time "skanking out" (a British term for "jamming") to The Clash, Bob Marley, Tom Petty, The Beatles, and The Fratellis. I was so happy to be surrounded by the Andes mountains once again. This time they weren't all brown and gray. Because of the various elements present like Iron, Copper, and Sulfur, there were tons of visible colors in the rock. We saw "El tren de los nubes" (train in the clouds) that used to transport minerals and now transports tourists for a view of the region. My favorite part of the long drive was all of the animals that we saw. We saw tons of llamas up close in grassy fields and crossing the street in front of our van in a line. We also saw timid, cute animals called vicuñas that look like deer with really long, skinny necks. There were horses, donkeys, and cows lazing about in the grass. We went to "las salinas grandes", the salt flats. A large body of water dried up a long time ago and left salt residue that gathered and hardened. People dig into the salt, collect water and then sift out the salt to form small mountains. We drove for a while longer and then stopped for coca tea. It tasted all right but contrary to what Mateo told me, it didn't cure my headache or stomach pains. Maybe I didn't drink enough for it to affect me. Or maybe it's more affective if you suck on the leaves directly. At one point, we stood at an elevation of over 4000 meters. We stopped in Purmamarca to see the Cerro de siete colores (mountain of seven colors). I called it the "Conversation Heart Mountain" because of the beautiful blend of pinks, purples, reds, and whites. We came back after a long day and had dinner with Soledad, the girl that I met on my cable car adventure. We went to a peña, which is a restaurant where singers and dancers dress up as gauchos and play folkloric music while you eat and drink. We drank Salta's famous white wine and I tried humita, which is a traditional food in the North. This is cooked corn mixed with cream and put back in a corn husk.
I was woken up the next morning by the hostel owner, who told me that my guide was here for my excursion to Cachi. I had slept through my alarm! In 7 minutes I was in a van with 3 more girls from Rosario. Miriam and Sarah didn't accompany me because they were heading to Bolivia later that day. The girls in my van looked like they were about 19 but they were really 24 and 26 and had intense jobs like lawyer and radiologist. Hassan was my guide again but I had a very different experience than the day before since the other North Americans and the Brits were gone. We spoke only Spanish, drank mate, and listened to Latin music. We drove through El parque nacional de los cardones (the National Park of Cacti). They were huge and numerous. Some of the really tall ones were up to 400 years old. When they are about 500 years old, they dry out and turn to wood that is used for craft making. The cacti were lovely against the blue sky and the purple and snow-capped mountains. We made a few stops and encountered people selling spices native to Salta, and little children playing the drums and singing. At one point, a donkey in a nearby field came up to our car and stuck his head through my window! I think he was looking for something delicious to munch on. We went to the small town of Cachi, which is surrounded by the Andes. I had a fun time eating lunch and taking silly pictures with my new Rosarian friends. They asked me about everything that I found to be different between Argentina and the US. I had a lot to tell them. It was an enriching experience being off on my own in the sense of being far from everyone I knew, but close to a lot of people that wanted to get to know me. I felt really fluent in Spanish and had no problem communicating with the girls. They told me that I spoke very well and that I sounded like a French person speaking Spanish, which was interesting. I had a lot of fun on our road trip and it made me realize that I should do that more around my own country. I would love to travel to Colorado, Houston, Philly, and Boston one day.
My third day of excursions was with 17 people on a bus instead of 5 in a van. Our tour guide Alejandro made a stop and invited us all to buy coca, the magical leaves that Mateo introduced me to on the bus. He taught us how to use them and told us not to chew or swallow them because then they become a laxative. When they lose flavor, you simply spit them out. I tried some and they were all right; I felt like I was sucking on tea but nothing insane or unexpected happened to my bodily systems. Our guide told us that usage of the coca plant is not something illegal or hidden there, it is a deeply ingrained part of Northern Argentine culture that dates back to the Incans. It is supposed to have 20 medicinal purposes. On our drive we saw tobacco and alfalfa plants growing in the fields next to us. We passed Pueblo Fantasma (ghost town), a pueblo that didn't use to have light and is a place where many movies are filmed. We saw a lot of rock formations on the way to the town of Cafayate that resembled varios things such as the Titanic, a castle, and a frog. We also saw "la garganta del diablo" (the devil's throat, the same name given to the epic cluster of waterfalls in Iguazú), which was a huge cavernous section of the mountains that contained tons of layered rock. We went to the Nanni vineyard in Cafayate where they make organic wines (without using chemicals). We saw where the wine was stored and were able to participate in a degustación, or a wine-tasting. On our way out of Cafayate, I had the suerte (luck) to be able to feed llamas corn kernels. My day was complete. All of the excursions in which I participated were very worthwhile and wonderful for meeting people. I am really glad that I came to Salta even though no one was able to accompany me. I feel like it was just the taste of independence I needed to wrap of my grand adventure of self-growth. For my last day, I hung out with people from my hostel who happened to be French and extremely attractive. They didn´t speak much English but spoke decent Spanish (some better than others), so we had a fun night of Frespanglish and boliches (clubs). I was sad to leave Salta the next day because there was still so much that I wanted to do, but when I return to Argentina one day I know I will come back to the North, too.
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