Touring Salta . . .

Yesterday was alot of fun. I went on an all day tour of the Northern Salta region. It went from 7 a.m. til 8 p.m. It was a tour guide in her car with three other people basically just driving through the georgously colorful Andes and visiting about a half dozen small villages and stopping to look at particularly beautiful areas of the country side. The Andes in this region are a beautiful splash of colors and the villages in the region are very traditional (a much different Argentina than you see in Bs As). Each stop in a village basically consisted in visiting a church, musuem, or other monument; having a walk around; and looking at the local handicrafts.

Here are some highlights of my day

*The Seven Colors Hills and Painter´s Palate - which are areas in the Andes that the minerals have formed to create a palate of different colors and shades in the rocks.

*The huge cactuses that were everywhere!!! I have never seen so many and so large in any one place! I have a really neat pic of me standing in front of a huge one. I´ll post it.

*Eating a traditional stew made of boiled corn and pieces of beef and pork meat.

*The precious little boy and girl who came running up to sell me a necklace and give me their address. They were so sweet and pretty. But, you should see this necklace! The things that kids come up with!

*The beautiful, sunny, weather.

*The colorful markets full of handicrafts.

We were at a very high altitude at times. And, it was interesting that I could really feel the effects. First of all, I couldn´t drink my Coca Light out of a straw. For some reason, it kept bubbling out as soon as I took a drink. I´m not sure why this was, but it must have been due to the altitude. The same thing happened when we were driving through the Andes from Santiago. I got a couple headaches when we were up very high. And, at one point, there was a monument with many stairs to climb up. No sooner did I start climbing, than did I start lightly hyperventalating. Of course I´m fine. I just had to go up a little slower. But, it was amazing to see how the altitude really made a difference.

So, that was my day. It was a long one with alot of driving. But, it was great, because I feel like I really pretty much saw most of the Northern Salta region all in one pop. Once I got back to the hostel, I took a LONG shower and had a quick walk around the town and bite to eat and then was off to bed. I slept and slept and slept . . .

Finally, at 11 today, I got out of bed. Unfortunatly, I´ve discovered that I´m missing some clothes that I intended to pack. I don´t know if I left them at the first hostel or if I left them in Bs As. Since I didn´t bring much clothes, missing 2 shirts and a pair of jeans is kind of a big deal. I´m going to go over to the other hostel and see if they are there. I´m really crossing my fingers, because they were all things that I REALLY liked.

Besides that, my friends Claire and Michael have left today. I feel like I´ve seen enough here. So, I´m going to walk around a bit more and decide what my next move is. I´m fairly certain that I´m not going back to BA just now. I´m really deciding between going to Chile or straight to Bolivia. I´ve also been craving my cream cheese, salami, cheese, olive, and potato chip sandwiches. So, I think I´ll go to the store and get the things for those. And, if my clothes aren´t at the hostel, I may need to do some more shopping. I swear that I´ve been wearing basically the same clothes for days!

So, that´s about it for now. All is well!!!