Maja in Norway: Salta and a lot of churches

On the bus from Posadas to Salta I got talking with an other woman traveling alone. She had done good research regarding hostels and I joined her to see if there was room for me too. It turned out that they did, but we couldn't check in until later. We left our luggage and went out for breakfast. Neither of us were specially good in Spanish and when we ordered two large juices, at a place recommended by Chloe, the man looked weired at us. Why? It was not two large juices we had ordered, but two jugs. I managed to drink it all=) I think that says a lot about the "breakfast" one gets on the buses.

While eating our breakfast several very young children came begging for money. We knew that giving money to them is no good because the mother is usually nearby and will take the money at once. The mother sends her children to beg for money instead of sending them to school, and that is something I can not support., even though it is very hard to say no to the children. We found two of the youngest children when we were finished and gave them the rest of the pizza instead=) All over Argentina I got surprised at the poverty that existed.

Before we went back we stopped at the tourist information, but we did not get to think long before we booked a trip. Right across the road from the tourist information was a tour arranger and of course the trip was booked when we walked out the door. I was not surprised when I ran into some of my classmates later that day and they told me they did the same thing.

On Sundays there is an artistic market in Salta where artists come from all over the area to sell their products. There was all sorts of things to buy there and the artists like to talk about what they make. Once again I wished I could speak Spanish. This was a great place to buy souvenirs or gifts and not ending up with some junk. market,

There was a hill in the city, San Bernardo Hill, that could be reached by cable car. Being restless from not having exercised for a long time I had to check if it was possible to get there by foot. It was=) It was x amounts of steps to the top and a road leading to the top as well. I decided to go for the stairs and got a great view at the top and some good cheering on the way up:) On the way down I took the road and met a lot of other runners and also cyclist, everyone with a nice hi:) But when I started my run in the city back to the hostel I just had to close my ears from all the comments.

We finished the day by visiting the 7(!) churches that were located within only 7 blocks! They were all big and fantastic. None of them in the same colour and several of them could remind me of a wedding cake. Wedding cakes with different topping. The amount of churches and the decoration of them makes one think of the amount of money they had to have spent on them and how hard they had to have tried to convert the locals to Christianity. Not to think of the money they still spend on maintenance. For me it seems crazy. To end a long and eventful day, we went to a peña; A place where musicians meet and play without it being a performance. Since Salta is touristic, this was not a real peña, but people paid to perform. Either way it was fun to see the traditional dance and listen to the music:)

The hostels name was Hostal La Posta. It had a good location, very helpful host, a nice backyard, clean and very cosy. I would recommend this hostel too:)