God is in the small details, #5

- People selling "artesanias" absolutely everywhere in Salta. And the winner of most unlikely place goes to the Amphitheater, a small, natural canyon about an hour away from any town, where there were several vendors.
- Redundant names you keep running into in different areas: Laguna Azul/Verde, Garganta del Diablo, etc.
- An old woman in Salta, who told me (with a smile) about how Ushuaia is not for people like her, but for tourists like me, that don't need to work too much for their money (she was quite right, I'd say).
- The story of the musicians in the restaurant in Purmamarca. "It's so touching to see two Bolivians play the Argentinean national anthem with such feeling" (they musicians were Argentinean, but from the far north).
- The cute soldier/policeman on the drive back to Salta, who started a whole spiel about the law regarding seatbelts, which apparently would've been pretty long, and exclaimed "Gracias a Dios" when we told him we don't speak Spanish.
- The hair salon in Salta with the inviting sign outside of it: "Compro Cabello" (I buy hair). Why didn't I sell them some? I had an obvious surplus at that point in time...

FTTN: Salta and Jujuy- culture and tradition as tourist attractions

You see it in a lot of places, but I guess it was most obvious to me in Salta and Jujuy: the attempt to package and sell the local culture and past to tourists. Whether it's the handcrafts (artesanias), whether native or pseudo-native, in museums, in hostel and restaurant names, in local (or "local") music and dance, etc. I always ask myself how much of it is honest and real, and if it actually conserves the culture or does the exact opposite.

I think that it's generally positive, and I have learnt a lot about the area and the people that live and used to live there, both before and after the Europeans came. But you can't avoid a certain feeling of fakeness, especially when you have all those colourful and highly designed brochures and posters printed on chromo paper and exalting the "real people" or the "autenthic tradition".

Salta & Jujuy- mid-April 2008

Salta, to my, my sister's and probably my dad's surprise, is more than a city full of Bolivian Argentinians (by the way, it's apparently legitimate to say that, since I've heard salteños joke about it themselves). It's quite a big and busy city - which surprised me - and a pretty one too. In fact, the nickname for the city is Salta La Linda, which means Pretty Salta, more or less. It has a big colonial architecture thing going, and they even have a law there that says that in some streets in the center buildings must have colonial facades (similar to the Jerusalem stone law, I guess). Most impressive, as is often the case, are the churches. It seems it's quite popular in Salta to paint the churches in strange combinations of pastel colours, usually using two main colours. There is also a nice pub & nightclub area a bit outside the center, although it's a designated night life area, so there's nothing there besides the clubs and bars. I find that a bit strange, and much prefer places to be interspersed into the "daylife" city. Other notable features are a great succession of plazas (my favorite one had a small lake with ducks and pedal boats), two pedestrian streets which are the commercial center of the town, some good museums and a nice handcraft market on Sunday.