More Salta

Continuation...
Second day: I found out at 11pm (the night before) that I left my sunglasses and camera in the car. By 'the car' I mean the excursion tour people's car. They get their cars washed and cleaned every night, so they're fresh and ready for the next day, so I started the day a little bummed because I was pretty certain I was never going to see my camera or sunglasses again. Plus we had a different guide, so I thought for sure they were gone, but to my surprise we ended up seeing our guide from the day before along the way and he had them! That made my day.

All of our trip parallels the same trip of the famous “El Tren de Las Nubes,” In case you've ever heard of that. We started our day in Purmamarca, known for 'The Painter's Palette,” or “The Hills of Seven Colors.” It was quite beautiful, but hard to capture in any of the photos. We had breakfast at an adorable little outdoor cafe that was also someone's home. We had Api and some type of pastry with honey. It was such a different and wonderful taste. The Api is a hot beverage that has a taste all it's own, but the closest comparable thing would be the best hot apple cider apple you've ever tasted with a special added twist. It's thicker with a beautiful shade of purple.

After our time in Purmamarca we headed to Maimar (There are Indian tribes there called Tilcara). A lot of the places we went were picturesque and grand. Much of it reminded me of Eastern Oregon landscape- I mean EASTERN Oregon. John Day fossil beds, painted hills area. Some of the areas were a little surreal. The lower pressure causes the clouds to look like white sand in the sky. Through out our trip we saw cactus fields, herds of Llama (and other members of the Llama family), donkey, sheep, goat, wild horses. I don't know at what point of the trip it was, but we got our picture taken at the monument that marks the Tropic of Capricorn. I thought that was pretty cool. I am getting tired, and need to make and eat dinner, so I am going to skip some stuff and wrap this up.

We ended the trip at a sub tropical rainforest. Don't get too jealous, it's not a rainforest with monkeys and brightly colored plants. Just looking at it I would not call it a forest, but I don't know all the details that classifies a body of trees and plants as a rainforest.

On one of our free days we took a gondola up to a little park overlooking Salta. We took the advise of the guy at our hostel and went up at sunset. It was beautiful and relaxing.

Salta is where empanadas originated. So, as you can imagine empanadas were an accompaniment to almost every meal. Muy delicioso! I also ate a ton of tamales. (To my amazement there is not a whole lot of typical Mexican food here. I thought there would be because of it being a Spanish speaking country and all that, but not really. I would love to have a burrito with salsa and tortilla chips. All of which cannot be found here-or at least not easily. I have yet to see a place that sells burritos. All of you at home- do not take your burritos for granted, you never know when you will be without them. They don't even have black beans in most places. I had to go to a special store to find them. I am going to make burritos this week because it has been way too long.) Salta had consistently wonderful food. Truly, wonderful food. I need to go make dinner.

*You'll have to visit to see our pictures. My pictures are more lame than Danny's- he's the photographer in the family, but I got a couple good shots. I didn't have my camera at the Salt Flats, but Danny did so be sure to look at his website for those pics. I don't think this website likes to have links, so just copy and past the web address.
Danny's Flickr pics: http://flickr.com/photos/dvarner/
Lizzie's Flickr pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizvarner/