Monday, Oct. 6, 2003 - 2:10 a.m.
At a Crossroads
The next two days in Salta I mostly hung out with David & Pete and did the least amount of sightseeing in a city yet.
I got used to staying out late and then sleeping in until mid-day, but it was fun to hang out with other travelers. Usually I'd go get brunch with the guys, we'd go to a cafe off the main plaza in town. One time when we were eating at a cafe and sitting outdoors and I was watching the people walk by I suddenly recognized Oshra and Inbar! I got up and talked to them for a little bit. They told me they hadn't seen the other Israeli girls from the apartment and that they planned to go to Mendoza, probably that evening.
Later we met up with John who had gone to the Bolivian embassy to inquire about traveling there to Bolivia at this time, due to the protests and roadblocks. They said it was fine to go to Bolivia. It seemed most of the problems revolved around La Paz anyway.
Monday eve (Oct 5th) I met another fellow traveler who joined us for dinner. His name was Kjartan (pronounced Chartan) from Norway. Right away I was struck by his likeness to my grandfather when he was young (my grandfather died before I was born, I'd just seen photos. His father was from Norway, and his mother was from Sweden). He also reminded me of my uncle (my grandfather's son) a little bit, which was really weird. But Kjartan turned out to be one of the sweetest guys I'd ever met, very polite and congenial, almost the opposite of David and Peter who were often crude sometimes even vulgar. I enjoyed talking with Kjartan, who was educated and had also traveled to Asia. I'd told him about some Israeli friends who had gone on to Iguazu falls and how I wasn't sure where I was going to go next, to Iguazu or go south, I was at a crossroads. I needed to decide where to go next, what direction to go on my circuit. Kjartan told me he was going to Iguazu the next day and I was welcome to join him. I replied "Thanks. I might take you up on that offer."
I woke up mid-day on Tuesday and only had a couple hours to make up my mind whether to go to Iguazu with Kjartan or go south to Cordoba, changing my original itinerary. When I mentioned it to David he suggested flipping a coin. So we did and the result was negative. Not to go to Iguazu, but to go south to Cordoba, Argentina.
I thought about how it would be nice to have a travel partner, plus it might be a little safer to travel with a guy. However, if I changed the direction of my circuit, then I wouldn't have to backtrack through the eastern coast of Brazil & Argentina. Plus I wanted to meet up with Mairi and Mhairi, if possible.
I saw Kjartan in the kitchen a little later. I told him I appreciated the invite but that I'd decided to go south instead. He looked disappointed and said he would have liked the company. And I don't blame him. It's a long bus ride, more than 20 hours.
Later I went sightseeing with David and Peter. We took a teleferico (gondola) to the large hill on the side of town, Cerro San Bernardo. While in the gondola David and Pete kept talking about hypotheticals if the car were to fall in transit. "I think at this point, we'd probably survive, just have all our bones broken." David would say. They were trying to freak me out & it didn't work.
At the top we had a great view of the city down below. Salta was a bigger city than I thought. I could see the San Francisco Church, San Martin Park and knew our hostle was just behind it. Up on the hill we ran into another traveler that David and Pete had met in Salta before I arrived, Astrid from Germany. We hung out at the restaurant on the hill for several hours. The sun was getting lower in the sky and I was starting to get pretty cold.
On the teleferico ride down Astrid confessed she was afraid of heights, which was the wrong thing to tell David & Pete. Their joking about falling was three times as bad as the ride up.
Next we went to the bus station because it was so close by and I bought a ticket to Cordoba, which didn't leave until the next day, in the evening.
