Barney Gomez a.k.a. Barney Gumble

As I couldn't remember if we (and by that I mean Brad and Ben and I) had visited Salta during our foray to northern Argentina on fall break 04 other than to catch the Cope Libertadores match, I decided to check it out. After all, everyone speaks well of it. A 24 hour bus cama from Bs. As. later, I arrived. But only after tearing myself away from Buenos Aires with great difficulty.

When I arrived, I saw a city I really had no memory of whatsoever. I therefore headed towards a hostel recommended by another traveller. Of course, it turns out that there are actually 3 hostels by the same name in Salta, and I of course ended up at the wrong a.k.a. the boring one. But that didn't really matter since I would only be staying in town for one night before heading towards Bolivia and the great unknown.

One problem I encountered immediately upon arriving in the city was one of profound stupidity. Think of it as some kind of euphoria-less feeling of being stoned. Or the daze of bright sunlight on your eyes after pulling an all-nighter with Australian backpackers; read that as after drinking heavily all night. Anyway, i was entirely unable to express myself in Spanish, and even my English seemed a little off. Now, all the locals would laugh and say it's the altitude that affects all travellers; I think that's crap as Salta really isn't that high up. I think it's the combination of 24 hours on a bus, which means on and off low-quality sleep, plus hunger (the breakfast was small and not very good), plus the general damage Bs. As. did to my system are to blame. Whatever the cause may be, however, the effect was that my Spanish was greatly diminished, to the point of appearing laughable even to myself. But a nap later, this problem had dissipated, a further indication that it was not the altitude affecting me.

Rested, I thus went to explore the city. My first reaction to the city was that it seemed entirely new to me: even the beautiful central plaza and the gondola that connects downtown with a viewing mountain above the city didn't recall any memories. In fact, nothing I saw or did in Salta was at all reminiscent of 2004 - until I was on my way home after dinner that night, that is. I was looking at a little map/guidebook of the kind given out by hostels and found a bar by the name of Barney Gomez, a character from The Simpsons known to anglophones as Barney Gumble. The name brought back memories of a post-rafting evening with all the trapping of being our best night out on that 04 road trip, so I decided to check out the place. Indeed, it was the same bar we visited back in the day, except that it was pretty dead. But just being there brought back some memories of that road trip that had been long forgotten, and wouldn't be appropriate here.

The next morning I decided to take the gondola to the top of the hill that sits immediately above town, on e of the main in-town tourist attractions. (There are also some nice museums, but more on that later.) The elevation going up is an extra 250 meters, i think, and you do indeed go up in the gondola much like when skiing. Anyway, from the top you have an absolutely gorgeous view of the city, and beyond it the valley that stretches down from the Andean highland towards .... well, I don't really know, but in the direction of the pampa/sea, I suppose. After all, both of those are lower than Salta, and valleys tend to have some kind of incline. I then hiked down the mountain, which made me really glad that I hadn't hiked up; it's abut 1000 steps, plus some incline parts. Unfortunatly the nature trail on the back side of the mountain was closed (for no apparent reason), so I had to be happy with the flora and fauna I saw on the descent. This wasn't particularly spectacular other than the large amount of incredibly HUGE spiders. Some were definitely larger than my hands, and not being a huge fan of arachnids, this kind of creeped/grossed me out.

Other than that though, the city is quite lovely, and not totally unlike Cordoba, in that it has a beautiful central plaza, and the rest of city is sort of a mix between older, nice buildings (including plenty of churches) and more modern, less attractive ones.