Tilcara to Salta

Today we awoke early to get to the town or Tilcara, which is about an hour and a half to the north of Jujuy. We knew this would excite our friend at the tourist office, who, on more than one occasion, came through with amazingly detailed times and locations, also ran to catch a bus for us and, his trademark, told us he would see us ¨bien temprano!¨ the next day. He was kind of our hero so we didn't want to disappoint him! So there we were, bien temprano, catching a bus to Tilcara which actually took 2 hours. We took the local which drove us through all the surrounding cities with a detour back through where we had been yesterday. We first got a coffee from a lady on the side of the road which was fantastic, very sugary, and came with a free homemade bagel-like bread. Yum!

Tilcara itself is a sleepy little town with a lot of muc houses and a cool church, but we were only able to see it from the outside. We went to lunch and tried choclo y queso, corn and cheese, which came out as literally that, corn on the cob next to a big slice of cheese. That was pretty funny. Also the corn here is really different, not sweet or juicy, more like what they feed the chickens I guess. After a while we went back to Salta where we were going to try to catch a bus to Salta. Instead we got a Remis. There was a man chewing the biggest wad of coca leaves I have ever seen, so naturally our instincts were to jump in a car with him! His friend had a Ford Falcon we climbed into and away we went. The guide book says it is a two and a half hour ride. We made it in just over one hour. Our guy went super fast, and whenever there was a red light he pulled into the lane of the oncoming traffic, passed everyone going in our direction adn pulled back into the lane and led the pack when the light turned green. He´s an excellent driver.

In Salta we are staying at a hostal called Terra Oculta, run by a hyperactive guy names Martin. He is his own best audience, and I get the feeling he tells the same jokes over and over, because in the 20 minutes we shared with him we heard the same one twice. The place is really nice, though, wich a bar on the roof and a terraza with a ping pong table. Salta seems like a nice place, tomorrow we will be exploring!