Culture vultures' night flights: Cordoba and Salta

We arrived in Cordoba after a mediocre night's sleep on the night bus. Hotel located, we injected some caffeine over breakfast and wandered to a city walking tour (our thinking being that we would be forced to stay awake out of politeness). 

The tour was a whistle-stop foray around Cordoba's highlights: the cathedral, Jesuit block, colonial governor's house, the public university and a memorial museum to those 'disappeared' by the authorities in Argentina's not-too-distant-and-not-so-pleasant past. 

The Jesuits made quite a mark on the city before the Spanish booted them out of the continent, including an impressive church with a roof curved like the bottom of a boat (the previous occupation of the Belgian architect). We took admiring photographs, trying not to encroach on a local's very visible confession to his priest, his wife waiting with the shopping.

Our attention was also held by some of the walking tours' less mainstream offerings. Macaron-esque treats were handed out to maintain blood sugar levels, along with lurid descriptions of the university town's drinking culture. 

Back at the hotel, we avoided the murky swimming pool overlooking the train depot (much to my annoyance) and did some planning. As night fell, we walked through the end of a protest demanding answers to a much more recent 'disappearing' of an indigenous rights activist. After failing to find our desired restaurant we settled on an average pizza place, slurping '24/7' local beer and a bottle of malbec at an outside bar to finish off the night (far too early for the real nightlife that starts at 2am).

The next morning we perused some more colonial architecture, enjoyed several pedestrianized streets, ate our weight in steak at a meat-centric restaurant ('Parrilla') and pondered the afternoon away in an excellent modern art gallery (inc. sculptures that questioned our perceptions of bodies and beauty, clever marketing material for human milking, and some deft sgraffito). 


After a supply stop we then boarded another overnight bus, this time for the city of Salta. Finding a Spanish-ish hotel we freshened up the next morning with a walk up the hill overlooking the city. We looked disdainfully at the teleferico (gondola) option, until the sweat dripping into our eyes forced us to focus on walking. At the top the view was great, and much more open than the promised cafe. We puzzled for a few minutes at some artificial waterfalls made of concrete, and trotted back to the city for lunch (vegan lasagne) and lemonade at a vegan restaurant (to offset the increased steak consumption).

Vegan

The highlight of the afternoon - if you can call it that - was an exhibition displaying and explaining three children sacrificed by the Incas. They were entombed at the top of high, sacred peaks, presumably so they would be well enough preserved to display in a 21st century museum. The museum also displayed the arrays of intricate miniatures and cloth they were buried with. There are three such incredibly well preserved children, with only one on display at any one time. We saw El Nino, the little boy, eerily lifelike.

Not vegan

A final huge steak and some local dry white wine (delish) in the evening fueled us up for an early morning bus to Villazon, on the border with Boliva. As we walked to the train station at 6am the party-ers of Salta were wandering home from the clubs. 

The journey was spectacular, as we climbed onto the Altiplano (southern Andres plain) through striations of coloured rock and across millpond-flat desert. Reaching the international crossing, we befriended Catherine, a Brit on her gap year who spoke much better Spanish. This helped make the process remarkably smooth, as we crossed a bridge into our second South American country. 

Crossing the border into Bolivia