Salta

We arrived in Salta on Thursday morning, but I had to wait until Friday to see Pri, and until Monday to see her again. Adrianna and Costanza left for Buenos Aires, and Patrick got sick and spent the weekend in bed. By Sunday I was feeling like I’d made the wrong choice by coming back to Salta.

Monday changed that. Patrick and I had a sunny lunch on the main plaza before he began a miserable journey home; 30 hours of busses south, followed by a long chain of flights north to Minneapolis. It was a sad goodbye, but Patrick is a compatriot with ties to Los Angeles, so there is little doubt I’ll see him soon. After our farewell, I went shopping for an Argentina soccer jersey, then met up with Pri for a sunset mate (not a typo or freudian slip; a typical Argentine loose leaf tea drank from a gourd through a filtered straw). As I sat at the base of a large cross overlooking a beautiful city, with an Argentine girl, wearing that new baby-blue and white striped jersey, and sipping on the most traditional of Argentine drinks, I felt like a bit of a cliché. But a fondness for cliché runs in my family.

After the sun dipped below the horizon and the temperature dropped, we took the gondola back down the hill, left our bags at my hostel and walked to the grocery store. I bought the groceries. She cooked - Argentine.

The next morning I was off. I could have stayed much longer, but the countdown had begun - I was flying home from La Paz, Bolivia in a few short days. I left Salta happy to have made the trip.