HooHoo-ee

it seems i have been getting out of the city so often over the weekends that ive barely been writing about what im doing normally! Last weekend I went with th program to Salta and Jujuy (see above alliteration) with t he program. they split us up into two groups--half of us went to jujuy and the other half went to the province of córdoba and next weekend we switch. the trip was absolutely incredible. it is very far away (see visual), so we took a plane which was about an hour and a half trip. despite the fact that our flight was delayed 4 hours, we got there safe and sound, stayed in salta for a night, and went to jujuy the next day. we stayed in these cabins that were essentially rectangular little buildings with two separate rooms. The first thing we did, after wating a deeeeeeelicious lunch of tamales and the best chicken ever, we saw this reconstructed incan village built and maintained by the history department of the university of buenos aires. was interesting, albeit a little boring, but there were these enormous saguaro cacti everywhere that were just beautiful. also, we saw llamas, which makes any trip worth it. that night we just kind of chilled out, all very tired and the next day we went on a short hike and then they took us to a small town called humahuaca. there was a really cool artisans market, as well as an amazing cemetery and man, what a view. let me just put it out there that utah has nothing on argentina. these mountains literally looked like they had been colored with crayola crayons. bright purple, bright yellow, green, red...some of them had horizontal stripes of color across them. amazing. it was also cool because its kind of the off season there so we saw hardly any other tourists, which believe me when youre already traveling in a group of 70 is a blessing. i tried the native staple munchie of coca leaves, which the (mostly indigenous) locals chew like gum. its really not that exciting, not that i wanted it to be. it really just tastes like leaves, but they say its good for altitude sickness so we all had some. the third day was my favorite--we took a spectaular three-hour drive through the mountains, which were golden and contrasted with the brightest blue sky i have ever seen in my life. there were lots of formations too--lots of mesas, canyons, etc. amazing. anyways, we go through the mountains to Las Salinas Grandes- the biggest salt flats in the world. at first i was not expecting much--oooh a lot of whiteness. but oh. my. goodness. it was so amazing. miles and miles of flat white land in every direction, and the salt had formed hexagonal formations across the whole surface. they kind of just gave us an hour of free time there, because i mean, how do you take a tour of or do an activity on the salt flats, so i took a long walk on my own, which was great because it would be practically impossible to get lost. just look for the only non-white thing or mountain on the horizon. anywho, then my friend anna and i did a photo shoot on the salt flats, which went a little something like "ooh now lets take some of the two of us with the self-timer" "ooh lets pretend we are stranded in the desert for weeks," "ooh, lets go into fetal position in the hexagons." you know, the usual think you do on the salt flats. the thing you dont realize is that the salt hurts! the whole ground is like a field of tiny knives because the salt is pretty much rock hard. fetal position, it turned out, is not the most comfortable salt-field pose, take my word for it.
after that we went to another little town and had lunch and took a beautiful hike and went to the little flea market there. and THEN night fell upon the andes. we had a big dinner at the hotel, complete with an andean band! it was so great! they were all wearing these big ponchos and some of them had the little bowler hats like in bolivia. instruments included pan flutes, mini-guitars (not ukuleles but mini guitars), drums, and this huge horn thing similar to the ones in the ricola commercials. intense. they kept swinging the hors over our heads--they were like 9 feet long. so great. we danced our little patooties off and then left the next morning for the airport in town. on the bus ride, which took like an hour and a half, like 7 or 8 of us started playing the game mafia...oh man. FIVE HOURS of playing later, as we finally boarded the plane, we decided that mafia may have overstayed its welcome.
it was such a great trip--i am also obsessed with the staff of the program, even more than i was before. the whole thing was just so relaxing, and it was really nice to get closer to some people with whom i hadnt had a chance to get to know yet. im very excited for cordoba.