In our last week on the continent, we headed north-west from Buenos Aires, first to Cordoba, then further north to Salta.
Cordoba used to be the capital city of Argentina until it was moved to Buenos Aires some time ago. Now, it is a bit of a university city. We liked the feel of the place - friendly people, nice weather, and lots of sleepy little towns nearby. We visited one called Jesus Maria which has an old Jesuit mission where they used to grow and sell wine to raise funds for their university in Cordoba after the Catholic church cut off funding. David was very impressed with their water engineering capabilities, as always.
Salta was another long bus ride north. It is even more relaxed, less built up, and contained a cool museum with another frozen ice maiden - a 16-year old girl sacrificed on the top of a volcano about 600 years ago. She has been amazingly well preserved by the freezing conditions. As David said, her skin looked better than ours.
After Salta, we headed back to Buenos Aires via another 19-hour bus. We have calculated that on this trip we have done 15 overnight busses, as well as several other long day busses, meaning that of our 16 weeks in South America, about three were spent in transit between one point
and another.
Anyway, after a short day in BA (our fourth visit, for those keeping score) we jumped on a ferry and added our final country to the list.
Uruguy is a one-hour boat ride from Buenos Aires. We went to a sleepy little town called Colonia. It was passed between the Spanish and Portugues several times, then claimed by Brazil for several years, before finally Uruguy became an independant country and things settled down a bit. There is little Portuguese left in the language, but there are some old buildings around the place, mixed in with some Spanish and more modern architecture. Definitely worth visiting if you have a spare day in BA.
On the ferry we met a British woman who has been studying Tango for three years in BA. She gave us some tips for seeing some good local dancing, so the next night we headed out at about 1am to Salon Canning for a milonga. This is essentially a public dance hall, tango style, with a large square dance floor in the centre of the room, and tables crowded around the sides. Through the night, the floor is filled with couples, generally looking somber and pensive (this is tango, after all), punctuated by several great performances by individual professional couples.
Having been warned in no uncertain terms by our British friend to stay off the dance floor under all circumstances, even if approached by attractive young women (an event which unfortunately did not come to pass), we instead decided to have a lesson instead. The next evening we headed to the National Academy of Tango and got a three-hour lesson for 15 Argentine Pesos (about AU$6). when we arrived, there were about 7 guys and two girls. Que pasa?
Anyway, our teacher was a pro, and managed to teach us a few steps without resorting to any single-gender partners (a couple of extra ladies arrived late, and the guys got to take breaks). As to the quality of the dancing I will not comment, but not too many toes were stood on.
Today, we return to Australia, flying over Antarctica on the way. It has been a pleasure having you all on board, and we hope you have enjoyed the ride. We certainly did. Until the next epic journey, we will bid you adeu.
Hasta luego,
Los Davides
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