Hello from green, warm, friendly Salta. We arrived yesterday morning from Jujuy, impressed by the lushness of the vegetation and vastness of the skies. Salta is perhaps the cleanest town we`ve been to and the people are very European, and the towns are more and more reminiscent of Spain.
The highways are nice making bus rides more comfortable and despite the economic crisis, people are getting along well enough. At least the level of poverty is not nearly as visible as in previous countries. One can sense the disappointment in their politicians. The people have no trust in their elected officials as they are as corrupt as they come, having basically destroyed an entire country`s economy for selfish gains. The value of the Argentinian peso has dropped in one year from being fixed one to one with the dollar to now 3.2 to a dollar, a staggering devaluation in such a short period of time. No one is anticipating a quick recovery either. But people have their pride still, and hope for the best, after all this place is indeed beautiful, and as we saw last night, people still enjoy themselves by going out and living.
Helen gave me a contact here in Salta, of which we took advantage and met John and Christine Leach (Christine is a cousin of Helen´s, her maiden name was also Lane), and their two boys Thomas and Lorenzo, ages 4 and 5 respectively who are two adorable little toeheads already speaking English, Spanish, and some Portuguese. We had lunch with them and took an afternoon nap and enjoyed the views from their lovely house just outside of town. They gave us some tasty honey from their large tobacco farm a few kilometers further out of town. They invited us to stay at their house, though it would have only been for the night because they left for Chile today. We already found lodging, but appreciated the offer. Nice people, John is of English dissent (sp?) but his family has been here for several generations; Christine is from Brazil. It was very interesting to visit with them and discuss Argentina and see how traditions survive (i.e. English).
We´ll be here a couple days more then head to Resistencia before visiting other relatives of Helen´s in Asuncion, Paraguay. Things are working out quite nicely.
I forgot to mention that we crossed another time zone entering Bolivia and another entering Argentina, so now we´re four hours ahead, i.e. 2PM there is 6PM here. We also crossed another geographical milestone by passing the Tropic of Capricorn just north of Jujuy, having transversed the entire Tropics (Cancer is somewhere between Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan). We won´t be going much further south, more east and north. Though I have a strong desire to see more of Argentina and for sure Chile.
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