Chapter 4

How lame was the province of Salta? Lame enough that my favorite part of the trip was playing on a swing set, an activity Julian, my new friend Ben and I chose because there was nothing else to do in Salta. After 10 minutes of normal swinging we decided to be more adventurous and swing standing up. Then even Salta's swing set proved to be shit after Ben somehow fell off the swing and had the metal seat come crashing into the back of his head, causing blood to gush from his scalp and consequently ending our playtime.

Aside from that the three of us took a day trip around the province of Salta from the capital named Salta up to Jujuy, seeing desert landscape that might have been interesting if I didn’t live the last 18 years of my life in Arizona. The highlight of Jujuy was seeing some kids play in a mountain of bottle caps (photo above), which wasn't a highlight after I learned they had cancer and their bottle cap collection was somehow going to win them a surgery. Seeing the desert complete with fake saguaro cacti and all made me homesick for the second time since I left my home in July.

The first time occurred when I watched a dubbed version of “Fools Rush In.” After watching Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek drive around in traffic lanes (a practice which doesn’t exist in Buenos Aires) through the United States' Southwest reminded me of home. However after watching the movie I was also reminded that I once lived in a land where “Friends” was an acceptable form of entertainment, and I remembered why I was sick of home in the first place.

The only other memorable moment of an otherwise forgettable trip was seeing some ugly Pucaran ruins, which had many small living spaces the size of college dorms. They even had a primitive, if not more effective version of the cliché frat-boy “No fat chicks” sign as all the entry ways into the adobe ruins were no more than 18 inches wide.

Here is one of the prettier pictures of the mountains of Salta, the rest were very lame:


As for your token goofy hostel moment of the stay, we lodged with this odd Israeli who invited us to watch “Don’t Mess with the Zohan” with him.

“I’ve already seen it three times, but it was so good I had to buy the DVD!” exclaimed the Israeli, outing himself as the only person in the world who watched and enjoyed “Zohan.” I passed and tried to go to bed, which was quite difficult since it sounded like the Israeli was recording a one-man laugh track from the family room.

Salta wasn't all bad as I did achieve one of my goals of the trip to get a picture of a doll engaging in auto-erotic asphyxiation while talking on the phone.