Going solo

SALTA, ARGENTINA - 21st March 2010

"It's weird isn't it - when you go to other countries you always see locals wearing English football shirts, but you'd never see English guys back home wearing Argentine shirts, would you?"

Proudly sporting my "Moscow 08" Manchester United shirt (following this morning's brush past a Liverpool side that really, really aren't very good), I've just finished a good value pizza here at "New Time Cafe" in the south-west corner of Salta's impressive Plaza 9 de Julio. The quite stunningly dense quote above came courtesy of one of two English girls sitting at the table opposite me, presumably after a cursory glance in my direction (and the relatively standard if woefully inaccurate assumption that my dark skin makes me Latin). I'm not sure if it's good that Anna isn't here right now or not - these two are prize specimens of almost everything she dislikes (in English people): unable to speak a word of Spanish (less than me, even); content to order vegetarian salads in a place specialising in meat dishes, and still not finishing them; not particularly attractive (admittedly not their fault); and patently lacking a couple of notches of basic common sense. Shame - she missed out.

I rocked up to Las Rejas Hostel here in Salta this morning after a long 20 hour bus from Mendoza and, first things first, settled down to watch the football. Actually, it wasn't first things first at all - an hour earlier I'd decided to help myself breakfast and some coffee, but had the unfortunate experience of picking up a jug of milk, pouring it in and tasting it, only to discover that the "milk jug" was in fact yoghurt. Not ideal.

Equally far from ideal was sitting on a computer in the hostel attempting in vain to find an online stream of the match. Finally, via Facebook and a useful post from a certain Robin Hill, I managed to get a stream... and discovered that in the 10 minutes I'd been looking for a stream I'd missed Liverpool scoring, a penalty, United equalising, and generally the best 10 minutes of the match. Again, not ideal.

At some stage after a post-match shower I sauntered out the hostel and over to here. The square is certainly one of Argentina's most impressive, and is dominated at its northern end by the beautiful 19th century Iglesia Catedral, resplendent in pink and white paintwork (right). Sadly, like so many churches on this continent during the day, it was closed - but then again with hunger calling me it was probably for the best.

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The near-on 1000km journey up here covers the best part of 10° of latitude - Salta is just shy of the Tropic of Capricorn, and you damn well feel it walking around in the early afternoon sun. So do the locals, apparently; the place was as dead as Liverpool's Champions' League chances - nothing open, barely a soul on the streets - siestas are the big business here. Iglesia San Francisco doesn't need to be open to be appreciated, however - its blood red exterior tapered with cream edging is so visually overwhelming you almost feel bad staring at it.

Anyway, Tom - one of the crew from our Mendoza vineyard and thermal pool adventures - will be getting into town around about now, so the next few days of South America are likely to involve more beer, less Spanish, and a lot more football than the previous 2 months. Happy days!