The importance of being idle

SALTA, ARGENTINA - 22nd March 2010

Prior to this morning, the last time I had to wake myself up for something, without the backup of having someone else to wake me up anyway, was at 3am in Auckland Airport back on that epically long 1st February. Clearly, I'm out of practice with this whole waking up malarkey - a fact not helped by my mobile phone-cum-alarm getting smashed back in Queenstown.

Having met up the night before for a cheeky bite to eat, Tom and I had decided to get up e.doors and hike our way up to the 1500m summit of Cerro San Bernado - the hill overlooking the city. In order to avoid the savagery of the tropical heat beating down later in the day, we agreed to meet bright and early at 8.45am at the foot of the hill, by the statue of Martín Miguel de Güemes - a hero in this northwestern part of Argentina thanks to his role in defending the north-west against the Spanish in the Argentine War of Independence. However, an 8.45 meet-up was looking pretty grim when I awoke and looked at my watch to find hands pointing towards a quarter to 10!

Feeling like a prize dickhead, I headed pessimistically over to the Güemes monument anyway - I figured at some stage on my way up/his way down we'd have to cross paths and I could apologise for being useless. What a surprise it was then, as I paused to photograph Güemes in all his military glory (see right), that over from my right strolled young Thomas - turns out he, being an equally useless boy, had done very much the same thing and had only been waiting at Güemes' foot for a bit over 10 minutes!

So up we went - step by step ascending to the top of this striking hill in, thanks to our mutual ineptitude, far hotter and more uncomfortable conditions that we'd intended, but the time flew by. Whether from the refreshment of having someone new to talk to, or the liberation of being able to speak totally frankly again, or just the immature amusement that comes only from laddish chat, it barely seemed like we'd set off before we found ourselves sitting pretty, looking down on Salta and - obviously - backing the bid!


The stroll back down was, surprisingly enough, much faster, but having both largely skipped breakfast thanks to our waking up woes, we were both bloody starving by the time we were back at street level. Cue scouting out a speciality empanada restaurant and, being hungry, growing boys, ordering a solid round of 6 (or 8?) special local-style empanadas (potatoes, chillies, and beef), followed by a proper main course involving plenty of meat, followed by fruit salads - all washed down with the delicious Salta Negra malt beer. Then it was definitely time to chill out back at Las Rejas.

Some quality kotching included time for Tom to get an email from his Mum with details of a Salta restaurant that had featured in The Observer's travel supplement - one of only 3 South American restaurants to be featured. As the same place had been recommended by Taylor back in Mendoza, there was no questioning La Casona del Molino as our choice of dinner destination. Unfortunately, the place was a mission and a half from the city centre where we were and, after making the ill advised decision to walk, we discovered that we'd inadvertently and wholly unnecessarily walked a good 6 blocks further north than we needed to, so proceeded to cover the same ground again back south. All in all, we walked the best part of 35 blocks before finally arriving, and very quickly realised that it was very much closed. Monday. Closed Day. Not cool.

Now knowing not to make the same error of heading north/south, our walk back home in a straight eastward direction was hella shorter (probably still 25 blocks though), and with hunger and time nipping at our heels we found ourselves in Plaza 9 de Julio (Iglesia Catedral looking stunning in its lit-up state, below) and were sold by the classic, simple option of superpanchos (foot-long hot dogs) - which came complete with all ends of sauces and toppings. I got one topped with sweetcorn and one topped with something else; both were fantastic.


Well aware that last night's decision to book of 2 consecutive days of tours to cool places around the area obligated us to two consecutive morning departures of 6.30am, and conscious of our collective waking performance this morning, it is hardly a shock that tonight is an early night!