Salta: Getting lost makes for a better story

After another crack of dawn flight, I made it to my hostel in Salta at 9:30 am. I plopped down on the couch and immediately met Kristian, my new buddy from Bristol, England. He was so friendly and invited me join him and a friend "doing whatever" that day.

Doing whatever was great. It happened so fast, too. Yay spontaneity. We left the hostel at 11am to take a random bus to San Lorenzo, the next town over. Everything is closed on Mondays and we hadn't booked an excursion, so hiking in San Lorenzo was pretty much the only option. When we noticed we were the only ones left on the bus, I asked the bus driver how much long to San Lorenzo. He laughed and said that the next stop was the last stop, so we better get off and enjoy the part of the town we landed in.

So we got off the bus and ran into an old villager of Salta trying to sell us a horseback ride through the hills up to the "Mirador" (viewpoint). Kristian and I had been joined by Carina from Denmark and Bruno from Brazil. Bruno was insistent on using his new GPS to navigate our trek through the hills, so we passed on the horses.

The thing about GPS is, it's useless unless you have a map of where you are loaded onto the device. Bruno hadn't paid for that software. So we knew that we were a little black arrow on a blank screen and we followed our little black line showing us where we had walked. If all else failed, we just retrace the little black line.

So we climbed down a little hill and crossed a river by stepping stones. We started hiking up the hill on what seemed to be like some sort of path. Following the path we came upon a random herd of cows. I don't know if you've ever seen cows just randomly in the wild, or not in a pasture. It's pretty cool. I never thought of cows as wild animals until Monday, especially when I saw the MASSIVE bull just cruisin through the thick brush of the hills. Those were some big, threatening horns. It's a good thing they appeared calm.

After some photos, we chose a path that appeared to lead upwards - since we were looking for the viewpoint to look over the city. We passed a stone wall and found a real path. Success! We also decided that since guided horseback riding tours come up on the hill all the time, our best bet was to follow the horse poop. Kind of like Hansel and Gretel, but with shit. Soon this real path had led us to a plateau where the view was blocked entirely by trees. "Oh look! A really nice view, if only I could see it." After that plateau, there wasn't really a path. So we wandered and stumbled upon a fork in a lesser path. We chose the one with horse poo and trekked on. Dead end. We went back and followed the other path. Excellent, another viewpoint with shrubs everywhere.

We backtracked on Bruno's GPS and took a different turn. We ended up with three options: right, left, straight. LEFT Bruno said. Left should take us down to the city according to the one other dot on his GPS screen that said City Center. We descended for a while and came upon.....a barbed wire fence. GPS didn't say anything about that.

I mean, come on! How could it not tell us there would be an impenetrable fence? And why hadn't Kristian remembered his wirecutters?

So we backtracked again. Bruno had been fired. Carina picked right when we got back to the three-choice point. Incorrect. So Kristian led the way straight. Eventually on this straight path I could see the stone wall from before. I voted that we go back and follow it the way we came. But where was the sense of adventure in that?

So we followed Kristian, down through the spiky, thorny brush, threw the pool of mud, weaving through the trees, down a steep gravel hill and finally back across the river. We made it!!! It was actually a really fun little trek. We didnt see much but the hills themselves, but who cares?

We were adventurous! We were daring! We were HUNGRY! So we stopped for lunch. Guess what we found on our table? A map. A map of the trail we should have taken. The trail that started about 50 meters up the hill from where we were. Yup. That's irony for you.

So we fueled up and went on the actual trek to the actual Mirador. This was a harder hike. Crossing bridges, smaller pathways (though pathways nonetheless), steeper hills, rockier terrain. But bright sunshine and a clear view at the top. We could see all of San Lorenzo, Salta and the town beyond (its name shall forever be a mystery). I also took a nap in the sun at the top, since I had been up at 4:30 that morning and we had hiked quite a bit.

Somehow we didnt get back to the hostel until after 9. Where does the time go? Oh right. I guess when you walk paths and backtrack and walk another path and backtrack it takes double the time. But it was a GREAT day. And I found out that going with the flow and getting lost and having to find your way out of the hills with a dysfunctional GPS is a lot of fun.

BESOS!