18:35 - Today was not very eventful. Didn't make it to Cafe Tortoni as I decided to sleep in. Pickup was at 11 so had a late breakfast and then joined everyone on the minibus to the domestic terminal. Jolanda on the way to the airport expressed concern over the type of plane we were flying with and Sally was unable to appease her :-). It all worked out ok though. The flight to Salta was a couple of hours and i made some inroads in my book on the Incas (and slept some more in all honesty :-) ). We were picked up at Salta airport by our local guide for tomorrow and she run through the highlights of Salta and our trip tomorrow. She seems nice. The Hotel is the best yet... But I guess that at 12 dollars a night you can't expect much :-). Still it is clean! Dropped off luggage and attempted to find the two museums that Sally had talked about. Salta is not a big town and apparently is very safe, so i ventured on my own. I didn't find everything I was looking for but did manage to find the MAAM where the mummies of three Inca children discovered in the Salta province in 1999 are kept. Story has it that the Inca used to sacrifice children at their important cerimonies (the three found are 6, 7 and 15 years old). I then walked around and took a few pictures, practiced my terrible spanish on some unsupecting strangers. It started to rain, so I went back to the hotel. We are all meeting up at 8pm for dinner in a fun restaurant with local music (called Peña). It should be good. Sally's been before I think.
23:30 - Dinner at 'Le Leñita' was really nice. Il piatto forte was of course argentinian beef... I sat with Phil on my right and Mary on my left. Two halves of married couples. Jolanda sat across from us, and no sooner had I said lets not talk about the war (Jolanda is polish), that she was talking about the Nazis. At that point Mary tells me (luckily out of hearshot) that her father was German and fought in the war in the air force for Germany! We've decided it's probably better not to disclose it to Jolanda... Phil and Alison are a laugh and we had a giggle with Sally also. She does the mathwork to split the bills so that everyone pays for what they have consumed and not a penny more...a thankless job. Alejandro and his guitar played some of the local songs for us and I am now long of a CD that I will probably never listen to again (but it seemed a good idea at the time). And by the time we walked out it was pissing down with rain... Some of us decided to walk back anyway and got soaked. Still at least the temperature is now at an acceptable 25 degrees... Nice! Off to bed now as we have a 6:30 wake up call and at 7:30 we are setting off.