Back to Civilization

    The shower at our hostel in Salta felt so refreshing after plastering ourselves in bug spray the day before. Although I love nature, we needed to get out of that camp site. I didn't realize how bad our bug bites were until the next day. I had a grapefruit sized welt on my leg from one bite, and Audrey had about 200 bites on her legs (mistake of wearing shorts). We all chugged water right after getting back to the town of San Martin to make up for our dehydration earlier.
    Saturday was the first day in a while we didn't have to hop on a bus to get somewhere else, so we spent the day exploring the city. It was a nice change from the rest of the trip to wear real clothes and sandals and feel clean. We visited some old churches in the city, and found where the artisan markets are to go gift shopping. We'd seen exactly what we wanted in the markets in Jujoy, but didn't buy them yet because we didn't want to carry our purchases through our camping trip. At first we couldn't find the same kind of stuff we wanted in Salta, but learned there were more artisan markets all the way across town, so we walked 20 blocks to a big warehouse full of artisan stalls. The only unfortunate aspect was that they were more expensive in Salta than in Jujoy. I bought so much lana (wool), I'm going to be so prepared for winter in Colorado when I get back in December. The artisan  markets are the kind of places where I think you can barter for price, but I'm not very good at it in Spanish, so I mainly paid what they were asking with a couple discounts here and there.
    We also went to the Museo de Arqueología de Alta Montaña in Salta, where they have an exhibit of mummified Incan children that were discovered on top of Llullaillco Volcano, dividing Chile and Argentina. The children were part of an Incan sacrificial ritual where their tribe got them drunk and buried them alive in the ground on the volcano. They were naturally mummified in the ground, and one of them was even hit by lightening in the ground and half of her face is burned. They only had one of the three child mummies on display. It was eerie to see the 6 year old child frozen in time. 
     Our 19 hour bus ride back to Mendoza on Sunday went by really fast. We watched movies, played bingo again, and had excellent service getting served wine and meals. I was a little worried before this trip about getting sick from so much time on the buses. But we've actually had a ton of fun on the buses bonding and seeing amazing views during the drive. Last night we were driving through the middle of nowhere and we could see so many stars from the bus windows. The entire sky was covered; I haven't seen a night sky like that in a long time. I was actually a little sad to pull into Mendoza and have to get off the bus. I just wanted to keep traveling. But I guess I have to go to classes at some point.