When I first planned my trip, I wasn't sure to pass by Salta. I didn't even know of it... Later on, trying to draw my itinerary on a map, it seemed as a good stop between Iguazu and Atacama desert, so I thought I would pass by quickly.
Once I arrived to Argentina, some people, both locals and travellers, told me that Salta was really beautiful... Even if I listened to them, I was still very sceptical.. we always evaluate what people tell us in comparison with our previous knowledge, our previous preconceptions... and, at the end of the day, Salta was not famous to me, no friends had recommended it before, and I hadn't seen any advertisements on television which explained the wonders of Salta...
Fortunately, I decided to give it a try... and instead of two days, I'm staying for five days in the region.
And I'm so glad I did so!.. Salta is just amazing! Here, I saw breathtaking landscapes... mountains of so many colors! so many shapes! dessert, llamas, even a colibri... amazing people, which are mostly indigenas, very kind and generous... An old woman paid a bus for me when I had no change, I didn't even ask for it... she looked poor yet she paid for me! and would not accept anything for the favour...
I saw history, before the spanish arrived, after the spanish arrived... a frozed body of an inca child sacrificed to their gods more than 500 years ago, found on a 6000+ mountain peak... he looked like real, you could see his face!... an inca child! with its inca clothes!... made me travel back in time, and very sad that a child like him had to lose his life that way...
None of that was in my concept of Salta, none of that was in my concept of Argentina... it made me think that, sometimes, learning is realizing that what we previously had learned was wrong...
Thinking this way, it's actually to open the door of learning... it's to be with an open mind, unenclosed to me and my preconceptions, ready to understand other people, to discover other lands, and to see reality... seeing it by myself, not thorugh my old concepts, but seeing it as it is...
