Colonial camping in Salta, Argentina (Drive Day 200: Jan 15, 2004)
The northwestern city of Salta is called the best preserved Colonial city in Argentina – even the communal campground is stunning. For two dollars a night we can take showers and swim in tree-lined pools the size of lakes. Everything is bigger and cheaper here – six full bags of groceries cost the equivalent of ten dollars and a box of red wine eighty cents, less than bottled water. A quarter kilo of fresh shaved ham? Sixty cents. It feels like we’ve slipped back in time – the campgrounds are filled with teenagers hitchhiking from town to town, families vacationing together, grilling great slabs of meat on charcoal grills and passing gourds filled with steaming mate tea from friend to new friend. And every other vehicle seems to be a Ford – from farm trucks to elegantly maintained Falcons. It’s breathe easy relaxing and for the first time in months we don’t feel blatantly out of place.
Follow this bonus-material blog and ride along on a one-year road trip that inspired the memoir The Drive: Searching for Lost Memories on the Pan American Highway. On sale now. Get yours through the buy-the-book links at the bottom of the landing page on my teresabrucebooks.com website or here or here. Planning a road trip? Buy the audiobook here. Like The Drive’s Facebook page and tweet back at me @writerteresa. Like travel anthologies? I’m in a brand new one called Alone Together: Tales of Sisterhood and Solitude in Latin America which you can get here.
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