Salta la linda

Salta. La linda, the fair, indeed. The city itself is beautiful, of course, and its setting is pretty sublime; but it's the culture there that really hooks you. There is folk music absolutely everywhere, and folk dancing: never have handkerchiefs been used to such seductive effect. The peñas, traditional folk music venues, dot the city almost as ubiquitously as cafes. Okay, that's a stretch: there are a lot of cafes in Salta. But you can hear the thump of that big martial drum and that vigorous multi-voice harmony spilling out of all sorts of doorways. I went to see a couple of shows, first with a British chap who was part of the traveling party from Bolivia, and then with a girl who was staying in my hostel, and both were riveting. I should mention Argentine folkloric music is not tango; it's some other creature, possibly called zamba (that' at least, is the name of the Salteño variety of folklore). These were Sunday and Monday nights. Saturday night was more of a late (but relaxed) drinks kind of affair on Balcarce street, the city's multi-block pedestrian-only bar & restaurant district. New to me, that night, was the sight of families with small children strolling past the patios and throbbing club entrances at 4:30 in the morning. Also new to me was such an environment where nobody was stumbling into an alley to puke, despite the presence of many a youthful patron. It was the most well-behaved, respectable club district I've ever seen; perhaps not insignificantly, it was also relatively sparsely attended by Western tourists, or so it seemed from our vantage point on the patio of a reggae club (they had cheap beer). Salta, in fact, doesn't seem to be a mandatory stop on the gringo trail the way Buenos Aires is; there were certainly tourists toting cameras, but almost all of those we talked to proved to be Argentinian themselves. Mostly it's just a small city going about its business, which business is simply pretty awesome.