the saltanian doldrums...

So, we´ll just address the editor´s comments in a later post.....we have much more important things to accomplish at the moment. Not really much has happened here in Salta. ít´s been almost a week again. I came into town with a rough case of food poisoning...maybe the worst i´ve had. i´ll spare you the details, but i am eating real food again and loving it. i´m not sure what it was, but i was up near bolivia and the water is not as clean as it is down here. maybe it was some fruit, or some bad street empanadas, or who knows what was the culprit. either way, it doesn´t matter much.

that being said, i have resumed my previous schedule here in this beautiful city of salta. i will take the time out from my doings and walk you through a day in the life of ryan in salta. breakfast ends in the hostel at 10, so it is nice to get up before this and wolf down a bowl of cereal and some pastries with some watered down juice. not the greatest start, mind you, but it fills the belly with some calories...after this, a shower with lukewarm water. freshly dressed and clothed in the same pair of shorts and hopefully a clean shirt, i take to the streets and either busk a little on the pedestrian walkway or sit in a park and play my fiddle for a couple of hours. today i chose the park option, as i wanted to fit in a little practice, in lieu of the quasi performance setting when busking. following this i stop by the market to pick up some avocados, tomatoes, and bread for a midday meal. it´s been my lunch of choice to mix up the avocados and tomatoes with some oil and salt and eat it with bread....mmmm.....i really still am not sure about when to put an oe on the end of words or just an o.....i don´t know why dan quayle got such a hard time for that. i think it was him....? either way i´ll sit and eat and watch old american movies on the tele...today it was mad max. illl sit around for a while and drink some mate, and then pick up the guitar and play for a while in the hostel. i just got a cd of atahualpa yupanqui, an amazing guitarist...i´ve really been trying to get some fingerpicking skills under my belt.

then, if the day is hot, which they usually are, i´ll wander over to the other hostel and swim in the pool for a bit and generally lay around. that usually puts me at about 4-5ish and it is high time to come back to the hostel and sit around maybe on the internet and blog about my deep thoughts, but usually i just check my email...this is of course followed by some mate and some more guitar playing, and perhaps a nap. with myself fully rested, i´ll head to the plaza where i pick up a newspaper and sit at one of the street cafes and drink a beer with some complementary chips. it´s quite lovely, i tell you. the sitting in public on the street drinking beer watching the world go by is definitely an underutilized concept in many places. depending on the evening i´ll either head to the casona del molino, a spot much like the bar the moon and sixpence in portland, where there are at least a few musicians just sitting around drinking and playing the local music...it´s kind of like an irish pub where they just kind of sit in the corner and aren´t really performing, per se, but people usually come to listen. it´s a really great place to hang out regardless. other than that, i´ll head to the other hostel for dinner, stay here and watch another movie with the guitar, or head up to a street loaded with bars and clubs...it´s quite a scene, really...

so there you go. now you all know what i do with my time here in salta. there are some carnaval things starting tonight and tomorrow, so hopefully i´ll have something of actual human interest to post. other than that i´m leaving salta and heading south on monday or tuesday.