La Paz, Tarija and Salta

Well we are now in Salta, Argentina. La Paz was fun, with lots of museums to look at. We went to a musical instrument museum, a mineralogical museum, an ethnographic museum, a textile museum, and a couple of other smaller cultural museums. My favorite was the ethnographic museum which had a large display of pottery and some videos on how the pottery was done as well as a large display of Carnival masks. All in all La Paz was very pleasant. We were in La Paz from the 16th - 20th. We flew out Feb. 20th to Tarija. In Tarija we stayed with some friends of our host family. They met us at the Airport. They were really nice and Tarija was pleasent but Lindsay and Candice spent most of their time being sick for whatever reason leaving me to wander about by myself most of the time. We took a tour of a couple of wineries which was fun. We also got to try some wines from the vineyard where our family that we were staying worked. On the 25th of February we took a car to the the Bolivia - Argentina Border and then another from their to Salta. The guy we rode with charged us too much but we made it fine. We had great scenery the whole drive and had to stop a lot because of mudslides from the heavy rain. Salta is really pretty, it has a lot of wildlife, especially birds such as toucans, parrots and birds of prey, in the nearby national parks. However, due to the heavy rains the national parks are inaccessible right now so we are forced to stick to the city. However the city in itself is very beautiful with great churches and colonial architecture. Tomorrow we leave for Mendoza which will be about an 18 hour bus ride. We will spend a couple of days in Mendoza and then head across the border to Santiago on the 5th or the 6th.