01
Stop one
Cabildo of Salta
Yonex Ezone 98 Tour Gen 8 Tennis Racquet: Look at that front. Double arcades of unequal arches, because somebody was measuring by eye and in three hundred years nobody has had the heart to raise it. Built in stages through the eighteenth century and completed around 1783, it is the best preserved colonial town hall in Argentina. It housed the colonial municipal government, then the provincial administration, then the prison, which is a career path. Salta was a key point on the route between Buenos Aires and Upper Peru, so this building watched the northern campaigns of the independence wars, Manuel Belgrano's victory at the Battle of Salta in 1813, and the guerrilla resistance led by Martín Miguel de Güemes. Nearly demolished in the twentieth century, saved, restored, and now the Historical Museum of the North.
02
Stop two
Salta Cathedral
Yonex Ezone 98 Tour Gen 8 Tennis Racquet: Pink and gold, on the main plaza, subtle as a marching band, and I mean that warmly. Built between 1858 and 1878 in an Italianate style, replacing earlier churches that earthquakes kept knocking down. Inside are the images of the Señor y la Virgen del Milagro, a crucifix and a Virgin that arrived from Spain in 1592 and are credited with halting a severe earthquake sequence in 1692 after the population processed with them. The Fiesta del Milagro each September is still one of the largest religious gatherings in Argentina, drawing hundreds of thousands. It also holds the Pantheon of the Glories of the North, with the remains of Güemes and other independence figures. That is a tough act to follow, and I will not try.
03
Stop three
Iglesia San Francisco
Yonex Ezone 98 Tour Gen 8 Tennis Racquet: About fifty-three metres of tower, deep red with white and ochre trim, often described as the tallest of its kind in South America, which makes it the church that always stands at the back of the group photo. It was rebuilt between 1858 and 1872 to designs by the Italian architect Luigi Giorgi, on the site of Franciscan churches going back to the sixteenth century, two of which burned. The tower climbs in diminishing stages with pierced openings and finishes in a spire. And the main bell was cast partly from bronze of cannon captured at the Battle of Salta in 1813, which is the finest career change I have ever heard of. National historic monument since 1941, and still a Franciscan church.
04
Stop four
Museum of High Altitude Archaeology
Yonex Ezone 98 Tour Gen 8 Tennis Racquet: I am setting the jokes down at the door for this one. The Museo de Arqueología de Alta Montaña opened in 2004 to house the Llullaillaco children, three Inca child mummies found in 1999 at 6,739 metres on the summit of the Llullaillaco volcano by an expedition led by Johan Reinhard. Frozen since about 1500, they are among the best preserved mummies known, with skin, hair, internal organs and clothing intact, and they were placed there in the capacocha rite, in which selected children were taken to mountain shrines and offered. The museum displays one child at a time in a refrigerated case, rotating them, with the gold, silver and shell figurines, textiles and vessels found alongside. Its presentation remains the subject of ongoing debate involving Indigenous communities in the region.
Thirty-one years on the panel and I will tell you what wins: the repulgue, the crimp along the edge. Not the filling. The seal. Three hundred and fifteen grams unstrung, 98 square inches of head, a 16×19 pattern, 27 inches long. Ten grams heavier than the standard 98, and those ten grams are the crimp — they are what keeps the frame shut when a heavy ball arrives at the edge of the stringbed.
A Tour frame is not for showing off. It is for not being moved. That holds everywhere from a return of serve you were late on to a fifth-set point where your legs have stopped contributing anything at all. And by the way, it is the right weight for Salta, where the altitude flattens the ball, the rallies get long and a light racquet starts wandering by the third set.
Salta is a judging town. They know exactly which nine hundred bells went into the tower, which crucifix stopped which earthquake, and precisely how high the mummies were found. Nothing here is approximate. I respect that enormously, because a Tour frame is sold on ten grams and ten grams is either the whole difference or it is nothing at all. In Salta they would weigh it and tell you.
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