Day 7 - January 14 - Santa Fe La Vieja, the first settlement

The city of Santa Fe was founded twice. In 1573, the first city was founded by the conquistador Juan de Garay. About ninety years later -- tired of frequent floods and even more frequent attacks by the indigenous tribes they had displaced -- the Spanish settlers moved to the current location, about 85 km. to the south. When they left, they took everything they could carry, including doors and windows. The old city was excavated by archaeologist in 1949.
In the museum, we viewed a model that showed how the city might have looked in the early 1600s. The city is now called by its indigenous name, Cayastá.

One of the highlights of the visit was the old church, which once displayed the skeletons of former residents who had been buried there. When the government applied for Cayastá to become a World Heritage Site, those remains had to be moved off-site. (They replaced the real remains with replicas, placed in the same positions as before -- the priests and important residents with their heads to the altars, the common people with their heads facing the door.)

Another fascinating aspect of the trip was a reproduction of the house of one of the most important families of the town, showing aspects of daily life in colonial Argentina.
On the way back from Cayastá we stopped in the town of Rincón, which has maintained many features of old colonial towns, including dirt streets.