Salta

We arrived into Argintina, after crossing in via the North (from Bolivia, via a Dinghy in the early hours of the morning).

We eventually found the Argintina border control. They did a bit of a bag search (thank god we gave away that TNT dynamite in Potosi 2 days ago !!), and then had a bit of an upset with Murray (because he had a UK and Australian passport with him which apparently most Latin american countries don´t permit dual citizenship). Eventually we got stamped in - Murray is now offically NO LONGER Australian for the rest of our Latin America travels.... forever to be a BRIT it would seem.

After the fun of crossing the border, we got introduced to our first Argintinian Bus (sorry..... Luxury Coach).... What a difference from Bolivia !! It was like stepping into another world. And we merrily made our way to the town of Salta (6 hours down the road).

Salta ended up being a chill out place. It is a pretty big city, and it is pretty much dead right now. We were forced to stay here for 5 nights in the end as the bus to San Pedro de Atacama (Chile - our next destination) did not have any seats on it until Sunday´s Bus due to snow/ice on the Andes mountain ranges.  So we thought we would end up doing some tours etc and see the area. There is a really cool cable zip lining tour through a canyon that we wanted to do. Except, mother nature put up a fight again..... Except for our arrival day where it was hot with extemely gusty winds bringing trees down (gumtrees actually.... they are everywhere around Sth america), the rest of our stay in Salta was absolutly freezing, making any attempt to go outside uncomfortable.

Another strange thing, was the tours. When researching the options they seemed a bit too expensive for what you get and the main scenery here is very similar to what we saw in Bolivia on our 2 day hike.  With that in mind we didn´t really move from our hostel !!  Tanya was also falling ill, and we thought it better to rest up before someone starts accusing her (or us) of particpating in the world wide fad currently driving fans mad ..... the infamous Swine Flu.

The only real tourist attraction we ended up doing was a leasurely cable car up the top of a mountain over looking the whole city.  It is pretty, but it really is a piss por effort on our part to see Salta in its proper glory. This town has a lot of potential, and we would recommend it to anyone during the warmer months.  We did not even spend any time in the city square although we did walk through it once and thought on the last day we would go back to get photos however laziness has yet again set in.

We did however see another movie in English (at a whole 2USD each)  We are pretty sure someone took Tanya´s little book full of phone numbers and codes etc out of her pocket through out the movie which is really annoying.  Both movies we have gone to at the cinemas we have lost an item (the first movie was Tanya´s very cool Quicksilver visa/hat).  It really isn´t much overall - at least it was not currency.  Bad luck on their part (we escape the cluitchs of crime once again in these wild parts).

The other main attraction to come to Salta was of course the beef!!!  The last time we were in Argintina we had great steak however we were hoping for something a bit more tender.  So this time we spent about 30 minutes working out what each type of beef is on the cow and how to say it in spanish.  We arrived at the supermarket with words in hand and of course none of them were on the board!!!  So we ended up going for the most expensive (we figured that might give us what we want)...  After a bit of research we have now figured out that it was Filet Mignon at a whole 7USD/kg...  Needless to say 1 1/2 kg later over 3 days have been consumed with cheap Argintina wine... Beautiful.

We are off tomorrow to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile which is supposed to be incredably beautiful (volcanic desert scenery and rock formations).  We have been told it is really expensive so we will see how it goes.  This is one place however that we don´t mind spending money as their are heaps of tours that are well worth it, and it is one of those unique places of earth.

We may not write again for a while as after San Pedro de Atacama we are taking a 3 day tour back into Bolivia, shooting up to La Paz (Bolivia´s Capital), and then flying up to the Amazon Basin to do a cruise (in a bamboo raft dinghy) along the Amazon river for 3 nights. The bonus is that it will be warm whether again.....  

Also thank you to everyone for letting us know that Michael Jackson had died - we had found that out the day he died but it was great to hear from you all either way.  Sorry for the confusion in our blog!

Also we wanted to explain why we are downloading so many photos.  These are actually all of our photos. We know no one has time to look at them all, however on the off chance we have our items stolen (or lost) we will still have a copy of them on this website on our return.  They are smaller copies but at least we would not lose them all.

And we forgot to mention... we have extended our trip. We´re now coming back to OZ on the 5th February, rather then November as we decided to delay going any further south due to the extreme cold of winter biting the continent at present.... more news to follow (once we work out what we are doing for the whole trip).

We had better be off - Hope everyone is happy and safe.