From BA to Salta and the rest of my time in Argentia

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Ok... so... I've clearly not been very good at updating my blog with the initial enthusiasm it started off with. I'm going to, over the next few blogs try and catch up with my travels as best I can.

After leaving BA we decided to travel to Salta. We did consider Mendoza but Salta it was. Another big bus ride awaited us and we finally arrived around 16 hours later to a little down which at 3pm in the afternoon is like a ghost town. The place just completely shuts down! Not a bad thing but a bit of a shock! We checked into our hostel "salta por siempre' which was a little gem. I would highly recommend it to anyone, the place was clean, the lockers were good, the internet was decent. Breakfast was as usual bread and jam but you did get fruit aswell as tea and coffee! They even have a pet tortoise roaming around and it is pretty cheap!

The town itself does't really have a lot going on but it is a good stp off point if you are travelling north to Bolivia. The, as has become customary in SA, Plaza is a bustling little place at night and there are an array of shops, resto and pubs around! If you are looking for decent steak as most people are then it would be worth your while to try ajero jacks... its an unassuming little place, not much atmosphere and very little by the way of staff interaction but the food is fantastic and pretty cheap!

I would recommend that you stay in this town no longer than around 2/3 days max as it does get pretty dull, pretty quick! Also a little tip would be to make sure you get Bolivian money before you go as when travelling to the border you will find that it is hard to find an ATM and even harder to find one when you get to Villazon... the first litle town in Bolivia from the border. If you are travelling to Tupiza it's even harder again! If you have a credit card however it will make it easier!

On the way to the border is when we had our first bitter experience on our travels! 17 days in, it had to come sometime! We booked a night bus to Bolivia which should take around 8 hours. This left at 10:30pm so was due to get us to the border for it opening, perfect! This is when it started to go wrong! The bus company "Balut" were a disgrace from start to finish! The guy handling our luggage would not put our luggage onto the bus until we tipped him, pretty hard as we didnt have any Argentinian cash left so our luggage was left to the side, this happened for a lot of people, even the Argentinians, we was a very arrogant chap who by all accounts would be sacked if he worked anywhere else on the planet! We were lucky to find a couple of pennies to give him but leading up to the journey was a bit of a panic that we were not going to get on!

About two hours into the journey we realised that one of our bags had been stolen! With it our camera, iphone, ipod, kindle etc... it is not like we were not being careful, our bags were at our feet and not stored above and I was actually awake! Somehow some thieving swine has managed to slide our bag away, pilfer it and jam it under a seat behind us. The culprit clearly got off the bus at the next oportunity before we realised! At the next stop we managed to get police assisstance using a kind gent who translated for us! The bus driver who I can only specualte was in on it due to his erratic behaviour (I may just be being a bit overboard but when you get that feeling...) would not wait for us to make a police report so we were given the option by the the police to wait and get a statement or get one elsewhere. As by this time it was like 1am we had no choice but to leave as we would not be able to get to Bolivia any time soon afterwards and we had no place to stay, we were in the middle of nowhere! The police searched the bus to no avail and we made off getting to the border in double quick time!

We had been told the border could be a nightmare but in reality it was really easy! A tip would be to have all your passport information at the ready as this will make it much faster to fill in the forms they give you as you stand in the queue!

Once we were through, job done, we were in Bolivia and Iguazu Falls aside, good riddance to Argentina... I wouldn't go back, unless Cheryl makes me (She wants to go to the South to see the glaciers... it won't be any time soon though!)

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