La Rioja, Argentina

---

So, back to the bus station and on to our next destination. During the journey, we saw loads of empty water bottles left at the side of the road. Apparently there is a shrine between San Juan and La Rioja to a lady, now a saint who died of thirst following her husband. When locals found her, her baby (feeding from her breast) was still alive, so people leave empty bottles. So there you go.

We arrived in La Rioja at about 9pm, having not been able to make a reservation. So with lots of hand signals and a few words in spanish we managed to get the name of a hostel from the "tourist information" at the station. Yes it deserves speech marks as this is a very loose term!

So a taxi ride in the dodgiest car Ive been in for a long time with the boot open as it was too small to fit our bags in, we arrived at our destination only to find in shut. Wondering what to do next, we spotted a hotel opposite and managed to negotiate a discount to 35 pounds each to stay in a 5 star hotel. Seemed fair enough and it was lovely, comfy beds, loads of hot water.

The next day we went to a proper Tourist Information to try and sort out a trip to the Valle de la Lune(Valley of the Moon) or Ischigualasto National Park and a cheaper place to stay. Happy in the knowledge that we had sorted this out, although it took about 1.5 hours, we went for a walk around the city. Now every city I have been to pretty much has a siesta, but in La Rioja it is observed to the letter. Come one o clock everything shuts and the place becomes like a ghost town, so not very useful when you want to sight see, so we spent the afternoon on the internet, which I guess was the last time I updated this!

The following day, we got up and left for Ischigualasto National Park at about 7am as its about 150km away, we arrived just after 9am, and joined the string of cars following the Tour Guide. Now this should have been a really informative day as the Tour Guide was a Geologist but guess what, he only spoke spanish, and when we booked the trip we asked if it would be in English and the reply was "yes"! They seem to think that a sheet of paper with an outline is a guide!! Still anyway I took lots of photos as due to the changes of the last million or so years it has made the rock formations think you are on the moon.

Afterwards we drove to Talampaya National Park, and did another tour (yep in Spanish) of a load more rocks and sand which look like various objects (if you use your imagination) Still Ive walked in the footsteps of dinasaurs (jealous?)

We arrived back around 9pm and pretty much crashed out.

We tried again to look round the museums and stuff, but this time it was a Monday and everything in shut all day, we did manage to see a dead Orange Tree.

See you in Salta.

---