Blogs from Salta, Salta, Argentina, South America

Thursday 26th April - Salta Argentina seemed a nice enough place on first sight, maybe not quite as attractive, affluent and European as we expected but it was certainly a lot more expensive than everywhere else we'd been to in South America. As a result we've decided to try and make a concious effort to be more economical which meant a return to the supermarket and more home made ham and cheese sandwiches. Friday 27th April - Salta One of the benefits of arriving in a more European style country was the potential to indulge in a game of golf which is quite common here. Before we could do this however, we had to secure some coin change in order to ride the local buses which is harder to obtain than you might imagine. It's so ... read more

After trying countless times to upload photos onto this blog, I gave up and started a google blog to put them on. So, to see some photos go to this website: www.tdjgidman.blogspot.com Enjoy. They´re not all there yet but soon will be, although it´ll just be a selection of photos from each place because they take a long time to upload.... read more

On Tuesday we visited the famous Iguazu waterfalls on the border between Brazil and Argentina. They were absolutely amazing! When we went it was comparatively dry as well, there was a small section with no water, but it still didn´t detract from the amazingness and general vastness of the whole place. We got up early in the morning to catch the bus to the entrance gate where we were immediately met by hoards of tour groups, mostly very elderly, but this was what we expected to be honest and obviously we were included in the tourist category so we couldn´t complain. We were advised to take the train to the viewing platforms of ´La Garganta del Diablo´ or ´Devil´s throat´ first, so we did. However we soon realsied that the extremely long queue for a train ... read more

Hi all, here we are in Salta, the second biggest city in Argentina, we are here for two nights, mostly to recover from a lot of red wine, dust, huge lunches and a heap of fun. The little cars are going just great, except in the high altitude (was that a surprise? -Not). We have done a bit of maintainance here at the hotel, we have checked for loose nuts and bolts, greased king Pins and oiled knife blades. I have secured my battery, Paul has changed a jet into carburettor! to a smaller one, so hopefully he will handle the high altitude an bit more efficiently. Yesterday, we all checked our Spectro oil, before leaving Cafayate, and I stupidly did not lock down the filler cap (we all have to do this once!) so as ... read more

We arrived a little later than expected at the Salta rafting base after being told to expect a four hour drive which meant we should have arrived around 10 or 11am. Yet after stopping for lunch we were told that the “road” which we were going to take was closed and we were now going through the city to head south toward the base. This was a bit of a puzzle for some of us as we never came to a road closed sign or a road for that matter. We figured we were a little lost but gave Fabi and Danny the benefit of the doubt. Driving through the city proved to be quite adventurous; we ended up in the “BAD” part of town and were expecting to get mugged at every corner. At one ... read more

Last cooking for a few days!! We woke up and put the kettle on. We had to borrow matches from another group staying on site as our matches were inexplicably wet (although it probably didn't help that someone had left them out in the rain after partying all night). Kumuka Overland was staying here and we took the opportunity to have a nose around their bus which was much bigger and cleaner and totally differently organised inside. We cut fruit for a fruit salad - including the leftover melon from lunch time and the uncooked bananas from the night before. We toasted stale bread on the gas burners and then basically sat raround most of the day not doing too much which was actually quite nice. Ed went white-water rafting at 3.30 pm but Jo opted ... read more

Ate breakfast which only provided one cup of coffee. As we had found a really nice coffee shop previously which handed out a glass of soda water and a sample piece of cake, we decided to rush there before getting on the bus for 9.30 am. It was our turn to cook lunch, dinner and breakfast the following day together with two other group members. The plan had been to shop with the equivalent of £70 from the kitty at a couple of local shops two hours' drive away to ensure that we could get to the shops before everything closed for siesta between 1.00 and 5.00 pm. However, it appeared that whoever was supposed to put the padlock keys in their rightful place didn't do so and we, therefore, had to stop at a local ... read more

We both slept really well as the bed was comfortable and went into breakfast for 8.00 am. A glass of orange squash, a cup of coffee and a mini Danish-type pastry and a triangular thing that was a little like a scone with butter and jam... We walked towards the main square as we needed to change the little Chilean currency we had into Argentinian pesos. We stopped at a coffee shop (as only one cup of coffee at breakfast in the morning is insufficient). We each had a really nice latte which was brought with a big glass of soda water and a sample piece of cake. There were really long queues outside every bank and we walked into one that changed foreign currency and asked why all these people were queueing. Apparently, they all ... read more