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Published: April 19th 2005
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José, Cold, on the Road to Cafayate
I forgot to bring a jacket and it was windy as hell. But the redrock landscape still looked pretty nice. After 4 weeks in Santa Cruz, it was time for me to leave. It was a wild, crazy time there, and i met a lot of people, but i wanted to get on the move again. So it was off to salta, argentina - back into the semi-developed world.
Or so i thought. After an uneventful 12 hour busride from santa cruz to the southern border town of yacuiba, i arrived groggy and disheveled to the "aduanas integradas" (integrated customs office). I walked up to the line that snaked out from the office and put my bags down. There were about 100 people ahead of me in line, so i figured id be there for a while and decided to do a little reading. 60 pages and 3 hours later (yes, i am a slow reader) I found that i had moved a total of 10 feet forward in line. The idiots in the customs office were moving at a snails pace - something like 6 people an hour were getting through. As i SLOWLY got closer to the office, i noticed that the inefficient imbeciles inside the office WERE ARGENTINES! I never faced such incompetence in Bolivia, a supposedly
More Redrock on the Road to Cafayate
By this point I had borrowed our tour guide's jacket. underdeveloped nation, and here i was, entering the bastion of south american developedness and it took 5 hours to process 100 people's entrance! So finally i get up to the office after literally 5 hours of waiting in what by this point was a very hot midday sun and deliver to the dude my passport. they search through my bags, everything's fine, and tell me to wait. 5 minutes later they come out to inform me that i have failed to get a bolivian exit stamp for my passport, and therefore must go to the bolivian customs office and wait in line there. I then run back to the bolivian customs place only to find a huge line and a sign out front indicating that they would be on siesta for the next 2 hours. Wonderful. I stomp back, livid, to the argentine customs weighing my options. on one hand i could explain to them that i have waited now 5 hours in a horrible line and that the bolivian stamp didn't matter to me, just so long as i was legal in argentina. on the other hand i could just try to walk through the border and not say
a word. i chose the latter option, and it worked.
so, 10 minutes later i was an illegal immigrant in argentina with no entrance stamp on a bus to salta, 6 hours south.
after a couple police stops on the way to salta where they chastised but didn't punish me for failing to get my entrance stamp, I finally arrived in salta. Salta is a nice, tranquilo town that doesnt have much for the tourist besides tranquiloness, lots of great cow meat and beautiful women. as you will see, these 3 traits are common to much of argentina, so salta en si isn't too special. but i did enjoy myself there and i will now tell you why . . .
I was intending to meet an old college friend, becca schneider, in salta to catch up on eachother's life stories etc, but she couldn't make it there for another few days. So, with 3 days alone in salta what did i do? not much. for 2 days I walked around, ate steak and watched movies at night (mar adentro, a spanish movie and the aviator, a boring movie). The third day was definitely the best. I
In front of "La Garganta del Diablo"
translation: the throat of the devil went on a tour outside of salta to the city of cafayate. The drive from salta to cafayate is extremely beautiful, but even more beautiful were the 2 argentine girls i met on the trip. We enjoyed the scenery together and shot some photos, but honestly it would have been a pretty boring trip if it weren't for meeting those girls. I had already been on countless scenery tours on this trip, and while this one was very nice, it was nothing more than decent. We returned from the trip and I made plans with the girls to go out for dinner.
I met the girls, Eugenia and Mariana, at their hostel and we went out for a nice meal at a restaurant that had folkloric dancers. I ate matambre - a thin piece of meat covered with a huge hunk of oily cheese - and shared a bottle of wine with the girls. The conversation was refreshing; for the first time in my life, I had met latina girls who were articulate, intelligent and confident. Not to mention beautiful. I was immediately attracted.
I left dinner early to meet becca, who arrived at my hostel at midnight.
Me with 2 babes I picked up on the bus
No, these aren't the cute argentines I met, just 2 friendly old women who i shared a small seat with on the bus. This was before the bus broke down and we managed to hitch a ride with a nice old man in his truck. then, like the asshole i am, i ditched becca the next day to go on a trip with eugenia and mariana to tilcara, a small town north of salta. Tilcara was having some sort of parade to celebrate the virgin of something or other (i tend to zone out when people talk about that sort of thing). Anyway, the parade was nice, and they had all sorts of stands selling trinkets, which of course, the girls found tantalizing. We spent several hours as eugenia and mariana poured over the endless variety of useless crap they were selling in the market. i got a beer and drank it. finally we went to eat (shitty pizza and a big cold quilmes beer) and then passed out. an uneventful day, but it was great to be speaking spanish, and to be hanging out with beautiful, well-spoken women was icing on the cake. the next day i headed back to salta to meet back up with becca and take off for mendoza. I said goodbye to the argentinas and promised to call them once i arrived in buenos aires (their home). more on that to come.
salta was a nice place to visit
José, Smooth Operator
On the left is Eugenia and in the middle is Mariana. Unfortunately Mariana decided to close her eyes for this shot. for a few days. I needed some tranquiloness to help recover from the insanity of santa cruz, so it was a welcome respite. But, if you miss salta, i wouldn't sweat it. the city doesnt really have much for the tourist in my opinion, though the surrounding countryside is certainly beautiful. I hear the tren a las nubes is wonderful, but it was closed when i was there, so apparently i missed the biggest thing salta has to offer. oh well.
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