We arrived at the bus office with Chris and Andrea at half nine like the girl in the office had asked us. We waited for a short while until she appeared with a bit of bad news. Our bus driver had not shown up for work! Luckily Andrea and Chris had good Spanish as we didn’t really understand her. We just knew something was wrong. Luckily tough she could put us on another bus on the other side of the street that left at the same time. Phil and Katrina from our salt flats tour had booked this bus which was 10 boliviano cheaper but not direct. Now we would be joining them but didn’t feel like fighting over the 10 boliviano extra we had paid as it was the equivalent of €1. The bus we ... read more

Surely nothing could go wrong! Well it did. After our breakfast of pancakes tea we all gathered outside ready to go with our bags. Only problem was that one of the jeeps was refusing to start. Our two guides worked tirelessly on the engine to get it to work. We had been told to expect problems as the terrain we were travelling through wasn’t exactly like a road of any type. Out here also there is no garages or mechanics. The guides are fully qualified in maintaining their own vehicles. It was 8am when we were meant to leave and it didn’t look like we were moving any time soon. The guides were apologetic about the delay and told us we would be underway as soon as possible. As you might see from our photo’s there ... read more

We decided the minute we heard we could do sand boarding that we would do it. Michelle fancies trying snow boarding in New Zealand so we thought we would have a trial run on the sand. We had seen people doing it the evening before and it looked pretty tough. The best way to do it was by renting a bike and strapping the sand board to your back and cycling 5km to the sand dunes. The cost of renting the equipment was €8 and very reasonable for 6 hours. We got the bikes at 11:30 and with a map in hand, headed towards the desert dunes. There is only one dune that you can sand board on as the rest are protected. The cycle was fine for about 10 minutes until we reached the turn ... read more

Our 16hr bus journey was as easy as ever and we have now become full accustomed to long journeys. When we arrived in Salta we had no address for our hostel and couldn’t find an internet café to look it up. A sound guy trying to sell us another hostel gave us the address. Soon we were in a taxi and on our way to Las Rejas. We had decided on dorms because of the cheap price of €7 each a night and it was the top rated hostel on the net. We were shown to our room and even though we were in a dorm our two beds were in a separate room beside it but with no door between the two. I am missing $250 that I brought with me. I had divided $1000 ... read more

There were six of us from the hostel doing the horse riding on the Sunday morning. Apparently there isn’t much to do in Mendoza on a Sunday and this was the best way to fill the day. We were all up early still hurting from our three or four hour stint on a rock hard saddle. We were to be collect at 9am but in typical Latin/Spanish form it was 10am before the guy arrived to bring us to his ranch. Two cars came for us and three went in each. Myself, Michelle and Katie went in one and Nick (American) and two Dutch girls (names forgotten) went in the other. The drive to the ranch was about 45 minutes and we passed through some wonderful parks on the way. When we arrived the owner was ... read more