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Published: March 3rd 2008
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Driving along in an automobile
It´s hard to know what to write about Argentina. Unfortunatly we were only there a week so I do not feel we have quite done it justice! Crossing the border was a long affair due to several people in the group not realising that they had to keep their visa slips from immigration and were thus forced to pay 150 US Dollars. We then crossed over and had to queue again to enter Argentina, but the officials seemed to enjoy skipping over us and allowing locals to go before us. We eventually entered though and headed to Puerto Iguazu. After Iguazu, it was to be several days on the road to Salta.
Our first stop was in a little random town called San Igancio, where several people visited some Jesuit ruins but not being my cup of tea, I headed into town instead. The campsite we stayed at was very bonito. It had a little beach and we arrived just in time to watch a gorgeous sunset. It was a nice warm night as well so we chose not to put our outers over our inner tents. Next morning we realised that was a
Sunset
Sunset at San Igancio campsite bad idea though because our inners were all wet from the morning dew but never mind. We then headed off on our two days of driving to Salta.
The roads in Argentina are as straight as the roads in the Nevada desert. Nothing for miles and miles which is not so bad when ur on a huge truck because at least you stay straight. The first day of driving was about 17 hours! It got to 1am and Marc could not find anywhere for us to camp as it was raining. So we stopped at a petrol station where four brave people put up their tents and the rest of us were split into two: half slept outside under a shelter with frogs and spiders and half (including me) slept on the bus which was leaking. So i fell asleep listening to a drip dripping noise! As you can imagine, we were all slightly worse for wear the next day!
Salta
When we eventually arrived in Salta, we were taken to what is supposed to be the largest supermarket in Latin America. Hmmmm, lets just say that my local Tesco at home is larger! Anyways we were
supposed to be there for two hours whilst Joss took Michelle to go get her foot looked at (a bench fell on it and its been swollen and bruised for a long time). So just enough time to buy our costumes for our ¨P¨ party fancy dress we were to have. However, two hours soon turned into 4 hours and soon after getting told off by the manager for taking up too much room, we were back on Swampy and on our way to Salta Rafting, out first port of call.
This day was my first day of being ill. I´d woken up with a bit of a head cold which had gotten better as the day went on. Unfortuantly the two hour journey to Salta rafting was the bendiest road we´d been on so far and it made me so ill that I spent most of it with my head stuck out of the window trying to get fresh air. We eventually arrived though and set up camp ready for the long day ahead.
Salta Rafting
The following day was opur activity day. We were all up and set in our swimming stuff ready for the
White water rafting. Having never done it before and being quite scared of water in general, I was a bit nervous. Plus we had to put more layers on beacuse we were quite high up and the water was freezing! I had a good group though, consisting of Jose (our leader), two Australians Renee and Clint, three Kiwis Laura, Holly and Fi and one german, Kira. So I was doing it for the Brits! Which generally involved a lot of screaming. The first 20 mins were nice as there were no rapids. So everyone pretty much just used their oars to soak each other. And they were not joaking when they said the water was cold! It was freezing! Then the rapids came. I can´t begin to describe how much fun it was. The two funniest moments were when Jose shouted LEFT BACK meaning that the left hand side had to paddle backwards to turn us round. With the purpose of turning me straight into a rapid. But I was not stupid, I saw his purpose before it happened and refused to paddle. I still got soaked though but I think my screaming NOOOOO amused many. Another time, Jose shouted
for us all to sit in the centre of the boat for a large rapid, so we obligingly did. However soon afterwards he yelled for us to get up and carry on paddling. But Clint was the only person to hear, so he was paddle through the rapids on his own whilst all us girls just sat there watching, very comfortable indeed!
The afternoon activity was Ziplining, which I felt to be a slight disappointement. I thought it would be a lot higher and faster than it was and you have to concentrate the whole time so that you dont spin. I was so worried about not spinning that i kept slowing down and thus got stuck twice! Plus because you are holding on, you do not get to experience the views as much. But it was definatly an experience.
The "P" party
After zipling, we headed back along that horrible two hour bendy road, back towards Salta. Luckily, as I was preoccupied with making my fancy dress costume, I did not get as ill as before. We eventually arrived at our next campsite and everyone decided to upgrade to these really cute little cabins. We then
P party!
Myself as Pick N Mix, Caroline as a Pineapple, Grace as Po the tellytubby and Hannah as a Patient had 1 hour to get ready for our night out. The costumes looked really good especially seeming we'd only had a few little places to by the stuff from. My costume was of a pick N mix, purely because it was so easy to create! I just bought a pink dress and stuck lots of sweets to me! Of course by the end of the night I barely had any left because people were ahppily helping themselves to them! Luckily they didn't cost me much! Some other costumes included: pink panther, power ranger, power puff girl, a Peruvian pan piping player, Portugese man of war, a plane, a pansy, a present, pocahontas and many more. It was a really good night and we even got to enjoy a meal at a fancy streak house restaurant though they almost didn't let us in beacuse of our costumes!
Horse riding and Illness
The next day was to be our Argentinian cowboy Horse riding experience. Unfortuantly, I woke up feeling incredible ill. But being the stubbon person that I am, I decided to go along purely because I had already paid for it. Bad mistake. The journey there took two hours
of which i spent asleep in the floor of the minibus. When we got there, we arrived at this beautiful house as it was a family that ran the horse riding. I missed out of the unlimited free red wine though unfortunatly as I had to go and have a lie down. I still went out horse riding though but I was too ill to enjoy it. It also rained which didn't help my fever much. It was a shame because had I have been well it would have been a great day. Oh well, afterwards it was straight home and straight to bed!
It was then time to leave Argentina and enter into the country of no proper roads: Bolivia!
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