Northern Argentina - Salta to the Bolivan border

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Adios a muchus gracias Argentina and Bien Dias Bolivia!

We´re now in Bolivia but spent pretty much the last ten days before we arrived here having an aweosme time in northern province of Salta in Argentina.
Following Iguazu Falls we took another crappy overnight bus to Resistencia, a ´city´ that was half way between Iguazu on the Argentinian border and Salta, our destination where we planned to stay for a week. Instead of doing the 24 hours on a bus straight we thought it would be nice to drop into Resistencia, have a nose around, get a cheap hotel room for a night, maybe have a nice steak.....Nope. When we arrived in Resistencia at 8am and took a cab to the hotel we planned to stay at we were confused as to how earily quiet the centre was. Ok, so it was Sunday morning, most cities are asleep then, but this was DEAD. To cut a long, and nhow quite funny story short, we arrived in Resistencia on the argentinan version of Independence Day. Except instead of the streets being full of parties and lots of fun things to get ionvolved in, every single resident of the town apperared to have left for the weekend and every business decided to close up shop and have a rest for a few days, hotels included. Take me and Nat grumpy and tired from the bus, carry 20kg bags through a town with nothing open at 8am on a Sunday morning, with no map and what felt like 30 degree heat and you have a bit of a mini crisis. So we ended up paying 180 pesos for a room in one of the only hotels open in the city (bearing in mind we had been paying about 70 per rnight and you can feel our pain) sleeping, watching american tv and then going out and drinking a bottle of red ans scoffing a pizza enough for a family of 4 to sedate us long enough to wait for the bus the next day.
Enough words on Resistnecia, it was boring as bat s**t and cost us a bomb!!

So, onto Salta, another overnight bus but this time arriving in one of the most beautiful colonial towns we have visited yet.
The two most intersting facts about it are that it is the oldest colonial town in Argentina and you can smoke in every public building, hospitals included, yet not on buses or in churches. Makes sense....
The nighlight of the city for me, except for the fact it was absolutely stunning, was that empanadas (mini spicy pasty type things) were only 75 centivos, thats about 20 cents Aussie and about 8p english. Yes, my size 32´s are starting to feel a bit tight but we in the last 10 days i have done enough activity to wear that off...
We spent our first few days just hanging around the town, taking heaps of pics, eating lots of empandas and then we met our two new mates, Jack and Jess from Tasmania. Kind of ironic that we have ended up travelling with two Aussies after living with them for for the last 2 and half years but they are super nice people and on the same route as us, and with the same sense of adventure and humor so we thought why not! Jack and i bonded instantly over a love of Argentinian steak when we wnet out for dinner on our second night. We had been recommended a restaurant as being ´local, cheap and with huge steaks´ so i made it my mission to make Natalie commit to letting me go there before we left. Well, all i can say is that night, between the 4 of us, we ate 2kg of pure bif de chorizo steak (thats fillet, not chorizo the meat) Jack and I had a full bif each, about 750g EACH! I have photos, it was larger than the span of my hand and weighed about the same as my head, and that is heavy, and thick. It was immense, it was like eating the food of gods, succlent, medium well done, juicy, a simple side salad so not to complicate things and take away space for the precious mate. I kid you not, we both ate the whole damn thing, with about 6 beers and then some afterwards. It was as Jack would say ´Epic´.
Aside from more meat eating (Jack and I had another bif de chorizo 2 days later, and that one beat me and another steak when our hostel put on a BBQ....i am starting to look and smell like meat) we did heaps of activities whilst we were there. On the Saturday Jack and I went white water rafting 2 hours south of Salta. It was absolutely awesome, something i have always wanted to do and it was in the most incredible setting. We rafted down a river through an amazing red stone gorge for 2 hours. It was only grade 2 and 3 rapids but enough to tickle the adrenalin senses and was good to do some proper exercise, post meat feast. The scenery just blew us away, massive red stone cliffs, bright blue sky, massive cacti everywhere, horses roaming wild in the river, it was awesome. What also made it particulalry funny was that there was a german dude in our raft who looked just like Rodney Trotter!! I tried to get a close up to show you as it was uncanny but as soon as he got into his trunks, which were about the size of Nats smalls, it didnt feel right going for a close up. Was hilarious, becasue he couldnt understand us we just called him Rodders all day. I just hope he doesnt have a random interest in Only Fools and Horses!!
Day after white water rafing the 4 of us headed out on a day long trip 3 hours south into the Cardebra Canyon to see the llamas, cactus and wineries of Argentina. Our guide for the day, Monica, didnt stop talking the whole way on the min bus, at one point i though the frenc girl in front of me was going to lamp her one! She DID not stop for 12 bloody hours, 7am to 7pm she was rambling away, telling us everything we bloody drove past had some importance to Argentina, even the bloody lampost! But the funniest thing about the day, and possibly the funniest thing so far on this trip so far was when we met our first llama. Rules - dont touch their ears or face or else they will spit on you. Seems simple. As we pulled up alongside a man selling toursity bits and his companion llama we were all eager to get that snap of you with a weird foregin animal. So we Nat, Jack, Jess and I are waiting, this woman goes up for the snap,and what does she do? Touch its bloody face. As Mr Llama turns to give her one in then face, she ducks and it this big green, grassy goolie goes flying past her and lands right in Natalies lovely brown hair!!!!! Well, you can imagine Nat{s response, this is her HAIR!! I was doubled over in stitches, whilst being summoned by Nat to ´get it out of my f´ing hair!!!´ Oh my god, i have never laughed so hard, everyone there was in stitches, Nat included after the initial shock of being gobbed on by a big woolie llama!! So so funny. Strangely, Natalie really really loves Llamas, still, even after her confrontation with one!
The rest of the day we spent visiting some amazig amazing natural landscapes, massive canyons, and then onto the wineries....yeah! It was too hot to get stuck into it al la Hunter Valley Australia, but we gave it a good nudge and bought some aweosme organic rose which we drank that night, much needed after Monica growled down her microphone for the entire 4 hour trip home.

After an aweosme 5 days in Salta, we started our journey north to the Bolivan border, stopping at a really cool little town called Humhuaca (pronounced Humwacka) on the way. The 5 hour journey there took us through the most surreal landscape. It was like martian land, what i would imagine driving across Mars would be like. We drove through some amazsing villages and really started to see how the poverty increases the closer you get to Bolivia. Humhuaca was again, just absolutely stunning, absolutely covered in cactus and full of amazing Artesan shops that i had to wrestle Natalie out of. We really started to see the change in how the people look, much more Andean and closer to theri Bolivian neighbours than the spanish look of the lower regions. This place was photography fodder and we took some aweosme pics which i promise to get up soon. We got a 4 bed dorm with Jack and Jess which we have been doing for the lat few days as it has proved to be alot cheaper, Nat and Jess get to talk about girl things and Jack and I have a beer drinking partner, which makes me feel less guilty about having one when Nat isnt, perfect!
We stayed just one night in Humhuaca and then took a bus to the Bolivan border, where the fun really began!!!

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