Salta, San Pedro de Atacama and toilet related issues

---

18/02/10

Bus to Salta from Mendoza. 18 hours. Nuff said.

19/02/10

Get a taxi to ¨Hostel in Salta´from the bus station where it becomes clear that Adam´s Spanish is showing few signs of improvement. When trying to say the number 18 (to tell the taxi driver the length of our bus journey), he keeps saying ´ocho nueve, ocho nueve´(eight nine, eight nine) before trying his luck with ´ochenta y nueve´ (eighty nine) before finally being put out of his misery when Shrennie tells him the word he is looking for is ´dieceocho´. Mistake point as numbers up to 20 should have been learnt in week one.

Adam is also a big fan of challenging accepted authority. We´ve come up with a TV programme he could run called ´Adam Smith, busting myth´. One of his many pearls of wisdom is that shaving doesn´t actually make hair come back thicker. Fascinating. Get that man on TV.

In the hostel, we meet our Dutch friend Margo from El Chalten and El Calafate. Supposedly she´s been reading these blogs so I´d better not be too insulting. Not that I would be anyway. Bloody Dutch. It´s always about the windmills with them.

Play beer pong for the first time with Adam in the evening. Lots of fun but trickier than it seems.

20/2/10

Go on an excursion to Cafayate with the guys, Margo and a ridiculous Argentinian guide called Leo. His grasp of English appears decent at first - he even sprinkles his sentences with seemingly complicated words and phrases. However, it becomes clear that his English is very much ´tourist´ English when he fails to understand anything we ask him. Even the basic questions. Not peturbed by his terrible question answering, after a few hours he feels confident enough to try some rascist banter - tricky even in the same language let alone his piecemeal Enlglish. It gets awkward when he starts calling black people ´negative photos´ and the conversation dwindles somewhat after that. The excursion itself if full of beautiful views and we even have time for another wine tour (in Spanish sadly).

Go out in the evening where we find ourselves absolutely dominated by the Dutch. For a small country they really do travel well. And I always feel guilty around them as most are fluent in 5 languages and can even speak English better than me. Must learn more languages on my return. Show the Dutch who´s boss.

21/2/10

Day of rest. God had one after six days so I´m entitled to one too.

22/2/10

Bus journey from hell to San Pedro de Atacama. Bus breaks down which delays us for over an hour. At border control I get called down from the bus 3 times as supposedly something hasn´t been stamped correctly. Only that it had been the first time. Why can´t countries just trust eachother enough to let tourists move freely between one country and another? If England and Scotland can do it, so can Argentina and Chile. The man sitting next to me keeps snoring and also has a really weirdly shaped ear which I can´t stop staring at. It looks like an elongated kidney bean. Get to our hostel where we´re kept up in the dorm by someone reading their book with the main light on for over 2 hours. Put your book down lady - reading at night is for sissies.

23/2/10

Spend most of the day planning our excursions for the next few days. In the afternoon go to ´Valle de la Luna´ - which as the title suggests is meant to resemble the moon. And although I´ve never actually seen then moon up close, I would imagine it might look a bit like this.

24/2/10

Wake up at 0345. I repeat - 0345. I´ve never got up that early before. Today we´re heading off on another excursion to see some nearby geysers and cacti amongst other things. It´s also the highest place I´ve ever been to - 4250ish metres above sea level. Such height spells disaster from the off. After breakfast by the geysers, I can feel my tummy rumbling. Watching the geysers with their water rumbling, rumbling and then finally blowing water several metres up skywards does look pretty cool, but also sets a nasty precedent with me, my tummy and a lack of sanitary systems. No toilets around = regular trips to the shrubbery for James throughout the day. Some of the noises made will haunt me forever. A lot of the foliage was particularly sharp and now I have several itchy grazes on my posterior, and I´m still not fully over the problem now. Just like those geysers I could blow at any time. Shrennie finds it hilarious... until he develops exactly the same problem. Karma in action.

Tomorrow we´re heading saying goodbye to Chile and are heading to the salt flats in Bolivia. Unfortunately we´ve been hit with the news that Machu Piccu is likely to be closed until April, making it incredibly unlikely we´ll get to see it. Another time maybe.

---