A taste of Argentina

Allrighty, back in the hostel after our first "excursion" - to Cafayate. But we'll get back to Cafayate, let's go back to the start of South America first...

After a sleepless "night" in London on the 16th, we had to leave at 3 AM to Heathrow Airport to catch the flight to Buenos Aires. Everything went on time, first one of smaller Iberia's planes to Madrid (they gave us no food grrrr, even though the ticket said they would! unforgivable!!!), then after a 2 hour wait a bigger one to Buenos Aires.
We got the aisle seats so as to be able to stretch our legs (flying for 12 hours sitting 99% of the time is NO fun, especially if you're on the taller side of the population) and after what seemed an endless no-real-sleep watching some already seen movies and episodes of Friends(?!) the arrival to Buenos Aires was finally announced.
Outside of the plane there were some thunderstorms (and I believe I saw a lightning hit the plane on one of the screens showing the outside of the plane, but then again, maybe it was just some random lightning :p), and at one point the plane dropped through some turbulence and caused quite a few of the passengers to recheck their seatbelts and contemplate the meaning of life :)
I have to mention that these guys made it up for the last plane, with a basically all-you-can-eat/drink kind of food programe (although they did run out of sandwitches and coke pretty soon lol).

Anyway, being that the plane landed a bit later than it should have, and that Marko's luggage came down that line dead LAST, and that we had less than an hour to reach the Retiro main bus terminal, find the last bus to Salta and get on it (bus to Retiro drives for about an hour), we took a cab and got our own driver.
Supposedly there is quite a high crime rate in Buenos Aires (even my plane co-traveller warned me about it :)), so you don't just pick any cab. You get to a cab company booth and they provide you a cab and a driver.
Luckily, the driver was awesome and got to Retiro in only 30 minutes.

Aaaanyway, long story short, we got on that 18-hour bus to Salta, from which we could finally make our first photos of Argentina.
First sunrise from a gas station next morning:

A bit later the bus had to slow down and wait for the goats to clear from the road:

and this is also a typical scene from this 18-hour bus drive down the 2-lane (one each way) straight road through the desert:


Finally, we arrive in Salta. Already at the bus terminal several people want us to go into "their" hostel, and being that practically the only Spanish we know is "no entiendo" (I don't understand) we went with the one speaking best English :)
Since it was already evening, and Salta has a nice little hill above it, we decided to go have a walk up and see Salta from above:

Original plan was to go on to San Pedro de Atacama as soon as possible, but we just realized here that the bus goes three times a week, next one being Tuesday morning. We got a ticket for that one and had to think of something to do in the one day we had to spend in or near Salta.
Luckily, with help from another hostel guest who speaks both Spanish and English (such people are a godsend to us here :)) we also found a tourist agency and booked the mentioned excursion to Cafayate.
So, today early morning - the agency bus picked us up at the hostel and started slowly southwards...
Lesson learned: if you need Spanish to book a trip, it's likely that no one on that trip will know English...
Thus, we didn't understand almost a thing the guide was saying, but that didn't stop us from running around taking photos every chance we had. In fact, from first stop onwards, the guide was most heard calling our names to get back to the bus :)
(seems most tourists are happy with just getting off the bus and taking a minute to have their photo taken at a spot and want to go on as soon as possible... not us though :p)
Anyway, a bit of what we saw today...



There'll be more, but since it's past midnight here now and we have to wake up at 4:30 to catch the bus to San Pedro de Atacama (that's in Chile), and this computer is waaaaaay too slow to do anything more and stay sane - we're off to sleep...

Catch you all tomorrow, hopefully from San Pedro ;)