Feeling sleepy in Salta

At the bus station after a bit of asking about, and slow repetition by various people we established that our bus to Clorinda would stop on the street outside the terminal. We went here to wait and it wasn't long before a little minibus pulled up. Thankfully it was almost empty when we got on and we managed to find spots for our bums and bags. It got quite cramped but apart from that it was an uneventful journey to the border. The bus actually only took us this far, then we had to walk across. On the Paraguayan side there were three people in the little booth at immigration and the one in the middle seemed to hold the esteemed role of passing the passport from one person to the other. I wonder how much she was getting paid.

Formalities over and we were in a taxi to Clorinda. Here we went to the Flecha Bus office and quickly, with no fuss, booked our overnight bus to Salta. We now had an hour to have some lunch which we found in a small cafe. It was actually really nice, raviolis con carne, which turned out to be cheese filled ravioli with a piece of meat on top, all covered in tomato sauce, yum.

Finally, over a month after arriving in South America those elusive front seats were ours. Unfortunately it wasn't the best bus in the world and the views weren't exactly spectacular, but it was still worth it and the leg room was much improved. It started off as a standard trip, Adam and I plugged in the trusty ipods and Amber and Nico read. We continued like this for about 2 and a half hours until we came to a complete standstill behind an extensive traffic jam.

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We remained in the same spot for around two hours, in that time the sun set and we got increasingly annoyed.

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Apparently there was some sort of protest and there was a human road block in place, which did seem kind of fitting considering we were just on the edge of a town called Resistencia. To add insult to injury they put on a terrible movie that the four of us became utterly engrossed in but then turned it off about half an hour before the end, I must find some way of seeing the end of Ring of Death. When we finally got moving they served us dinner which consisted of three ham and cheese sandwiches each. One on white bread, one on brown and one in a roll. Then they put on some Jackie Chan movie dubbed in Spanish and it was time to go to sleep.

When we woke up after the usual sporadic bus sleep we were almost in Salta. Once at the terminal we tried to catch a bus in to the centre but we needed exact change, which we didn't have so we walked. Adam and I had booked a hostal which was in a different location to where Amber and Nico intended to stay so we parted ways here. Our hostal was nice, a little out of the centre which as usual was marked by a plaza but still a good find. We had a bit of a rest after the bus before venturing out to inspect Salta more closely.

The town is surrounded by steep, forested mountains and has many elegant colonial buildings. We walked down to Plaza 9 de Julio, which had quite a European feel with plenty of people sipping coffee in the sunshine surrounded by architecturally strong buildings.

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There is a lovely cathedral and of course a fountain in the centre completes things nicely.

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There were a lot of tourists about which kind of surprised us, but then it's a very picturesque place and would certainly appeal to a lot of people. We could definitely appreciate this but I don't think Salta ever really grabbed us. Instead it acted as a little bit of an interlude for us and after discovering a shopping centre with a cinema I was happy. I really wanted to see the second Twilight movie, New Moon. Adam begrudgingly agreed, although I think secretly he quite likes it and he's even listening to the audiobooks with me, although he says it's just because it passes time on the long bus journeys. With my Twilight fix finally satisfied we went back to the hostal before heading out to the supermarket to buy a couple of tins of tuna and some salad stuff for dinner.

The next day we had a bit of a lazy start and when we finally did make it down in to town with the intention of doing some shopping, everything had closed for an incredibly long siesta. This did little to motivate us and we just walked back to the hostal via the supermarket, another salad for dinner. We were doing our best to minimise costs as Argentina continued to be expensive, not quite as bad in the north as the south but still a stretch to our limited budget.

The following morning we took advantage of the cinema again, it was really quite cheap if you went to the first showing of the day. We saw a film called The Burning Plain, directed by Guillermo Arriaga who also directed 21 Grams. Adam thought it was depressing, I agreed but enjoyed it nonetheless. The downside was part of it was in Spanish and funnily enough there weren't any English subtitles. I'm pretty sure we got the general gist though and didn't miss too much, but still I might rent it when we get home.

After the cinema we finally got around to going up the Cerro San Bernardo in a cable car. It is a very smooth operation and we had a little car all to ourselves as we climbed into the sky.

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At the top there are views out across the valley and the miniaturized city.

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There are also some really lovely flowers and water features that consist of small, man made waterfalls.

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It is a good spot to spend some time and perhaps have a nap on a bench as I saw a couple of people doing.

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We rode back down and walked towards our hostal. We tried to treat ourselves to a late lunch at a restaurant doing parrillas for two but unfortunately we were too late and it was to be a visit to the supermarket yet again.

We perhaps did not achieve all that much in Salta but when you're travelling for such an extended amount of time there are inevitably troughs in your energy and also places that you perhaps don't find so inspiring. I think these two factors collided for us in Salta, that said a lot of people like the place and it is worth a visit. We both hoped to find the next place more energising.

More Soon,

Laura & Adam