Mar 2008

I finally decided it was time to leave Salta after spending 10 days there. After 8 months of travelling it was nice to stay somewhere for a bit longer than normal and not to be constantly packing and moving on. I got to know the city quite well and i think the Spanish lessons I had there have helped.
From Salta I travelled south to the small town of Cafayate, a big wine producing area in the hills. The bus journey there was only suppossed to take 3 hours and for once I was lookig forward to it as it passes through a gorge with amaxing scenery. It took a bit longer than planned though as we were travelling on a dirt road and a little bit of rain in the morning had flooded parts of the road. I spent a couple of days in Cafayate. The first day I went back to the gorge for a guided walk around the cliffs, cave and rock formations carved in the sandstone by water and wind. The second day I went to Quilmes a prehispanic fort in the hills near the town and then went for a walk along the valley to a waterfall. For once the many knee deep river crossings were a welcome relief as it was a really hot day. So when I went back into the town I tried the local speciality of wine flavoured ice cream, I can´t see it catching on anywhere else. In the evening I went out with 3 Argentinian girls I met in the hostel and tried the local wine, which was a big improvement on the ice cream.
From Cafayate I carried on heading south to Tucaman, where I just stayed a night so I could get a bus to Cordoba the next day. I had heard on the news that farmers had been protesting for the last couple of weeks about increases in taxes, but in the north it didn´t have any affect. But here I found out that the farmers road blocks had been causing chaos with the buses and many had been getting stuck or just cancelled. Luckily the day I went they were letting buses through so we were only a bit delayed arriving in Cordoba. When I arrived at the hostel I met a lot of people who had been stuck there days trying to get a bus and heard many stories of prople getting stuck on buses for more than 12 hours and then just ending up back where they started. Also found that here the strikes have been starting to affect fresh food supplies making it more difficult than normal to get fruit and veg.
I have spent the last few days in Cordoba. Although it has been reaining almost constantly since I got here, I have looked around the main sites inthe city, a lot of colonial and Jesuit buildings and churches, a few museums. Yesterday I went to Alta Gracia, a small town near here where Che Guevara grew up. In his house there was a really interesting museum and photo gallery that covered his whole life. Cordoba is also a big student city with 7 universities, so the nightlife is a big thing here, the hostel even employs someone just to take people out to the bars and clubs everynight. At the moment the city is also really busy beause the world rally championship is being held here. The other night when it started was absolute chaos and even walking anywhere in the city was difficult. The cars were doing a parade around the centre, thousnads of people were on the streets to watch that, there were farmers demonstrating in the streets and the roads were still open to normal traffic. I tried to go out for a bit but you could hardly move because it was so busy.
Tonight I am moving on to San Juan, a town near Mendoza.

From Salta I had a short bus journey to Tilcara a small town in the far north of Argentina only a couple of hours from the Bolivian border. It was noticeably very different from the rest of Argentina, very little European influence, traditional style adobe buildings, cobbled streets and very few descendents of European people. Hardly anyone there spoke a word of English, whcih was good for me as I´ve got very lazy with speaking Spanish when there are people that can speak English. The hostel I stayed in was really nice, a group of cabins around a central courtyard with hammocks. I was sharing with 3 Argentinians so even there I had to speak Spanish.

I arrived in the town in the early afternoon and soon realised it was going to have to be a very relaxing few days. Here they seemed to have a siesta which lasted from midday to about 6pm and everything would shut. THe next day I went to Humahuaca, another small town a bit further north. It was similar to Tilcara and it was interesting jsut top walk around the main square, and I went up to a big statue on a hill overlooking the town. In the afternoon I went back to Tilcara and had a good walk up to a waterfall on the edge of town and then another walk to a small lake the other side of town.

The following day I went to see the Pucara, a partially restored pre-hispanic fort on a hill over looking the town. THen I went to the archaeology museum where a lot of the finds from the fort were displayed.

In the evening I got the bus back to Salta so that I could get another bus further south the following day. But I´ve had a bit of a change of plan. As it is a really nicecity and I´m staying in a nicehostel, I´ve decided to stay a bit longer and have arranged to start some Spanish lessons tomorrow.

Hopefully had my last long bus journey for a while when I travelled from Iguazu to Salta. Salta is a city in the north west of Argentina, it has a strong colonial influence with a lot of interesting original architecture but is also one of the first places I´ve been to Argentina with a large indigenous population.
I spent a few days in the city seeing the sights and going to a few museums. There is a cable car which goes up to the top of a hill overlooking the city which is surrounded by mountains. Went to a really interesting museum about high altitude archaelogy and how they discovered 3 mummified child sacrifices on the top of a mountain near Salta on the border with Chile. I alos spent a day going to San Lorenzo a small village just outside Salta where I had a good walk through the jungle.
I have also spent 2 days doing tours organised by the hostel. The first one was a trip up to the alti-plano and salt flats. It was a really good day as the scenery was constantly changing. We started off travelling through the rainforrest in the valley, went up into the dessert where there was loads of cacti, and amazing rock formations. Each layer of the rock is a different colour because of the different minerals they contain. We stopped for lunch at the town of San Antonio de Cobres, which is a small mining town on the edge of the altiplano. On the way here we were giving coca leaves to chew as they are suppossed to help prevent the effects of altitude as we were up at about 4000m. They taste disgusting, like really bitter tea and I don´t know that they had much of an effect although I didn´t feel ill.
After lunch we crossed the alti-plano hundreds of kms of flat land with very little there except llamas and wild donkeys. Then we reached the salt flats which were very impressive as they covered such a huge area. After that we started heading back to Salta , stopping off on the way at Pumamarca, a small town famous for the hill of 7 colours, a rock formation by the town with different coloured layers in it. It was a long day as we left Salta at 7am and didn´t get back until 9pm, just in time for a big BBQ organised by the hostel. I had met a lot of people in the hostel over the previous few days so it was a good evening with lots of very good steak. We ended up going out to the area of Salta where all the pubs and clubs are for a few drinks and we saw a local folk music performance. But it turned into a bit of a late night. Ended up getting back to the hostel just in time to have breakfast before going out for the day on the next tour. This was a trip to Cachi, a small town a few hours drive from Salta. For me the highlight of the trip was driving through the Cardones national park. There were literally thousands of cacti either side of the road, in a valley surrounded by more amazing rock formations. We stopped here for a while to have a look round. The area also has a lot of spiders, didn´t manage to find any tarantulas but we did see a few black widows.
Went out to another BBQ that evening but managed to get back to the hostel in time for a few hours sleep before getting the bus the next morning.

After another long overnight bus journey I arrived in Puerto Iguazu at about 9am. After finding the hostel, having a shower and breakfast I decided I was going to have a relaxing day doing not a lot. The town itself is quite small so it didn't take long to find my way around. Just outside the town is the Tres Fronteras where the borders of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet by 2 rivers. Other than a nice view and a few stalls selling souveniers there wasn't a lot to see. But after the chaos of Buenos Aires it was good to have a quiet day getting used to the tropical heat and humidity.
The next day I had an early start so I could to the national park before all the big tour groups arrived. This was worth it as it meant I arrived at one of the main sights, the Garganta del Diablo before the crowds. This is another place where it is impossible to describe and photos won't show the true scale of it. Its about a 1km across bridges over the river to the top of the falls. From the start of the walk you can here the noise of the water but you can't actually see it until you get a lot closer. The walkway goes right to the edge of the falls where there is a huge mass of water plumitting over the edge of the cliffs. Because of the amount of spray it's impossible to see the river at the bottom. On the walk back across the river I spotted a cayman. I spent the rest of the day doing various walks to different areas of the waterfalls. Despite the number of views of waterfalls I had, even at the end of it they still seemed impressive. In the afternoon the main area of the park was very crowded so I escaped to a less visited area on a longer walking trail through the forest. As it was a bit quieter there was a bit more wildlife around including Coatis (a kind of racoon?), a lot of lizards, birds, butterflys and strange insects.
Today I decided I still hadn't had enough of waterfalls and went to Brazil for the day to see the falls from the other side. On the Brazillian side ther is just one walking trail that you can use without a guide, but it gives a better panoramic view of all the waterfalls, which you don't really get on the Argentinian side. This gave a much better perspective of the area and it was well worth the trip.
After thinking of various plans on where to go next, I've decided to stay in Argentina and travel to Salta. Unfortunatly this means yet another long bus journey tomorrow, another 23 hours.

So after another long overnight bus journey we arrived in Buenos Aires in the morning. It wasn't the best introduction to the city as just trying to get from the bus station to the subway someone tried to steal my bag. Fortunatly it was a scam that I had heard about so I realised what was going on. Basically someone 'dropped' chocolate icecream all overthe back of my rucksack and then someon else offers tohelp clean it off, which is suppossed to distract you enough for them to steal stuff. After 8 months travelling a lot bit more dirt on my rucksack isn{t going to make any difference.
Eventually made it to the hostal with everything and after breakfast headed to the San Telmo area of the city as on Sundays there is a big street market with Tango shows and muscians. Went back to the hostal for lunch and to check in, then came back later witha camera totake some photos. Decided to carry on to La Boca as its also suppossed to be a good place to go on Sundays. But we didn't get that far as we stopped to take a photo and 2 guys snatched the camera. This was in the middle of the day surrounded by loads of people but there was nothing we could do about it. So had to spend the rest of the day reporting it to the police.

The next day things improved a bit although despite only carryibg a minimum amount of cash it still didn't feel that safe a place to be. Spent the day exploring the centre, places like the Presidental Palace where Evita made her famous speach and the cathedral. The following day we went to Recoleta one of the wealthier areas of the city. On the subway someone tried again to steal stuff from my bag but didn't get away with anything. It's most famous for a huge cemetry where all rich and famous Argentinians seemed to be burried. Despite only being able to recognise Evita, it was very impressive with each family having a big, elaborate mausoleum. Spent the afternoon in the national art gallery which had good European and Argentinian collections.

The following day we went to Palermo, an area of the city most famous for its prks and gardens. But the hightlight of the day was going to a fooball match River Plate V Americas. It was a Copa Libertadores game which River PLate had to win to stay in the competition. There was an amazing atmosphere, even when River Plate were loosing their supporters cheered continuosly. So when they scored the winning goal in the last minute it was unbelievable.

For the final day here we decided to go to Colonia in Uraguay as its only an hour away by boat. Had a really nice day here just wandering round the old town. It was nice to escape the chaos of Buenos Aires and have a relaxing day where you felt safe. Also turned out to be a good idea, as there were storms in Buenos Aires and parts of the town ended up flooded.In the evening we went back to Buenos Aires and went out for a traditional Argentinian dinner, steak and red wine wine. It was excellent and a lot cheaper than anything you could getin the UK.

The next day I hadanother long bus journey to Iguazu.