Bus to and afternoon in Mendoza, Aug 4th.

FRIDAY 4th August 

Bus to Mendoza

After some fitful off and on sleep I checked the time and it was 6am.  Happy with that.  The bus made a stop at 7am. I checked the map.  It looks like 150km to go, in a straight line.  That could easily still be three more hours.

Now I await for sunrise and breakfast.  Moved seats again to look out the window.

The sun started to appear at 8:30 am.  That's late.  The one hour time change from Bolivia and Chile must suit the East coast but it seems pretty tough on the Andean side of the country.

The interior lights came on to coincide with the sun rise.  Maybe breakfast will appear soon.

I'm amazed. We are still in desert.  The land is flat and dry except for the foothills of the Andes out to the West. I have my first sighting of Mt Aconcaqua, the highest mountain in the Americas at 6962m. Mendoza grows 75% of Argentinas grapes but only because of an irrigation scheme running down from the mountains.  The climate of warms days, cold nights and minimal rainfall apparently forms a good combination to make wine.

Our 18 hour bus ride came to an end at 10am.

We transferred by taxi to our hotel who thankfully were able to check us in early.

I then discovered that I'd lost my keys to our suitcase padlocks - oops.

Luckily (for me) I had half a back up plan.  I'd had the forethought to stash a spare key to my bag somewhere else.  However I was now really wishing that I'd had the forethought to do the whole job and have a spare for Lindsey's case too. :0

Someone was sitting on my shoulder.  Two of our team had decided to avoid the overnight bus, stay in Salta an extra night and then fly in today.  After a quick text we discovered that the hotel had already found our keys and had given them to our Aussie saviours.

Our group got together again half an hour after check in and we were taken on an orientation walk and then to a cafe.  Lindsey and I had a "Submarino".  A mug of hot milk and a chocolate bar. One plunges the chocolate bar into the milk and it then melts to become a hot chocolate drink.  It was pretty good.  We also shared a ham & cheese toasted sandwich, which became our lunch.  Their Tostadas aren't really the toasted sandwiches that we know.  It appears that they toast the bread first and then throw the filling in afterwards. First the cheese fails to melt and second the toast is never quite hot enough.

After this the group dispersed and we went caching.  Two finds out of five wasn't the best of days.  The hides were mostly park benches with many muggles.

Lindsey and I have been bored since leaving Bolivia and are looking forward to coming home. Salta and Mendoza are "just" two Argentine cities in the back blocks with not a lot going for them.  I am going on a wine tour tomorrow so that may unexpectedly change my mind about Mendoza.  Lindsey is hoping for our guide to arrange a food cooking tour for her.  He is yet to make much headway on that front so she will probably just head off to a park two kilometres away where there are several geocaches.

Salta followed by an overnight bus to Mendoza Aug 3rd

THURSDAY 3rd August

Salta followed by an overnight bus to Mendoza.

We had a planned 9am departure with our guide to walk to a gondola and catch a ride to the top of a nearby hill that overlooks the city.

We felt our frustrations rising with our guide.  Most of the wine tour crew were shattered after two long days in a row and so those that were coming were late.  We eventually left at 9:30.  The gondola was good and the views just OK.  But there was a cache to be found at the top :). We had a nice walk back down the hill with another couple while the rest caught the gondola back down.

It was around midday by the time we arrived back in town and we had three hours to kill before we were due to transfer to the bus station.

After finding an ATM and some popcorn we sat on a park bench for nearly an hour across from the cathedral in the main square to people watch or in Lindsey's case to have a bit of a zizz as well.  It intrigued us that many people crossed themselves as they walked past the cathedral even though they were on the other side of the road some fifty plus metres away.  As I was so intrigued I took a survey.  The majority of older women paid their respects.  Less than half the older men and very few of either gender in the 20 to 30 range.  However, of a group of five teenage school children three did without missing a beat in their animated conversation.

We returned to the hotel feeling a bit flat and aimless.  After the high of the salt flats and with no perceived comparable highlights on the horizon we are ready to come home.

At 3 the taxi transfer to the bus station went a lot smoother and our overnight (18hr) bus left a little after 4pm.  Another comfortable bus.  Three big seats across.  Almost fully reclining and most importantly an unlocked fully serviceable toilet.

As the bus left, the first thing the hostess did was close all the curtains.  Hello? I'm a tourist on the top deck of a double decker bus.  All I want to do while it's daylight is look out the window.  Apparently it was something to do with people throwing stones at the windows if the curtains weren't pulled when we passed through towns.  Maybe something got lost in translation because I certainly don't understand the logic.  If you want to throw stones at a moving bus I fail to see how a curtain would stop me from doing it.  Anyhow, I shifted to a window seat behind Lindsey and got to see out that one window for what it was worth.

We stopped at a town about four hours later to pick up a few more passengers. By this time it was nearly 9pm and I was wondering when our meal was going to arrive.

Next thing I know we are getting dished out Bingo cards as a precursor to dinner.

The lady behind us was first and won a bottle of Chardonnay for her troubles.

Finally dinner was served at 9:30. A lump of chicken in mashed potato, heated, a carrot and tomato salad and a cake in a wrapper.  It wasn't too bad.  Lights out at 10:30 to try and get some sleep.

Salta Aug 2nd.

WEDNESDAY 2nd August

Salta, Argentina.

We have been unimpressed with our guide so far.  For some reason he told us yesterday that there wasn't much to do in Salta and he didn't know why Intrepid stopped here.  He believes that we should be staying in a small town 170 km further south. So... he offered a wine tour at this town for any takers and six of our group took him up on his offer even though there is also a wine tour in Mendoza in two days time for those that want to go on one.

After a twelve hour bus ride the last thing I wanted to do was get up for a 7am departure to drive another 340km return in order to go on a wine tour.

Lindsey and I rose around 8:30, had breakfast and headed into town to find some geocaches.  The first one was called the Cloud Train.  It turns out that there is a wonderful train journey through the Andes that used to leave from here.  It now leaves from the same town as mentioned above, 170km south of here.  They decided that the first sector was too boring!

On another km or so and we found a park with military hardware placed around it.  A tank and a few guns.  Our next find was on one of those guns.

2.5km later walking through a poorer part of town we came to some small hills where the houses had views.  There were some really flash, well kept ones here.

Another cache bagged and then we walked a further km for a Dnf.  

We then caught a cab back to our hotel.  The taxis are cheap.  We negotiated our ride for 70 pesos, about 6 kiwi.

Our plan for the afternoon was to go and find two geocaches in a suburb or town called San Lorenzo about 12km from the city centre.

To add a bit of spice to life, we sussed out the local bus route and how to get bus card.  The drivers won't take cash.  We walked to where they sold the cards and I put 25 pesos onto it.  I thought our fare would be six pesos each way but it appears that it may have been seven.

Our first cache was at the very end of the bus route in quite a nice forest park.  There were families picnicking by the running stream.  We thought that a clean free flowing stream was rather special in this part of the country.

Another cache ticked off and we walked 1.5km down the road to our last cache.

This one was outside a restaurant and the hint said to ask the manager about it - Esteban.  At this stage we weren't even sure if it was inside or outside the restaurant.

We went inside to talk to the staff.  They had no idea what I was talking about. Eventually we were taken to the manager who turned out to be the owner.  He's only owned this place for three months and he also had no idea about any geocache.

Back outside and we began our search.  Lindsey quickly unearthed a likely spot and I found a lid.  Then I found a bottle further into the hole.  It's contents were a soggy mess.  I then checked the logs and it hadn't been found for over 13 months.  We replaced the container with a watertight one that I had in my bag and added a nice new log.  When I looked up the restaurant staff were hanging out the window still trying to work out what on earth we were on about.

Mission complete we waited at the next street corner and hailed the next bus to take us back to town.  That's when I discovered that I didn't have enough money left on the card for two fares.  If the bus driver even noticed he certainly didn't care.  We find that it affords some of the best people watching sitting on a public bus.

Back to the hotel late in the afternoon for some rest and Internet time and then to meet our guide at 7pm for a briefing.

At 7 the wine tourists still hadn't returned.  We got our briefing and walked around the corner to have a steak dinner at quite a nice looking nearby restaurant.  A good plan except we were told at the restaurant that they don't start taking dinner orders until 8pm!!

We returned to the hotel to kill another half hour.  As we were about to head out again at 8 the wine tourists appeared and we all decided to go to a BBQ beef restaurant as a group.

We got three plates of grill to share between the eleven of us.  The plates were massive and contained beef steak, beef rib, kidney, sausage, chorizo and chicken.

All washed down with some local Malbec. 

All very nice but we found it pretty heavy in the gut when you don't finish until 11pm and then all we wanted to do was go to bed.

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile to Salta, Argentina Aug 1st.

TUESDAY 1st August 

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile to Salta, Argentina.

7am alarm. 8:15 walk to the bus station.

The 9am departure turned into 9:30. Another comfortable bus. A double decker with four seats across. We scored upstairs one row from the front so we had good views.

We climbed out of San Pedro de Atacama back up the road that we came out of Bolivia on and we were soon back up at 4000 plus metres.

Three hours later we reached the border.  At least the Chileans and Argentinians talk to each other. The exit and entry stamps were acquired in the same building.  That doesn't necessarily mean that it was by any means streamlined or efficient but it was a step up from our previous experiences.

However.... they can only accept one bus load at a time and there were two buses in front of us. 1 hr 45 later our bus moved into the customs area and we walked into the customs hall to queue.  The line moved fairly quickly. At the first window we received our exit stamp and then back in a second queue and at the second window, right beside the first window we received our Argentine entry stamp.  Now back out to the bus where one of the two drivers had been unloading all our luggage.  Grab the bags.  Back in the same door and around the corner to queue for the X-ray machine.

No paperwork at this border to declare or not declare contraband. One quick sweep through the X-ray and outside again to find that our bus had moved two bus lengths forward and was now firmly established in Argentina.  Re load the luggage and all aboard.  The whole process for about sixty passengers took 45 minutes.

Total time at the border 2hrs 30.  This border outpost was once again high up in the Andes at 4400m.  One hell of a place to work.  At least there was no sign of corruption here, unlike the Bolivian border.

On our way again and about five hours later we were finally leaving the Andes as we started a slow descent to below 3000m.  We descended through an amazing gorge. Many hairpin turns which continued for a total of over 2000m down.  It reminded me of the roads in the movie The Italian job but twice as steep.

We put our clocks forward an hour and arrived in Salta at 8:30 pm.
We checked in to quite a nice wee hotel.  Our room had a king bed and a single bed.  I managed to talk Lindsey into having a bed mate as the bed was "just" big enough!