Salta

Back to Argentina

By Heather & Pravin

May 28^th, 2017

Best Bus Trip Ever

Once our time in Chile had come to an end, we headed back into Argentina - via the most beautiful bus ride imaginable! The iPhone photos from the bus window certainly don't begin to do the area justice.

We left San Pedro de Atacama in the morning, and arrived in the city of Salta in the late evening. The ride out of San Pedro was quite steep, and we passed through some incredibly beautiful high-altitude scenery. The bus passed 5000m just before the border, where everyone had to disembark with all of their luggage to proceed through Chilean and Argentinian customs. There were no problems on the Chilean side, but upon arriving at the Argentinian counter, the border official told me that my birth date had been entered in incorrectly when we arrived in Buenos Aires, and that he would need to fix the problem. I ended up having to wait almost an hour before I got my passport back, and after spending an hour at 5000m, I wasn't feeling 100% clear-headed due to the altitude, and the bus driver was eager to rush me back to the bus so that we could all get moving again. A couple of hours later, well into Argentina, it occurred to me to check my passport and make sure that I got my entry stamp - of course, the customs official had failed to stamp it :(

The rest of the bus ride was even more spectacular than the first Chilean section! The bus continued through high-altitude volcano and lake scenery for a long time, and even passed through a small salt flat where salt was being harvested, before beginning the lengthy descent towards Salta. The road was incredibly steep, with short, narrow switchbacks at the end of a never-ending cliff down towards a distant river below. At one point, the weather turned cloudy almost instantly, and within minutes, we could barely see a couple of metres in front of the bus! Thankfully the bus driver had probably made this drive in much worse weather, and we continued safely down through the lovely, multi-hued Quebrada de Humahuaca and eventually arrived in Salta.

Salta

The next day in Salta, we decided to deal with my lack of entry stamp at the migrations office in the city. We didn't realize that it is only open 4 hours per day, and just missed the short open window. We spent the rest of the day wandering around Salta, and ran into some Romanian friends that we had made in the bus station in Salta (bonding over Chica the dog!) - Cezarina and her young daughter Maya, who were also on an extended round-the-world trip. They had decided to rent a car the following day to take a scenic route down to Cafayate, and very kindly invited us to join them. We were more than happy to do so, and made plans to meet up mid-morning the following day to head out of the city with them.

Salta was a city that we had always heard was very beautiful, and is even known as Salta La Linda (Salta the beautiful). Unfortunately, it didn't quite live up to our expectations and we found that it was quite rundown and even unkempt feeling. We spent the rest of the day wandering around and eating empanadas for lunch and the local delicacy of super panchos for dinner (super cheap, extra-long hot dogs).

money woes in argentina

One thing that we found very difficult in Argentina, but especially so in Salta, was the challenge of finding exact change. Each and every time we went to pay for something (and it's almost exclusively cash-only everywhere), the cashier would beg us to pay in exact change. Due to inflation, there is a country-wide shortage of smaller bills, and it seemed that there also weren't nearly enough coins to fill the gap. In Salta, almost every time we were owed a peso or two as change (1 Peso = 9¢) as change, we would instead be asked to accept a small candy. Or in bakeries, we would be handed a small, hard, dry biscuit to make up the extra peso! It wasn't so much the money we were worried about missing out on, rather the fact that it was next to impossible to accumulate small change and so this was constantly happening to us over and over again.

Along with the inconvenience of getting biscuits instead of pesos, the other giant effect of inflation that we saw all the time as tourists was increased prices. On menus, in tour agencies, in hostels, and on buses - anywhere that prices were advertised - you would see a thick layer of countless pieces of tape, and the new price written in sharpie. It seems that rather than continue printing pricing materials that would quickly be out of date as prices had to rise, people had simply taken to noting the new prices in sharpie. This also meant that it was next to impossible to do any research on how much a particular hostel or activity might cost - prices went up from one month to the next and any online information was very quickly made unreliable.

The last hassle to deal with was ATMs constantly running out of cash, or only dispensing very small amounts (as little as $100!) while charging exorbitant fees. It was quite common to come across a long line at an ATM, only to then see everyone walk away in disgust as the person at the head of the line reported that there was no more money. There were some stretches where it felt like we were taking money out every single day!

All of these things were a pain for us to deal with, but its a lot worse to think about the struggles faced by so many Argentinians whose salaries certainly don't increase as the price of everything else does.

The next morning, we packed up and left the hostel very early in the morning to sort out my passport at the migration office. Although we arrived very early, it was already very crowded with people and we were forced to take a number. The office was particularly busy because it is quite near the Bolivian border, so most of the people waiting were Bolivians who were taking care of work-permit related business. We waited and waited, but didn't make much progress. Watching the Argentinian government workers slo-o-o-o-wly shuffle from desk to desk, drink mate together, catch up on gossip, and peck away at keyboards painfully slowly was quite the sight to see and was a good example of Argentinian bureaucracy (barely) in motion!

Eventually, we saw a woman from the previous day's bus journey enter the office with her Argentinian tour guide. She had also failed to obtain an entry stamp at the border, and her tour guide had called ahead and managed to make arrangements with the supervisor at the office. I was able to get my passport to the official along with hers, and the tour guide's clout helped to speed things up a bit. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite quick enough, and Cezarina and Maya weren't able to wait any longer for us with their rental car and had to head out of the city.

CAFAYETE

We ended up taking the bus to Cafayate instead, and it was another beautiful journey! Cafayate is a few hours south of Salta, and is famous for being located at the end of the Quebrada de las Conchas, and also for producing delicious white torrontes wines. We found an incredibly cheap camping spot in the middle of the tranquil town, and paid only about $1.75 each to set up our tent. The first order of business was to sample some of the local wine, so we found a nice cafe right on the plaza and enjoyed a chilled bottle of torrontes in the evening sun. Once we headed back to our hostel, we were invited to join in a pizza feast that was organized by some of the Argentinians that were also camping there. Turns out that a group of them worked as pizza chefs back home, and they took advantage of the campground's wood-fired oven to produce some of the most delicious pizza we'd had yet on the trip!

The next morning we headed out bright and early to rent bikes to explore the Quebrada de las Conchas that we had traveled through by bus the previous day. The canyon is filled with weird and interesting rock formations, and it definitely merited more exploration than simply passing through on a bus. We rented decent quality bikes in town, and then took a bus (with our bikes) that was heading back towards Salta, and got off 50km from Cafayate to begin our day of cycling back towards town. We took it easy and made a full day of the journey, stopping to explore all the features along the way, hike through giant cactuses down by the river, and of course, sample empanadas at a small roadside cafe that also featured a parrot and a pair of llamas! The last part of the journey traveled past many of the vineyards in the area, but as it was mid-week, we found that most were not open.

The rock formations and colours of the canyon reminded us a lot of some of the landscapes we had seen on our road trip through Arizona, and we were constantly in awe as we pedalled along the highway and were treated to non-stop views.

At the beginning of the day, we were slightly leery as the rental shop didn't have helmets, and there was not much of a shoulder to the road. Luckily traffic was almost non-existent, with it being mid-week, and we felt perfectly safe the whole time. There were few hills to contend with, and much of the journey was flat or slightly rolling. All in all, it was a very beautiful and memorable day and we celebrated with even more empanadas and local wine in town for a late dinner.

The following day, we did manage to meet up with Cezarina and Maya in Cafayate for dinner, and then the day after, we had a lovely, scenic ride back to Salta with them. It was a fun journey together and it was very generous of them to invite us (and all of our gear!) into their compact rental car.