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We were bid very warm farewells and good travels by all at the excellent La Justina Hostel in Bariloche
and once again weighed down with front and rear rucksacks, a collection of plastic food bags in our hands we descended the steep road to the bus stop.
There are no timetables, the bus comes when it comes and should do so every ten minutes or so. As the minutes (and other buses) ticked by we started get increasingly anxious that we might miss our coach to Mendoza. It arrived and almost left again before we had time to gather our collection of plastic bags from the pavement and climb aboard. The driver then had no change for 6 pesos from the 10 peso note (about 3 Francs). Instead he hooted at pedestrians walking down the street and waved the 10 Peso note at them, sometimes opening the doors in case someone could jump in and give him change. His dilemma was solved by the next customer of whom he demanded 4 Pesos in change which were passed along directly to us. There is indeed a shortage of low denomination currency in Argentina as I had heard on a Radio 4 podcast some weeks earlier. The Andesmar coach was not quite as luxurioius as the Via Bariloche coach, but never the less we had fully reclining seats and were entertained by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover during dinner.These long distance coaches have a brilliant concept in the "banos" department. It is a spring loaded toilet seat which keeps the lid permanently up to one side and is only held in place by the weight of ones posterior. This not only stops guys peeing on it but also resloves the issue of us men being nagged to leave the seat down for the ladies. :) The lady next to us on the coach is from Mendoza though lives in Bariloche and engaged us in a lengthy conversation about us, herself (Polish and German grandparents) and our travels. It was quite a test of our Spanish and though it was a struggle, quite rewarding to have been able to manage the conversation. A little later she spotted me reading to Kate from the secret disguise of my Jack Higgins ebook and asked across the bus "paraque usted ha romper el libro" why have you broken your book. I laughed and we showed her the ebook and how we could store many books, guides, history books etc on one small machine, and how the disguise was to prevent prying eyes. We have since found that the disguise doesn't work so well but instead has had people bumping into each other as they stop to pear over at the book or try to sneak around the back of us so they can get a secret look :)) In fact when we crossed over to Bolivia we met Simone and Chris who had seen us using the e-reader in the cafe overlooking Salta in the picture below and had since been googling Jack Higgins books on the internet to see if there was a special book! At 6am we were awoken by lights and found that the bus was in a petrol station. "Salta" announced the bus conductor. "We're an hour early" exclaimed Kate, and we gathered our things together hurriedly disembarking and reclaiming our rucksacks despite my not finding the luggage receipts in any of my pockets. We had just about sat down inside the bare cafeteria when there was a commotion amongst the only other guests, a group of 6 Australian girls. "Quick, quick they called to each other, the bus to Salta is waiting". We followed them out to find another Andesmar transfer coach next to ours. It transpired that we were 50km outside of Salta, and by chance had managed to escape being stranded at this eery remote petrol station. Salta In the north west of Argentina, Salta is a medium sized city of around 500,000 and a pleasant year round climate. To the west the foothills of the Andes climb upwards to the great deserts of northern Chile and to the northeast tropical forest starts to lead into the amazon jungle. The city center retains some lovely colonial buildings around the central plaza, which have been preserved thanks to efforts of some local families such as Carlos (who I will talk about later).
A cable car (Swiss made of course) runs to a hill overlooking the city, and we couldn't resist spending a few hours reading in a cafe over looking the city.
Made in Olten. Nice that we get to keep the gondola according to the last picture :)
Sayta After breakfast which included some delicious diamond shaped rolls similar to hard english scones, we were picked up by a minibus along with 5 others to be taken to an 'Estancia' ranch called Sayta, for 2 days of horse riding. Enrique stood with hands on hips dressed in traditional Gaucho (cowboy) clothes, his baggy pants tucked into knee high boots and sporting a bristling beard looking for all the world like a pirate. Welcome to my home he boomed, and ushered us in for a plentiful second breakfast even though we are not hobbits. Enriques English, it soon became apparent, consisted of a string of expressions such as "Of course, my horse" and "f***ing baby" directed at anyone who got the dregs of the wine bottle, of which there were many. "I buy 3000 litres a year from Monks in Cafayate", he told us as we tucked into an enormous BBQ lunch known as the "assado", and washed it down with glass after glass of holy communion wine. Kate tried to fill her glass with water, but quick as a flash he was at her side knocking away the water bottle and substituting it for the wine. "The water is just for show and not to be drunk he roared".
I enjoyed my third time ever on horse back, even though it wouldn't obey me all the time and was the only horse to flatly refuse to go down a stream bank turning around instead to face the 8 horses behind. The narrow country lanes and streams were a challenge, but it was fun to drift in and out of chat with whomever happened to be perched alongside. The guides were rather macho though and it wasn't just Kate who didn't appreciate it when they crept up from behind and gave the horses a hefty crack of the whip to jolt them into sudden action.
By the evening I had my first case of stomach agony in 5 weeks from the lunch. It would take over a week to disappear again. Kate had dinner alone with Enrique as we were the only ones staying at the ranch. She found that behind his daytime charade was a warm, open and deep character who enjoyed entertaining and had left Patagonia many years ago after his wife had died. He left the oil industry and moved to Salta to set up the ranch and escape the stresses of work.
Me on a horse which only wanted to eat! ( a bit like me then) Augustina
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