Hitchin' a ride !! San Pedro to Salta

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

The next place on our trip was San Pedro de Atacama, located in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile.   For those of you who didn’t know, the Atacama Desert is the driest desert in the world… Oddly enough, it rained both nights we were there, weird!  On our last tour in Bolivia, we had met a few friends who we were now travelling with, the Kiwis, Chris and Paul, and the Aussies, Jeremy and Ellalouise.  Our plan was to stay in this town only for one or two nights, and then continue on to Argentina.  It seemed like a great idea, until we realized that there are only a few buses each week to Salta, Argentina and the next open seats were on Sunday, bad news is, it was Monday !  We tried a few other places but eventually realized there was no way out for 6 nights!  We talked it over amongst ourselves and decided that we didn’t want to wait until Sunday (particularly because every business in town knows you’re stuck and the prices certainly reflect it… can you say ridiculously overpriced?)  We needed to come up with a plan !!! 

THE GREAT PLAN:

1)      Hire a van from a tourist company to drive the 6 of us to the border crossing into Argentina. 

2)      Cross the border on foot.

3)      Take a van / taxi / bus or whatever was available at the border to the closest town in Argentina (this should be no problem according to the van we hired)

4)      Finally, catch a larger bus to Salta, Argentina which would be our final destination.

It seemed like a rather simple task at the time of planning, and we figured it might even be quicker than the direct bus, which was scheduled to take 12 hours.

As I mentioned before, the plan seemed really great on paper but we were still a bit nervous, seeing as we knew nothing about the border or the towns we were heading to.  Nonetheless, we went for it.  Things started off pretty good, and we headed off on our journey at 8:30am.  After waiting an hour at the immigration office for our exit stamp, the van began the 2 hours journey to the actual border.  Once we were near the border, the driver pulled over and dropped us (and all of our luggage) 3 km prior to the actual crossing.

  Apparently he was not allowed to get any closer without getting in trouble.  So, we started our walk down the hill towards the office and soon noticed a bit of an issue… The office was in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and there didn’t appear to be any taxis or mode of transport to take us anywhere.  At the border, there were long line ups of people from the large inter-country bus companies completing their immigration papers.  We asked around to a few people working there to see if they knew of any way to get to the next town, but we figured out from their expressions that this was not going to be easy.  Many of the people actually asked us, “If you didn’t get here on a bus, how did you get here?”  You could imagine their faces when we told them we walked!!

They stamped our passports and wished us luck as we continued walking out the door into Argentina.  What to do now??  We saw a gas station a little ways down the road and hoped that maybe they would be able to help us out, so we started walking again.  The gas station attendant informed us that the town which we were told would be easy to get to was actually 125kms away, and there was no way to get there without your own car.  In the station was also a little café, and a few of the locals must have figured that 6 gringos, with all their bags on their backs, looking tired in the middle of nowhere without a car was not a normal situation.  I explained our predicament to one man and his family, and they immediately wanted to help.  Unfortunately they were heading the wrong direction, but the man wanted to help, so we went outside and he helped me to ask a few truckers if they were willing to give us a ride.  All of the truckers were very friendly and interested in helping out, but unfortunately all of their vehicles were full of family members already.  I was beginning to become discouraged until one of the others came out from the café with a big grin!   Apparently, another man who was driving a courier / cargo truck overheard my earlier conversation and offered to help.  It was truly perfect.  He was on his way home to a town only a couple of hours from Salta, and he had no cargo in the truck!!  

Dawne and the other girl in the group joined our new Amigo in the front, while the 4 boys jumped in the back with all the luggage, getting comfy for the 4 hour drive ahead of us.  I don’t know much about the scenery of the trip after that because there were on 2 dirty rear windows in the back part of the delivery truck.  What  I do know is that the road was very windy as we rolled from side to side on the floor with the luggage with each corner.  Every now and then the driver would pull over an let us out to show us some amazing scenery and tourist attractions in the area including a (dry) salt flat and a seven colour mountain.  Dawne tells me the scenery was amazing the entire way with many different types of landscapes.  I think it must have been really amazing judging from all the ‘ooohs’ and ‘awwwws’ coming from the girls in the front, leaving us boys in the back to only imagine what was out there.  

After the 4 hour ride in the cargo van, we arrived in San Salvador.  The man dropped us off at the bus station and wished us the best with rest of our travels.  We tried to pay him some money for the ride, but he would not accept anything from us.  We ended up stuffing a small amount of money into his shirt pocket and thanked him for the ride.  Honestly, this man was an absolute SAINT!! The girls said he was talking the whole way, telling them about the area and his family. He had apparently been working since 8am the previous morning so I think he was happy to have some company on the long road home.  Without him, we would have likely been in some big trouble at the border and would have had to pay big money for a lift.  We were very lucky that he was at that café at that moment!!

From San Salvador it was a comfy 2 hour bus ride to Salta!  We were all pretty pleased that our plan had worked and we ended up only taking one hour longer than the direct bus would have been…. Not bad, not bad!!

Salta- Argentina

We woke up in Salta after a well-deserved rest, checked off hitchhiking on our ‘To-Do’ list and set out to explore.  We were amazed when we set out and realized that we were back in some serious civilization.  After spending our last days in the desert and Bolivia we started to forget about most modern luxuries.  Stepping into Argentina was like entering a whole new world.  A modern(ish), built up city with large free flowing streets, trendy shops, beautifully maintained parks and fancy restaurants!!   It was certainly not what we were used to.  We did the usual walk around tour of the city with the highlight being a climb up to the mirador on top of the hill which offered spectacular views of the entire city and outlying region. 

 Later in the evening (and by later I really mean LATE, people eat dinner between 10pm and midnight!) we met up with the rest of our travelling gang and ventured out to try the amazing Argentinian steaks that everyone who had been there had been raving about.  We picked out a place and jumped into 2 separate cabs; Chris, Paul and I in one cab and Jeremy, Ellalouise and Dawne in the other.   Dawne’s cab took off and our driver followed closely behind for the ride for just a few blocks.  The cabs stopped and pointed to a restaurant across the street with a Coke~Cola sign that said Jacks!  It surely didn’t look anything like the ‘fancy’ steakhouse we were looking for.  Chris, Paul and I informed our dirver that this could not be the right place, and he radioed in for help and within a few seconds we were back on the road assuming Dawne’s cab was following along.  Chris, Paul and I got to the restaurant after a ten minute drive (which seemed a bit odd to us, as it was only 10 blocks away on the map) and grabbed a table, started munching on the complimentary bread and dips, and ordered a bottle of wine.  After several more minutes we noticed the address number on the door was #1445, which was a far way off from the number on the flyer we had given the cab driver, #139… Perhaps a hint as to why the other cab had not yet arrived after more than 10 minutes.  We flagged down the Mesero and asked him if they had moved locations recently.  He let us know that they had not moved, but that the location we were at was much newer and nicer than their other location, at #139.   Uh-oh!!  It turns out that Dawne, Jeremy and Ellalouise were at the other location, which was actually the place where we had stopped earlier!  We had the waiter call the first location and tell Dawne to come to the other place.  Just a small mix-up to kick the night off! 

The restaurant was amazing, and by far the best food we’ve had since arriving in SA.  The menu was all from the BBQ, and we all went for the local speciality ‘Bife de Chorizo’…. No idea what it means, but it’s known as one of the best steaks in Argentina.  We had one heck of a time trying to explain how we wanted our steaks done, using all kinds of hand motions, and colourful expressions that made no sense to any of the locals or waiters.  At one point, we had nearly the entire staff at our table trying to sort out what we wanted.  After failing miserably for at least 5 minutes and having plenty of laughs, they brought out one of the chefs to help out.  He walked up to the table and in nearly perfect English said “Would you like it well, rare or medium rare”…  Haha, where was this guy for last 10 minutes?? 

Going into this place we had incredibly high expectations from what we had heard, and it certainly did not disappoint.  For $12 per person, we each had a melt-in-your mouth steak, as many grilled veggies as you could ever want, loads of breads and dips, and 3 bottles of wine to share (and good wine at that!!  I suppose being near Argentina’s largest wine region helped out!!)  It was great!!! 

After dinner (just after midnight) we headed to the party district for some drinks.  The area was huge, 3 or 4 complete blocks of just pubs, bars, and discotecs!  Salta is known for it’s night life, mostly due to the fact that the city boasts 7 Universities! 

 However, it was fairly quiet as it was summer holidays and a Monday night.  Either way we had a blast sipping random drinks on a patio until 2am, then crossing the street for a late night bowling match until 3:45am (I really think Dawne and I need to brush up on our our bowling skills!) and then heading to the dance club, which was just starting to get going.  Dawne and I packed it in just after 5am, but I have a suspicion that the locals carry on well into the morning!