Good morning. I don’t know how successful I am going to be at typing this as I am on a bus which seems to not have any shocks and I am wondering if my breakfast is going to stay down as we bounce, bounce along. It is just a four hour trip today. It is kind of surreal though. I am sitting right at the front of the bus on the second level and because I can type without looking at the keyboard. I am just watching the beautiful scenery go by. It is kind of neat to be so productive (getting the blog caught up) and relaxed at the same time. No WIFI on the bus, that just seemed to be in Uruguay so I will write this now and post it later on.
I had another incredible day yesterday. The scenery in the Salta province is incredible. Esteban was Anne and my guide for the last two days. Anne is my new friend from England. On day two of our drives to check out the area we were the only ones in the car and therefore had a private tour. It was great. I knew it was going to be a fantastic day as we were driving through the green mountains with the tunes cranked rocking out to it’s a beautiful day by U2. At work they play music some mornings to get the kids moving to class and I love when it is this song, for me it is a great song to start the day with, so when it came on and we were driving through that beautiful landscape I couldn’t help but smile.
The landscape between the two days was so different and yet they are so close. One day was red mountains and the second day was green mountains. The way the sun was hitting the one area in the afternoon made the mountains look like they were covered in plush velvet and I just wanted to reach out and pet it. You know how I am with petting things being the tactile person I am.
Oh god, just a little pause and a prayer. We just came across carnage on the highway. There we two bodies spewed over two lanes of the highway going in the other direction. It must have just happened. Sorry for those families losses.
I am now a little distracted. We saw tons of cacti yesterday and at times there were cacti in the foreground and snow on the Andes in the background. We saw a condor which was really neat. Esteban has been trying to take a picture of one for three years so he was really excited about seeing it too. It was close to the road and it was huge. It looks almost like a big wooden bird. We watched it and its baby’s for awhile and then it took off in flight. They have a 10 foot wing span. We also saw wild donkeys that are prey for pumas and guanacos (they are kind of like a deer and an alpaca). We actually pulled over the car because we could see a tarantula crossing the road and didn’t want to hit it.
The people around here are also quite lovely. The hostel I was staying at in Salta had incredible staff. Each day was someone different but each one of them was extremely helpful. Traveling with no phone sometimes leads to a bit of a hassle but these people were always offering their phones and making calls for me. When I was trying to arrange the car to go around the area and Anne was staying in a different hostel they made the calls and arranged it for us. Then they called her hostel for me so I could tell her we were good to go etc. Anyway little things make me happy, right. Then this morning when I was checking out the guy who checked me in saw me and instantly said “Sarah, how are you? Where were you yesterday I worked from 8 – 7 and I didn’t see you, where did you go?”All this service for $12 a night and they also had the best breakfast, included. Today I had two eggs and each day there was fresh fruit out all day for your taking. A typical South American breakfast is white bread, which they had brown, dulce de leche, a carmel sauce which they are obsessed with and a croissant. Oh yeah and I got hot chocolate made with milk whenever I wanted it. All included in that $12 fee. Now it is no four star place, a six bed dorm room and not the greatest bathrooms, I definitely needed my shower shoes, but a great showerhead with pressure, which is sometimes hard to find and therefore sometimes it’s hard to get that shampoo out of my hair or the soap off your body for that reason.
Again lots of photos were taken some of them are quite cheesy as were we playing around to maybe make the shots a little bit more interesting for you.
One of my favorite things to see, Grace will make fun of me because it is red, but it was a field of drying chilies it was incredible to see this field of red.
Anne has an I-phone and can take panoramic view photos so I copied a few of her pictures on the bus today. They are really neat to see. Did I tell you this guy in Buenos Aires had an I-phone with him and he had an app on it that translated for him? He held the phone over a menu and it translated the print from Spanish to English. Oh how travelling is changing.
We arrived in Tilcara this afternoon; it reminds me of the wild, Wild West. It is a little town with a mix of authentic locals and backpackers in a hot dusty 20 square block area. It is a beautiful location though among the mountains and such a nice vibe to it.
We arrived at the hostel to suppose to be having a twin room but the room was rebooked by its previous occupants. So they gave us a two bedroom room with a bathroom and balcony that can sleep six for the same price of $11 each a night. I walked onto the private balcony that looks out onto the mountains and went ok this is cool. I can chill out and read and write on this for awhile.
Here is the link for the photos from Cachi Argentina.
Click on the link for photos from the drive from Salta to Cachi Argentina
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