Last Day in Argentina

Hey everybody,
Today is unfortunately my last day in Argentina - well, officially I take the bus in the evening so I guess tomorrow is. Details. Tomorrow I take the bus up to La Quiaca at the border to Bolivia. I was considering taking a bus to San Pedro, Chile, based on a suggestion that it is less of a pain to get into Bolivia, that I could do the salt flat tour from there to Uyuni, Bolivia, and that it was only about $50 more. Well, as luck would have it, the buses were full till Monday and I´m not sitting around in Salta for the weekend. Especially, after seeing a dead dog with its spine and ribs showing (I think it got hit by a bus) and getting harassed by tranny hookers. Not that Salta is all bad. The central plaza area is nice and there are a lot of tours that you can do.


I got into Salta yesterday, by way of the same Argentines that I hung out with at their camp ground. I ran into the at a disco the night before I was leaving and happenstance, hadn´t purchased my ticket out of Cafayate. They offered to give me a ride up to Salta since one of the cars had a spot available and were staying in Salta 1 night before continuing to Jujuy. Anyway, as is common in Argentina, I only got about 5 hours of sleep when they came to get me. I was riding with Julio and Pablo. Julio apperently manages a band on the side and we listened to that and many other Argentine bands (I´m speculating their origin), oh, and Bob Marley and ACDC. Julio had seen ACDC in BA and had the ticket stub, he was smitten. Anyhow, they all were pretty nice guys and I wish I could have communicated a bit more in Spanish. It was great cause, remember how I was saying how beautiful the drive inbetween Salta and Cafayate was, we got to stop at the places and take pictures. Not only that, but we stopped a lake along the way. They fished and swam while I attempted a nap.
We got into Salta and grabbed a hostel about 9PM.
Speaking of tours in Salta, there is supposed to be a great one by train called Tren Los Nubes. It makes sense that a tren specifically for tourism wouldn´t run during the summer months, so I took a bus that follows the same route. The nice thing is that the bus stops so you can check some stuff out. In the morning, it stops at about 1 place worth taking any photos. At lunch it takes you to a town that is kinda a place I wouldn´t spend more than 30 minutes in. I forget the name, but every tour eats lunch there so if you go, you´ll know the place. I tried to find a sandwich place but couldn´t. So I ate at the place the tour reserves and it wasn´t bad. I ate llama and had some coca tea to finish the meal. Then it´s off to a small salt flat, some other place, and finally my favorite part of the trip, the painted hills. I´m glad I went the entire trip cause the scenery and experience was worth it, but really the best thing is the hills and they could cut out about 3 or 4 other stops to give you more time there. The town is nice and the scenery is spectacular (check out my FB photos). Also, there is some amazing mountains inbetween the painted hills and S.S. Jujuy that would be absolutely sick to trek in during the summer and ski in during the winter. I am going to have to research how much snow these areas get when I get back to the States. These particular mountains were lush green, but only with small shrubbery, so even if they only get a total of 100 inches of snow a year, as long as the temps are always low, they´d be great skiing.
It occurred to me that I need to keep a dynamic log of my next travel ideas. I know that my next dream is to heli ski Alaska. After that, I still have Africa and parts of Asia to see (and whatever I miss from my orginal plans for this trip). Since one of the major goals of this trip was to figure out the places that I really like and want to spend more time at in the future (hence why I´m moving quicker than a lot of backpackers), obviously I am beginning to add to that list. For sure add something like 12 months in Argentina (probably with splits into Chile at times), 3 or 4 in Brazil, some diving trips to Central America, as well as a Mexico/Guatamala trip for a month or two. And that´s only after 3 months on this trip. Add all that shit up and it´s like a total of over two years. Of course they wouldn´t be all at once. I´ll probably post the sheet when I make it.

Anyway, time to shower and go bed, I will likely be out of communication for a while starting late tomorrow.
Salud,
Dylan