Adventures after the merger
We had expected to see Tito again bright and early for our Uyuni tour, but he had been specifically requested by a group of French tourists overnight, so it was Milton who showed up at 7:30am to pick us up. Continue reading “A Four-Day Tour to the Salar de Uyuni”
Serendipity disguised as misfortune had us spend two whole days in a town that most travelers skip and we couldn’t be happier.
You can sleep in the bus until 6am
After crossing the border from La Quiaca, Argentina to Villazón, Bolivia we found ourselves waiting for seven hours in the new bus terminal for a 9pm bus. We knew the bus ride was only 5 hours, but we were told we could sleep in the bus until 6am, so we agreed. The route is mountainous and windy, and at one point it seemed almost certain we would drive off the edge as the driver slowed to a crawl and drove around around a sharp curve. At 1:30am, the bus driver started blaring this delightful tune (turn up volume for full effect) as we entered the city and continued to do so until we arrived at the bus station in Tarija 15 minutes later. There he told us he had somewhere else to be and we had to get out.
For the last two weeks we have been volunteering on a winery in Valle de la Concepción just outside of Tarija in exchange for free accommodation and lunch. We were expected to work six hours a day, six days a week with Sundays off. March is harvest season, so our timing was perfect and we got to see most of the wine making process. The winery is an artisanal operation where virtually everything is done manually. It’s hard to convey how manual the whole process is.
Continue reading “WWOOFing Is Working”
After our adventures in the desert, we returned to Argentina. We had a couple more days before we had to be in Bolivia, so we decided to take our time going north. Our bus ticket from San Pedro de Atacama would take us all the way back to Salta, but the bus stops in Purmamarca and Jujuy on the way to Salta. We decided to ask the bus driver to let us out at Purmamarca so we could explore some of the smaller towns in the north.
Continue reading “Purmamarca and Tilcara”
Day 1: Picking up Wicked Van, Laguna Chaxa
We arrived at the Wicked offices to pick up our van at 10:30am. There were a few people ahead of us in line finishing up their paperwork, so it took us a little while to get on the road. After signing the documents, verifying the condition of our camper, double checking the checklist, and snagging a few essential free items: sleeping bag, pillow cutting board, extra dishwater, we were off. Our first stop was the grocery store to stock up on food for at least the next day. The second stop was the gas station to fill up the camper and the 20-liter jerrycan we had been given just in case. There is only one gas station in the desert, in San Pedro, so you have to come back to town to get gas, and we definitely did not want to run out. With that, we were off on our adventure heading towards Laguna Chaxa.
We have a week before we need to be in Bolivia for our WWOOFing post, so we decided to go back to Chile to explore the Atacama desert for a few days. There are three bus companies: Pullman Bus, Andesmar, and Gemini, that each run three trips to and from Atacama per week. The bus costs 1600 pesos ($42.11) per person no matter which company you go with. We took a 7am bus on Friday morning with Pullman Bus. The bus ride was uneventful, but our arrival in Chile was marked by some of the now familiar challenges of exploring a new place.
Continue reading “San Pedro de Atacama”
Cafayate is a wine region in southern Salta province. It is located at 5,500 meters above sea level which makes the wines produced there some of the highest altitude wines in the world. The valley has mild weather with low humidity, receiving less than one inch of rain per year, and is most known for the Torrontes grape. We had heard that Cafayate was similar to the Mendoza wine region in Argentina but lesser known.
From Salta city to Cafayate, there is a four-hour bus that costs 350 pesos ($9.37) per person. We took a bus on Tuesday with Roderick at 1pm and arrived at the bus station in Cafayate just after 5pm. On the bus ride, Roderick booked the Backpackers Hostel on Booking.com, but when we showed up, we were told there were no rooms available. It was clear the hostel did not have a system for dealing with day-of bookings since the person doing check in did not have a computer and kept insisting no one had told her we were coming.
Continue reading “In Pursuit of Wine in Cafayate”
On Wednesday, Eric and I set off from Cafayate for a hike to the waterfalls of Rio Colorado. We had read many blog posts and TripAdvisor reviews of this hike advising that it was a must-see and indicating there was a guide option available for ~$10, but that many people had elected to do it without a guide. There are seven waterfalls along the trek of increasing size, with the seventh, most impressive, waterfall having a fall of 20 meters. We caught a taxi from our new hostel, Casa Árbol, for 150 pesos ($3.94) to the trail head and were immediately accosted by people trying to sell us a guide. They handed us a sheet of paper that indicated the cost for waterfalls 1-3 was 250 pesos ($6.58) per person; waterfalls 1-5 was 350 pesos ($9.21) per person and waterfalls 1-7 was 500 pesos ($13.16 per person). Normally hiking doesn’t come with a fee, and if it does, it’s nominal, but we were looking at more than $25 for this hike, which seemed a bit crazy considering we saw Iguazú Falls for just over $35.
Continue reading “Hiking to the Waterfalls of Rio Colorado”
We arrived in Salta tired and hungry having long ago exhausted the multiple sandwiches and snacks we had brought with us on the bus. We had expected to arrive at 7am and have the whole day ahead of us, but instead we arrived at the bus station at 2:30pm. Eric and I had a hostel booked for the night, but the two French girls did not, so they decided to tag along with us and see if there was room for them at a reasonable price at our hostel. It was only on this walk to the hostel that we thought to exchange names, despite having first met each other 40 hours before and spent 28 hours in a bus together. That might have been a small personal failing, but you can meet so many people on the road you never see again, that sometimes names aren’t that important. We’ve noticed it’s not unusual to chat with people for quite a while before asking their names, even though that would be one of the first things we asked at home.
Continue reading “Finding Friends in Salta”