From North to South - The road to Patagonia

Mendoza is the region of Argentina most famous for its wine, red wine in particular. The region is also a very similar latitude to New Zealand, I'm sure this is the reason for the amount of similarities I found between Canterbury and Mendoza. There were many vineyards, many fields full of olive plantations, and nearly always there was clear blue sky and hot blazing sun, (perhaps this is one slight difference!) The place where we were going to work was near a small town called Junin, about an hour outside of the city. I'd received an email earlier with a map informing us exactly how we were to find their place from the bus terminal. I figured that a sure way to find it easily would be to show the bus driver the map, pointing to their housing, saying, “we want to go here.” The was a wee bit more to it than that, but eventually the driver confirmed with me that he did know this place, and that he would let me know as we approached it.


The directions that she gave me said that it was about 45mins to an hour on a bus. As we were going along I was trying to orientate myself with the map, but gave up in the end, insisting that I really had no clue where we were. Eventually the bus driver called me up, signaling that we were approaching the stop off point. I stood there ready to get off, but the bus driver then just gave me a confused look, saying to me “there was the cemetery but I can't find the street that you want.” (the cemetery was a land mark on the map which was close to where they lived. Before we knew it we had arrived in Junin, completely missing the place that we wanted to be at. Junin was about 11km past where we wanted to go so it wasn't exactly a convenient place to end up. After dropping us off in the square, the driver said to me that my best bet would be to go and talk to the police and that they'd be able to help me get where I wanted to go.

Despite what people had told me about the police here in Argentina, I once again my experience to be very helpful and positive. I explained to the officer what had happened, and showed him the map where we wanted to be. He then said that there was going to be a bus passing by soon which would be passing by exactly where we wanted to go. He even went out of the way to show us exactly where the bus passed, the got another police officer to wait with us she could explain the the driver exactly where we wanted to go. With this help we were informed exactly upon arrival at our destination. As we were finally walking down the street to where we wanted to go I wondered exactly what we were getting ourselves into, but I was also very curious as to what exactly this experience was going to come to, as I still really had no idea. As I was starting to wonder exactly which one their house mite be we were greeted by a friendly sounding voice, and three dogs whom were also eager to get to know the new guests. Hugo and Silvana were the couple. They were working on a piece of land through the methods of permaculture, with the intentions in mind to eventually make it self sustainable, taking minimal from the earth, and then returning it back where ever possible.

We were greeted in true Argentinian fashion, with mate and tortitas. The mate was as I explained it in my last blog. Tortitas are another distinctive food that come of of the culture. They are small flat breads, some of which have a slightly salty taste. The closest thing I could compare them to back at home would be scones. This is a custom that we very became accustomed to. Every morning we'd have toasted tortitas for breakfast, then every morning after a few hours of work when they got the daily delivery of fresh bread we'd once again stop for the usual mate break. I knew straight away that I'd have a great time for our two week stay at this place. It was a great opportunity to not only get to know the rural aspects of Argentinian culture, but also to learn a great deal about living in a way which consumes a lot less energy and relies a lot less on outside resources. They spoke good English so it also made it a good place for an exchange. I'd practice Spanish as they'd correct my mistakes, while they'd speak English to me.

The first thing that I learnt about permaculture after our introduction, was how mud can be used as a renewable building material. The first part of the process was the preparation of the mud. The four ingredients were dirt, water, chopped up dried grass, and horse shit. It was our job to walk all over the mud, getting everything all mixed in so it could be used for application later on. It was truly getting our hands dirty, but it felt good to be doing some sort of work, and although the thought of mixing shit into mud with my feet didn't appeal to me to much at first, it soon became a fun task. After that we were shown the correct way to layer the mud onto the wall. A mud wall is made of many layers of mud, each layer with a different combination on ingredients, each serving a different purpose. Most of the work we were doing was inside which was just as well, the heat was relentless, and seemed to suck the energy out of me every time I went outside. We carried on working with this throughout the first few days of our stay. Some of the other tasks that I was assigned to included building a fence out of recycled materials, cleaning out beehives, and plating cactus’s.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about my stay here was the change to the simple way of living. Every morning after waking up we'd have toasted tortitas with jam, accompanied with tea. Whenever we sat together to eat or take a break, it would always be accompanied by long interesting talks, with all of us practicing each others language, learning new words off each other. After about two hours of working we'd have our first break, which was often termed “the mate break.” (any excuse to stop and drink a mate here is always welcomed!) There was always a big cooked lunch every day, full of organic vegetables and fresh bread. Possibly the best thing was the standard siesta that followed. The style of working here is very different to back at home. Rather than working less time with less breaks, here is a very long work day, but with many breaks during the day, however the long daylight hours meant that I could still enjoy the day a wee bit, even though we often worked through until 8pm.

Working for two weeks was a great way to break up the trip a wee bit, and it also gave me a wee bit of a chance to catch up on my budget. During my time I felt like I was really able to have a true experience on the lifestyle of a small Argentinian town. On our final night we were lucky enough to be able to share an asado. As usual there was a huge amount of meat, and a lot of red wine, but it made for a great night. In return for putting of the asado I offered to perform a concert, playing some of my original music for the first time. I'd really enjoyed my time over the two weeks, but one thing I was looking forward to was being able to sleep without mosquitos buzzing all around my ear. In the whole time during my stay I would have been lucky if I had four decent nights sleep. We were due to go and stay at a party hostel for a couple of nights so I was hardly going to catch up either.

After saying goodbye to our new found close friends we made our way to the road to catch the bus back to Mendoza. The town that we were near was not very far away from the city, but the buses took well over an hour to reach central city. As we were waiting I noticed that there was a lot of traffic so decided to have a go at sticking my thumb out to catch a ride off one of the locals. It only took five minutes and two attempts before a man pulled over his truck. He said that he was going to small town on the way but he could drop us off there and then from there we could find another ride to Mendoza. We decided to give it a go, so we threw our bags on the back of the truck and jumped in. As usual, the guy was interested in where we were from, how long we were traveling, and how we were able to afford it (that one always comes out eventually!) Halfway through the ride he said to us, “ahh well I could probably actually take you all the way to Mendoza, it's not that much further.” He then went half an hour out of his way to take us all the way to the center of Mendoza city. Not only did it save us a wee bit of money, but also half an hour in time. Our main reason for staying in Mendoza was to get to know the city a wee bit, and also to meet a few people to do some trekking with. During our work Hugo had explained a trek in the mountains that only local people knew about. It was quite an explanation on how to get there, and to assist us had drew a simple map with a few notes each step of the way. It sounded like a true adventure so we were both excited to meet a couple of people and make the trip with them.

After a big walk around the city to try and find a cheap hostel we settled on a place that seemed to have a good vibe, then I immediately went about trying to find some people who may be keen to go on a hike with us. We also hadn't been living with Argentinians for over three weeks now so it was nice to meet some other travelers for a bit of a contrast. One of the things that I really liked about the hostel was the fact that each night it had some sort of theme. One of these included a night which was labeled as “ the asado night with free tequila” it sounded like it would be worth the money, so I signed up and went along. When we arrived at the place the sign conveniently changed from “free tequila” to “free tequila from 11 – 11.30pm.” This wasn't the only catch either, if you wanted to take a drink of tequila you had to tilt your head over the bar as they poured it directly into your mouth. You can imagine the scene. I had a few turns, but after filling my stomach up with excessive amounts of meat, it didn't react particularly well to the tequila.

A couple of days was more than enough for me to get a wee bit of partying done, and through that time we also met a couple of who people whom were interested in joining us for the hike. There were now four of us, which made an ideal number for the hike. On the morning of our departure we had a mad rush buying last minute supplies and picking up our tent for hire. It was cutting time very finely, arriving at the terminal with not one minute more to spare. It seemed that in Mendoza the one time that you needed a taxi asap was also the one time that they happened to be busy, or they just didn't feel like stopping. The first step of our adventure was to take a bus ride to a small town from which we were to start the hike from. It was yet another one of those trips where we really didn't have much of an idea as to what we should be expecting.

When we arrived in the town I realized that really was a small town. The only shop open in the whole town when we arrived was a small restaurant. When we showed the guy our basic map, at first he gave us a confused look, saying, “I think you've come to the wrong place, this map doesn't look familiar at all.” He then studied it for a while and finally realized where exactly it was that we were wanting to go hiking. It was about 5.30pm and he told us that we had about three and a half hours to our first camp site. The second day involved climbing up to the top of a saddle, going around a traverse, the climbing all the way to a hut where we'd spend the second night. The third day was the return all the way back to the town. None of us really had a clue as to how long it would take us to the first camp site that night. We'd met several people whom had all told us completely different things. Hugo wrote on the map two hours, a guy on the bus told me four or five hours, and a guy we met on the track on the way said that we still had another three hours to go (after we'd been walking for an hour already.”) We had decided that if we still hadn't found the campsite by eight o'clock that we'd just set up camp wherever we were, but in the end the three hour prediction turned out to be the most accurate and arrived in time with plenty of daylight to spare to set up our tents and even explore the surrounding areas a little bit. This day had been fairly straight forward, but day two was set to be the most challenging day. The map was very vague, pointing out a few obvious land marks that would supposedly lead us the way.

Day two began with a late start, but by nine we had finally left and the next step was to find something resembling a saddle, which was meant to our first point of orientation. Once we reached to top of the saddle we were meant to find a big pile of rocks, and from there the path was meant to be shown with other small rock piles. It took us a wee while to come to a decision as to where exactly the saddle was that we were supposed to climb. The camp site was in a valley so there were several places that slightly resembled a saddle like figure, but in the end we settled on one in hopes that we wouldn't have to climb all the way back down. Once we got to the top we were unable to see anything that looked like a man made rock pile, so we had another group meeting to decide where exactly we were going to go. We figured that maybe we'd come up the wrong end of the saddle, and we mite find the pile if we carried on up to the other side. After about 20mins of wondering if this trip was a good idea we finally came to the big man made rock pile which was one of the key land mark points on the map. It was a great confidence boost to know that at least we'd made this decision correctly. Hugo had explained to us that after this point it was fairly straight forward, simply a matte of following the rock piles until we reached the refugio, (hut.)

Luckily the small rock piles were in fact pretty obvious from this point, which made the pass over the traverse pretty straight forward direction wise, but the path was very steep and rocky. That coupled with the altitude made it a very challenging walk, requiring breaks every twenty minutes to half an hour. We were very lucky on this day. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and from the top of the traverse we were able to see a view that stretched all the way to the horizon. The view revealed lakes, mountain peaks, and condors, which all seemed to be hidden away from the bottom of the valley. (This was another situation where my camera ran out of batteries so once again I'm short of photos from the second day onwards.) The second big landmark that we were looking out for was a second campsite. This wasn't to far away from the hut , so it was going to be our point of reference that we were on the right track. As we approached the point of the map where it specified the campsite we couldn't find anything but rocky slops which didn't exactly look ideal for camping. We carried on anyway, by now we were on our way up a valley on our final stretch to the hut. At this point the sun was unbearably hot with no shade to be seen anywhere, the track was so loose and steep that it felt like we went back two steps with every step we took forward, and my pack by now felt like it weighed 100kg.

After about two hours of climbing up the valley we saw something that looked like maybe it mite be the hut that we were so disparately hoping for. It was very far in the distance, but it still gave us some sense of hope that maybe we'd be arriving soon. As we got closer our hope was crushed, as we realized it was nothing more than a pile of rocks which just happened to sit in a very deceptive way. Even though it wasn't the hut that we were looking for, we still took the opportunity to take a well needed break. All I wanted to do at this stage was go to sleep. The sun had drained every bit of energy out of me, and we really had no idea where we were, or even if we were anywhere close to the hut. We still hadn't seen a campsite so we were wondering if we'd just passed it by without noticing, or if we'd taken a wrong turn somewhere and taken a completely wrong direction. The only option we had from here was just to keep walking in the general direction of where we thought it mite be. Eventually we saw something that resembled a man made object. It was hard to pick out exactly what it was, but it looked like an areal of some sort, which gave us the sign that there surely must be something else there. After our last incident with the rocks I was careful not to give myself false hope, so I decided that I wouldn't make any conclusions for myself until I could see 100% that it was for sure the hut. As we climbed over the hill I was me by a feeling of immense relief as I saw the shape of a small building reveal itself in front of me. I was beginning to form some pretty strong doubts in my head, but all that quickly subsided when I was finally able to relax, knowing that we'd arrived. The day hadn't been a really long day, but the six hours in total had all been spent doing very steep climbing in the very hot sun, which made it one of the most difficult days trekking that I'd done on this trip.

As soon as we arrived I lay straight down on the bed and went straight asleep. I didn't get to explore around the hut very much, because I didn't have any energy at all to do so. The rest of the night was spent sleeping, only getting up briefly to have something to eat. I realized at that point that the sun had done more to me than just draining my energy. As the headache started kicking in I realized that I'd suffered a minor case of sun stroke. I decided to go to bed early, hoping that a good nights sleep would restore my body back to what it was. As I awoke early the following morning I realized that my body was anything but restored back to what it was. My stomach was making very strange noises and the first thing in my mind as I woke up was “you need to go to the toilet right now!” I quickly rumbled through my bag to find my toilet paper, then I rushed outside to find a rock to hide behind while I let the pressure off a wee bit. I'd had the shits a couple of times on this trip already, but I could never have asked for a worse place than at the top on a mountain. By 9am I'd already gone to the toilet three times, and the others kindly offered to let me rest for another hour or two before we left, insisting that we still have plenty of time go get back before the final bus. I tried to sleep if off for a couple of hours, but it didn't really get any better, instead it felt like I had acid in my stomach, and that every time I put food in my stomach it wanted to get rid of it faster than it went in.

After a short sleep the inevitable time came when we had to start making a move, and I just had to have a go and see how it went. Luckily Anni had a special pill that she gave me. Normally I don't like taking pills when I'm sick but this was one circumstance where I was willing to try anything. After one last dash out to my hiding spot we started out I didn't feel to bad, I just took my time and I was getting down alright. This didn't last to long, every step down seemed to shake up my stomach that little bit more, making it more and more unsettled the further down I went. Eventually it got to the point where I was having to stop every ten minutes to let my stomach settle a wee bit. I was also made hard by the fact that my body didn't appear to retain any of the energy that it had lost in the previous day. After about an hour and a half it got to the point where I was really struggling to go any further, and by this stage the pill still hadn't worked any of its magic on me. It was at this point where Matthais offered to carry my pack for me. The other girls divided up some of my things between themselves to make it a bit lighter, then Matthais went about climbing down the steep, rocky, narrow path with his back on his back, and mine strapped around the front. This helped a lot, but I was still lagging behind as I slowly made my way down. After about three hours the pill finally started kicking in, and I was finally starting to feel normal again.

By the time we'd finished the most difficult part of the climb my stomach had finally started to settle and I was now able to fart without the fear of shitting my pants. The day had passed by pretty quickly and we were now wondering if we were going to make it back in time for the final bus. At this part of the day everyone was really starting to feel the tole of a difficult two days of hiking and we were really making our way back quite slowly. We all decided that it would be nice to make it back in time for the bus, but if we didn't it wouldn't be a problem if we had to stay. When we got back to the starting point of the trek we still had a couple of minutes to spare before the bus was due to arrive so we made one final dash to the bus stop hoping that we'd get there just in time to jump on board.

We got to the stop pretty quickly, but after a one and a half hour wait we were beginning to wonder that maybe we did in fact miss it. Just when we were really beginning to wonder, a man pulled up in a truck and told us that it was some public holiday here at the moment, and the the usual bus schedule isn't running. Apparently there was still one bus due to pass by, but no one really had a clue as to what time. Eventually after a two hour wait the bus came through and we were on the bus back to Mendoza. I was happy with the adventure that we went on, even though the start of the third wasn't one of the most enjoyable times of my life. We had been lucky to have perfect panorama views, also the privilege of seeing a couple of condors. The plan here was just relax in Mendoza for a couple more days before having another go at hitchhiking in the south.

Mendoza ended up being one of my favorite cities on my trip. It had a big city feel, but also seemed to have a very relaxed energy about it. It had several impressive plazas, a huge park, and all the streets were lined with big old trees. Eventually I'd spent three weeks in the region of Mendoza so I was well due for a new place. Some of the locals had told me that the nearby town of San Rafael was also a nice places , with some good areas for camping. We decided that it would be a nice place to spend a couple of days. One of the great things about this area was the canyon, which was filled with great areas for camping. We found a campground which had been recommended by a local and spend a few days camping by the river. From here we decided that we would have a go at hitchhiking as far in the direction of Neuquen as we could. A man at the campground recommended to us that we should first take a bus from San Rafael to and small town called General Alvear. He said that this was a very small town and a good place to start hitchhiking from.

It was only a short bus ride to General Alvear before we were about to embark on our first hitchhiking adventure of the south. First priority was to buy some snacks for the long waits, then the second priority was to find out where the road was that went in the direction of Neuquen. I thought a good person to ask would be someone from the bus terminal, so I went into one o the offices and explained that we were wanting to hitchhike, and therefore we were looking for the best place in town to wait from. He gave me these crazy directions which I understood fine, but still had an intuitive sense that they were going to lead us in the completely wrong direction. As we made our way in that general direction I thought for sure that this was the wrong direction, so we went in to a bakery and asked again. Sure enough, the guy had given us the directions for anywhere but where I had asked him. Luckily it was easy to find where we wanted to go, and after a brief walk we'd arrived in the outskirts of the town, ready to find a ride.

As we were waiting there we were approached several times by police officers. At first I thought they were going to try and negotiate some sort of bribe out of me, but it turned out they'd just come over for a friendly chat, asking us where we were from, what we were up to, and where we were wanting to go. They also looked at us a bit funny, wondering why we were waiting in this heat. Two long hours had passed by and we were beginning to think of other options if we wouldn't be able to find a ride. Just as we were talking about the idea of taking a night bus, a truck pulled up. The back was filled up with hay bails, and inside were three young looking people. I spoke to the guy who was driving and told him that we were looking at getting to Neuquen (over 400km away,) but I also said that first we were aiming to reach Santa Isabel first (150km.) He told us that they lived on a farm not so far away, and that they could drop us off at the police checkpoint on the boarder of the next province, which wasn't to far away from Santa Isabel. He also said that it should be easy to find a ride there because all the cars have to slow down to almost stopping, making it more likely that they'll pull over. We started off the ride on the back of the truck, sitting amongst the hay bails, but pretty quickly we were covered in hay, so we all squeezed into the back seat together. They were all around the age of 19 and 20 and were friends from the community. The ride went for about an hour and during the ride we got to know a lot about each others culture. As they dropped us off at the checkpoint it was yet another moment in the trip where we were saying goodbye to people that it seemed we got to know so well in such a small space of time.


The police checkpoint turned out to be a great place to hitchhike, as the others had told us. I spoke to the man working there and he said to me that our best bet would be to take a big cargo truck because they will be passing through all the way down to Neuquen. The problem with that was that they don't pass through until later in the evening, and it was now only about 4pm. We had a nice shady spot to wait, then Anni and I took turns to stand for a while and stick out our thumb. After a couple more hours waiting a man pulled up, once again a truck and told us that he'll be passing through the town of Santa Isabel. It was perfect for us, and we got to ride on the back of a truck through Patagonia for the remainder of the journey. It was the ultimate feeling of adventure and we raced down the highway, leaving every car in front of us to fade behind. I had no idea how fast this guy was going, but was fun sitting on the back. We arrived in Santa Isabel in a lot shorter time than I thought we would, and the town was tiny, with not much more than a few corner stores and a small bus terminal. After he dropped us off there we tried to find out some information about buses, but the office we needed wasn't open until ten in the evening. The heat from the sun at this stage was also so hot that we decided that we'd catch a bus from here to Neuquen.

The wait lasted for ever, but eventually the office was open and I was finally able to ask about a night bus passing through to Neuquen. The lady said to me that there was a bus passing through this evening, but that it wouldn't be passing by until 2.45am, (it was only about 10.15pm at this point.) Being our only option, we tried to find an interesting way to pass the painfully long wait. For a while I read, for a while I listened to music, and I even managed to sleep for a while, but nothing seemed to make the time pass quickly. I slept for a while just before the bus arrived, thinking that I'd be able to sleep properly when the bus arrived. But as we got on the bus I learned quickly that this wasn't going to be a smooth bus ride. A man about two seats behind me was snoring so loud that even the bus driver was probably getting bothered by him. The couple beside me also decided that even though it was three in the morning, they'd still have they big social catch up, informing everyone else close to them at the same time. There are not too many things that really wind me up, but wanting to sleep and being kept awake is defiantly something that wore my patience pretty thing. In the end I was able to sleep, but only because my eyes couldn't possibly stay awake for any longer.

It only seemed like I'd been sleeping for ten minutes before I was awoken by the arrival at the Neuquen bus terminal. We had organized to couchsurf here, but we still didn't exactly know whom we were going to stay with. Anni had contacted two people and made requests to stay at their couch, but no conclusion had been made yet as to whom exactly we were going to stay with. As we sat in the terminal we did some last minute planning to try and find a place where we could stay. After some last minute emails we received a phone call from Nico. He told us that we could stay at his house, but we had to wait until 6.30pm this evening for him to finish his work. It worked out well because the other girl called and offered to show us around for the afternoon until we were ready to go to Nico's house. As Valentina and I met and got to know each other, I found out that she was a singer, and frequently did gigs here in the city. I told her that I was also a musician, and that I was always looking for opportunities to perform my music. She said that if I stayed in Neuquen for a while that she would give me an opportunity to perform at one of her gigs. I'd already bought my ticket to San Martin for the following day, but now I was thinking that maybe I'll stay for a wee bit longer. By that evening I'd made up my mind that I was going to refund my ticket and stay in Neuquen to make use of some musical opportunities. Anni decided that she would carry on to San Martin, so from the following day I was once again traveling solo.

Staying at Nicos house was a great way to get to know some more of the Argentinian culture. He was new to this city as well, so the chance to go out and meet people was gladly taken up by the two of us. A couple of nights later I went to a Brazilian bar where Valentina was performing. Originally I was going to get up and do a wee duet with her for one song, but she ended up just saying to me, “ahh just get up and play your own songs for a while.” When I got up I decided that I'd give them a taste of New Zealand, playing “Loyal,” then I carried on playing my originals. Throughout my time there I also got to see Tango performed for the first time, and also went to a salsa bar, but both times I was content to stick to a spectators roll. I also learned the correct way to prepare a mate, and a great new way to prepare a huge cut of meat. As usual the time disappeared and already Christmas was approaching. I thought about a few options, and in the end decided that Bariloche would be the place to celebrate. After one last night out in the city I forced myself out of bed for the early bus and made my way to my first destination of Patagonia.

Ok, well I'm caught up again now, from now on maybe I can make them a wee bit shorter and more frequent, but my habit thus far has been leave it until its to late so I don't know whether or not that idea will manifest, we'll see!

Drinking Fernet and Eating Empanadas - Learning the fundamentals of Argentinian culture

After a long break from my blog I've finally decided to get back into it and somewhat update things. Because of the fact that I got so far behind I've decided to miss out the last part of my Bolivian section. It involved a very fascinating three day trip through the salt flats from a town called Uyuni, but I'll just post the photos up and then you can get a pretty good idea on what that was like. I'm going to start this off with my arrival from the Bolivian border town of Yacuiba, into my first taste of Argentina in the town of Pocitos. I'm going to warn you in advance that these posts will be long reads, but I'm hoping that next year I can keep them more frequent and a wee bit shorter.... but we'll see.


By the time I'd spent a few days in Yacuiba I was well and truly ready for a new country and a new culture. Bolivia had been very cheap and a great adventure, but at times very exhausting also. After taking my final taxi in Bolivia I arrived at the border. As I got my final exit stamp out of Bolivia there was only a small bridge separating me from the two countries. When I arrived I had to wait a bit for my visa entry, then as my bags were searched I was exposed to the Argentinian accent for the first time. As my bags passed through the scanner the security guard mumbled something at me so fast that I could barely pick a word. I asked him if he could please repeat it a wee bit slower so I could understand. He then repeated the exact phrase at the exact same speed. I gave up after the third time and said to him "no entiendo" (I don't understand.) Eventually I was able to understand that he was asking about one of the unusual pieces of recording equipment that I had. I thought my Spanish was coming along nicely before this encounter but after this it made me realize that maybe Argentina will pose me a new challenge with it.

I didn't intend on hanging around in Pocitos for very long. I had decided to cross the border early to give myself enough time to catch a bus to Jujuy by the late afternoon. As I was walking through the town to the bus terminal I noticed that it was very similar to Bolivia, both the people and the town itself were clearly influenced by the culture of their close neighbors. When I arrived at the terminal I was given my first reality check on how much more expensive Argentina was going to be. The buses up until now had been very cheap, normally between $1 - 2 per hour. But here the cheapest I was able to find was three times as expensive. The cheapest one didn't leave until four hours after I arrived in the terminal so I was once again forced to spend some patient hours waiting in the terminal. I tried to have a conversation with a shop keeper, but once again ended up being left with nothing but a confused face, trying to somehow become accustomed to the strange accent.

The time flew by quickly and finally I was on the bus and ready to head to my first Argentinian city, Jujuy. This was scheduled to take about seven hours so I was expecting that I'd arrive by the early evening. It wasn't long into the bus ride when I learnt that in Argentina they take a few more security precautions around the boarders than in some of their other close and distant neighbors. After about ten minutes into the ride we came across our first security check. There were four guards standing on the side of the road in their army outfit, one of then putting out their hand as we approached, signaling for the bus to pull over. One of them then came of to the bus and informed us all the we had to get off the bus and take all our things outside with us. When we stepped off the bus we also had to grab our big luggage to get searched.

Once we were all off two guys with mirrors and torches entered the bus to search it over for any prohibited items. Outside the bus we had to make two lines, one for the men and the other for the women. It was the first time that I'd been in a situation like this so I was a wee bit curious as to what would happen. The guards all looked very serious and didn't really look like they were to interested in conversation. But as I gave the guard my passport he looked me and said "ohhh kiwi ay" I laughed and said "ohh so you know a bit about New Zealand?" he smiled and said "yes you guys are fanatical about rugby there, you have Jonah Lomu." It was obvious that he hadn't been following the rugby in recent years. It was also clear that they weren’t so concerned about the tourists. He checked through the first couple of things that were in my bag, then gave me the nod and told me to go and wait in the other line. About forty minutes later we were finally finished and on our way again. That same bus ride later turned in to what seemed like the never ending bus ride. There were two more stops where we had to repeat the same process, then one more check later on in which only the bus was searched. The standard seven hour ride to Jujuy turned out to be about ten and a half hours.

As I walked around Jujuy the next day, the sight of Mcdonalds restaurants, expensive clothing shops, and cafes selling espresso coffee reminded me of home. Even though I still had the sense of being in a distinctly different culture, at the same time I felt I'd somewhat come back into civilization again. The downside to that was that everything had also become a lot more expensive. I'd been given a guide book from 2008, but since then there has been so much inflation that some things have doubled in priced. I got a wee bit of a shock when my hostel was 50% more than what I was expecting, so I decided after a couple of nights that it was time to put my tent to use again. I met two Canadian cyclists from the hostel who had a tent also, who decided to join me. We'd been recommended a good place about 40mins outside of Jujuy which had hot thermals and places to camp. When we got there we realized that the thermal hot springs were in fact part of an expensive hotel and were really nothing more than a spa, so we ended up just going to a more low budget outdoor park which had a pool. When I asked the lady if we could camp there she said that they didn't allow it, but it would be fine if I camped on the side of the road. For two nights I had a free spot next to a river with an outlook over the Northern Andes. Two days gave me enough time to plan my next move. I had a week before I needed to be in Salta, so I decided to check out some of the small towns north of the city.

I chose to base myself in a small town called Tilcara, which was about a two hour bus ride from Jujuy. I didn't really know anything about the place, the reason I chose Tilcara was because that it looked big enough to be interesting, but at the same time small enough to be nice and chilled out. I had only been in Argentina for around a week by this stage, so I was still trying to figure exactly was "cheap" or "expensive." After getting dropped off in the small terminal I began my wonder through the town to find a cheap hostel option. The first one I found had labeled itself as a hostel, but when I inquired about a price the cheapest room was about $56 NZ. It quickly became apparent to me that maybe this wasn't exactly the most ideal location for a tight budgeted backpacker. As I carried on down the road I saw a rough looking sign with "Burrito Hostel 400m" written on it, "surely this couldn't be anything to flash" I thought to myself.

As soon as I entered the door I realized that it was exactly what I was looking for. It reminded me of an old student flat I used to live in, dirty dishes were scattered all over the kitchen bench, and everywhere you looked there seemed to be some sort of clutter lying around. Outside there was a big area for asados and a big sunny area with a hammock. The owner of the hostel had one of the most difficult Spanish accents that I'd ever heard. I could barely understand him, but eventually I managed to get the price out of him, and communicate to him that I didn't really know how many nights I was going to stay. He was one of the most relaxed hostel owners I'd ever seen, (or maybe lazy is a better word for it.) It wouldn't be uncommon for people to leave, then he wouldn't even bother to make the beds. Some of the rooms were empty, yet most of the beds always looked like they were occupied. Having said this, his unique nature made for an interesting stay.

A couple of nights into the stay me and a couple of others decided to have a go at doing the almighty Argentinian Asado. I really had no idea how to go about it, and I had no choice because being the only male it was up to me to prove myself on the grill, this night the hostel owner just so happened to be away as well so I was left to some how figure it our for myself. This is a whole different thing to our BBQs back at home. In New Zealand all it takes is lighting a flame to the gas, then just standing around with a beer in your hand, making sure you turn the meat every now and again. The Argentinian method however is a whole science on it's own. The two different types of fuel they use are wood, or carbon. This place didn't really have any wood, so the common technique was with the carbon. After buying all the ingredients from the local store the time had come to give it a go. There was no wood at all so I really didn't know about going about getting these coals hot enough to cook some food over. There was barely even enough paper there to start a fire. I scrunched it all up the draped a few pieces of coal over it in hope that it mite get a bit heat into them, but in no time all the paper was burnt out and the coals barely looked like they'd been touched by any heat at all. I tried to think how I'd find more paper, then I remembered that I had some old Spanish notes which I'd pretty much finished with. After several more unsuccessful attempts I said to one of the girls (who had previously seen how this was done,) "I'm running out of paper, there is no wood, and these coals are so cold that I cold put them back in the paper bag and it probably wouldn't lite on fire." After some thinking we decided that maybe if we tried some petrol, that mite get some heat into them. All this did was made a huge flame for a little while, then just made the whole area stink like petrol. By this stage the girls had prepared all the food for the grill and the pressure was really building to redeem this failure first attempt. Just when I was on the brink of giving up, the hostel owner arrived back. I did my best to explain to him the problem and he just said to me, "ohh you need a lot more carbon than that, and also more paper." After retrieving him what he had requested, he proceeded to show me the way in which you do it properly. The first thing I'd done wrong was trying to light the fire and then put the coals on top. He told me that I needed to put them on top of the grill, then light the fire underneath, heating them from below. I thought that now he was here that he'd take over and I could just observe, but after explaining it to me in his crazy Spanish he said to me "cool, now you can carry on and finish it." Although we now had hot coals, it didn't really turn the whole thing into a success. After about a four or five hour wait we were finally able to have our dinner and about 11.30. It tasted pretty good in the end, but I decided that the next few times I would be the observer rather than the cook.

After my terrible failure on the grill I had a chance to redeem myself a few nights later when a local musician offered me a gig with him. He was friends with the hostel owner and had come over the night of the asado for a catch up. After we each played a couple of songs he said to me, "hey I'm playing in a bar tomorrow night, you can come and play a set if you want." (This guy spoke so fast that I was never able to understand anything he said, I always needed someone to translate for me!) I'd written a few of my own songs by this stage so I was eager to take the opportunity to jump behind a mic and have a go. When I turned up the following night the place was pretty quiet, but I was happy to play my first gig to a quite, yet receptive audience. As I waited for my turn to play I pondered over what I was going to play. I ended up deciding that the best thing would be just to decide when I get up there. Eventually the time came, and before I knew it, for the first time in my life I was sitting on a stage with a mic in front of me, about to perform the play my own original music. I'd performed many gigs and sang to many people before this, but this experience was very unique. Not knowing the feedback that you'll receive from your original music certainly brings up a sense of vulnerability, but as soon as I began playing I immediately relaxed and enjoyed the experience, it was also to my advantage that nearly all the audience consisted of Argentinians, which meant they were unable to understand what I was singing about anyway. Despite this they all gave me a great reception after wards, and through this performance I was even offered another one the following night.

My time in Tilcara had come to pass very quickly. When you get to know people its very easy to just pass up a week somewhere before even realizing it. I perhaps would have stayed longer in this place, but I had arranged a time to meet Andrea in Salta, so the inevitable time eventually came, and I was on my way to Salta. I only managed to find a later afternoon bus that left, and it was due to arrive in Salta until about 9.30pm, but I figured it would still be OK to have a go a pitching a tent at this hour. Once again however to bus ride was delayed with police searches, and it wasn't until about 11pm that we arrived. As I arrived at the terminal my next plan was to take a taxi to a camp ground where Andrea’s tour group was supposedly camping, and have a go at pitching my tent in the dark. After waiting outside the terminal for ten minutes without seeing a free taxi I decided to walk down the street for a bit until I found one. As the driver drove past various places he pointed out each place that I mustn’t walk at night because of almost certain risks of being mugged, then afterward he said to me, "but Salta really is a great city, we have the best wine, and some beautiful places to visit."

As I got all my gear out of the taxi I was relieved that I could finally just relax for a wee while.... well so i thought. As I was approaching the gate of the campground the guys were all looking at me like I was a complete idiot. I told them that my sister was staying here with a big tour group and that I've come to join the group for a couple of days. The guy then looked at me and said "you can't stay here at the moment, the campground is closed until mid December." I was very confused because I'd found this place on the internet and there had been no information about it on there, nor did the taxi driver mention anything when I told him that this is where I wanted to stay. At 11.30pm I couldn't really be bothered searching for another hostel but at this point I really wasn't left with many options, so I jumped into another taxi and went nearly straight back to where I'd come from. As this was meant to be the meeting point for my sister and I, I had no idea as to how exactly I was going to go about finding her now, not having a cell phone was certainly going to make things difficult.

Luckily the hostel I found had wifi, so the following day we were able to have a brief conversation on facebook to organize a new meeting place. It turned out that they had arrived in Salta after me, and had come across the same issue, turning up at the camp ground, only to find that it was closed. When we met I jumped into their luxury tour bus and went with them to find a new campground to stay at for a couple of days. Andrea was traveling in the form of an organized tour group, so it was very interesting for me to see the contrast of this way of travel, compared to independent travel. It was also nice to have to company of a big group for a few days after traveling solo for a wee while. With the recommendation of the driver, we were taken to a steak restaurant, which served the biggest and best tasting steak that I've ever eaten. (If you like meat, you haven’t truly enjoyed life fully until you experience an Argentinian steak!) After the meal we all decided that it would be a good idea to go out to the town and have a couple of drinks together. I managed to drag everyone to a karaoke bar at the beginning, then after a while when we'd all had enough drinks we were all ready for the dance floor, after searching the street for a good looking bar, we finally found a place that looked popular. The music was of course the typical reggaton. Even though its far from my musical choice, its a lot easier to blend in on the dance floor as opposed to salsa or meringue, where unless you're one of the locals (many of whom look like they learnt to dance before they learnt to walk!), you just have to do your best to shuffle your feet around and move your hips, pertending that you at least have a vague idea on what you're doing. Later that night I met a local guy and he was interested in my travels. I'm always glad to have conversations in Spanish because its good practice, so I asked him if he wanted to go outside to have a yarn. I told him all about my travels, and he told me a bit about the culture of Argentina. The time passed by pretty quick and eventually I got to the point where I thought I better go and find everyone again.

As I scanned the entire night club I couldn't find anyone anywhere. I started getting a wee bit worried because I had no idea where the campground was that we were staying at or even a slight clue as to the name of it. All I knew was that it was about 20mins out of town. As I kept looking around I found the guy that I'd had a conversation with and I asked him if he had seen anyone from my group, explaining the whole situation to him. We had a look around and he said to me, "don't worry, we can help you find them. If you don't find them then you can stay at my place and sort it our tomorrow." I said to him that I'd rather try and sort it out tonight, so he offered for me to jump in his car and we'd have a look around. Luckily he was pretty sober, but the rest of the guys in the car were far from that. As we drove around Salta I really had no idea as to how exactly this was going to help in finding anyone. Eventually at about 5am he drove me to the police tourism office and said, "here you can speak to the police, they know of the camping areas around here so they can help you find where you need to go." I gratefully said thank you and made my way into the police office, wondering if they would really be able to help me here.

There were two people working in the office, and of course they didn't speak a word of English. At 5 in the morning it was defiantly a bit more effort to get my point across, but never the less I was able to tell them my situation, but then they said to me, "we aren’t the tourist police, they don't arrive here until 8am, so if you want you can wait here for them to arrive you can." I was meant to meet everyone at the campsite at nine to go on a horse trek for the day, but I realized when they told me that, that I was almost certainly going to miss that. To my surprise the police were actually very friendly. They were curious about New Zealand culture, and why I was traveling, and they occasionally offered me water, or tea. The three hour wait also gave me a lot of time to look at a map of Salta to try and recover anything in my mind that mite help me remember where the site was, but nothing at all came up. When the tourist police finally arrived I once again explained my situation to them. They said that there were many many camp grounds around Salta, and because of the fact that I couldn't even give them a direction, it made things a lot more difficult for them. They made a list of over ten campgrounds, and began calling each one, asking if there was a big tour group staying there with a big yellow bus in their area. An hour went by and the same answer came up every time... no. What made matters worse, was that it was a Sunday, and in Argentina that means that absolutely nothing is open, and the internet was down in the office, so we had no access to the internet. I then realized that Andrea had given me the cell number of her friend in one of her emails. Even though she specifically said you can't call this number, I figured if I can get on the internet and find it, I could just have a go anyway. After explaining this to them they took me to another office where I was able to borrow their internet to recover the phone number. I tried a couple of times and luckily managed to get through. At about 10am I was finally able to track down the directions to where we were all camping, it turned out to be pretty much the opposite direction to where they had been looking. By the time I got back I'd of course missed out on the horse trek, but I was so far behind of sleep that I spent the whole day sleeping anyway so it didn't really matter to much.

As usual the three days camping went by like nothing and once again I was in the position where I had to decide where I wanted to go next. I had about three days before I was meeting a friend in Cordoba, so I decided to go to the town of Cafayate for a couple of days. A touristy place famous for its wine and beautiful surroundings. I managed to find a surprisingly cheap hostel there which had a good outdoor area to spend a few days relaxing and writing some music. On my final night we also had an asado. This time I was happy to watch someone who knew what they were doing do the job. It was a great social atmosphere with people from France, Irland, and of course Argentina. An essential thing to accompany an asado is of course red wine, so after filling my stomach with the two I was well and truly ready for my 17 hours of bus travel which was to begin at 1.45am. I wasn't able to find a bus which went directly to Cordoba from Cafayate, so I first had to take on to Tucuman, then from there find one that would take me the rest of the way. The first ride to Cordoba was about 7 hours. It worked out perfect, when I reached the terminal in Tucuman I was able to find one that left half an hour later, giving me enough time to have some breakfast and to stretch the legs before the next long haul. I was excited about Cordoba, here was going to be my first experience of couchsurfing, and I was also going to be meeting a friend of mine, Anni.

As I arrived in Cordoba I realized what people had meant when they told me that it's a huge city. The bus drove around suburbs for nearly an hour before it even arrived at the terminal. There was a university close to the city center so the city had a very alive buzz with young people wondering around everywhere. The local that we stayed with was called Emanuel. He lived in an apartment with his brother close to the city center. Staying in the house of a local person is a very different experience to the hostels. It was great to have someone show us around the city and give us some recommendations on some cool places to check out. His brother was also a chef, so one night he showed us how to cook empanadas. We were also introduced to a couple of other popular Argentinian customs including mate, and fernet. Mate is like a herbal tea but it is served and drank in a very particular way. Everyone drinks out of one cup called a mate. You drink from the cup with a thing called a "bombilla," which is basically similar to a metal straw, which has a filter at the bottom to filter out all the "yerba." This is passed around and everyone drinks out of the same mate. It is commonly drank with hot water, but there are many different ways in which you can have it, depending on your preference. Fernet is a strong alcoholic drink which is always mixed with coke and ice. It a very acquired taste, and when I first tried it I didn't like it to much, but it didn't take to long before I was enjoying it like the locals.

My stay in Cordoba was brief. After three days I felt that it was time to check out some of the nice surroundings. There was a national park near by which was meant to be a good place for viewing condors, which had a free area for camping. The map had mentioned this place as if there was a wee town there or something, but when the bus dropped us off in the middle of no where there was nothing more that a sign confirming that this was indeed the national park that we were looking for. After about a 500m walk we found the information office where we were informed that there were a couple of options for free camping, the catch was that we had to walk about another kilometer with all our gear. Eventually we got there and after setting up camp with a wee bit of time left in the day to go for a walk to the viewing platform for the condors. Turned out we did in fact see a couple, but they were flying so high that you couldn't really appreciate their huge size, and it also made it difficult to get a good photo. That night I also got to know what it was like to sleep in my tent during the rain for the first time. I seemed to handle it pretty well, apart from the fact that the vent on the back wasn't able to be shut properly caused me to think of a quick fix option. It turned out that the poncho that had been sitting in the bottom of my bag had a use after all. After a mad rush to fix the problem of course the rain stopped. Luckily the next day had enough sun to dry it all out before we left.

Eventually we'd passed enough time and we were due to be in Mendoza for our first experience of WWOFFing. The whole concept of this is that you work for however long, then instead of getting paid money, you get a free room and fed for free during your time. I was looking forward to a slight change of dynamic in my travels. I'd moved around quite a lot up until now so I was happy to settle down for a couple of weeks to do some work. Id heard mixed things about this. People had told me that it was very much determined by luck as to how your experience turns out. I had some very good luck when it came to finding the place, so I favored myself on perhaps finding more good luck once we arrived.