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.
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