Hosteria de las Nubes Salta

... a very nice piece of architecture, it's painted in a lovely baby pink!<br><br>The hostel was very nice, with a bar and pool and they also arranged excursions into the countryside around the city. I went on 2 excursions - first to the north and west following the route of the "Train to the Clouds" and then to Cachi, south west of the city. The first one was about 14 hours long and the distance we covered was around 570km! As you can imagine a fair portion of ...

... car arrived just after nine and it was alot better than I had hoped - a VW Gol with CD/mp3 reader, air con etc - which would prove to make our journey alot more comfortable. We named him Carlos. After getting some fresh pastries from the pasteleria (my first full conversation in Spanish!), and some flavoured sweeties to make the coca taste less like the bunch of foul leaves they are, we headed off to our first stop, San Antonio Los Cobres. <br><br>To begin with, the road was ...

... on them.<br>We arrived in Salta Wed morning and went straight to hostel and just relaxed for a couple of hours as the bus journeys really wear you down. Our plan originally was to stay for 2 days and leave early Friday but in the end we left on Saturday morning at 00.45am as this bus suited for our next stop which is Bolivia!!<br>So we had 3 days in Salta which is a nice place to stay but nothing hectic, On Wednesdy we just strolld around and did a cable car ride ...

... Polo) and were really scared of ruining the car - our average speed was about 45 km/h while driving through the desert.<br><br>There was a few nice things there to see like llamas, a hill cemetary and small adovbe houses in the middle of nowhere but after about 30 min or so we were kind of sick of the road already coz it was so dusty and bumpy and no fun driving on..<br><br>Then we finally made it to the ...

... up with some brits playing a drinking game, then some girl who lives on Valencia/ 19th in my neighborhood in SF so got to chatting and drinking and didnt get to be until almost 3. Had a 7am p/u so slept hard for 3.5 hours, but since i had the room to myslef i was able to sprawl and wory about locking everything. Of course at 7, breakfast is not served yet, and (of course) the kid wouldn´t give me change for the coffee ...

... about the world and stay sitting down. But the three of us donned our glad-rags and set off into town nearly an hour late to meet the others in the main Plaza.<br><br><br><br>Arabic food had been decided upon and one of the girls had heard of a good restaurant from people she worked with, so we turned up there. A very quiet little place, "Dubai", seemed nice enough. The staff were very quick to welcome us in and explain the menu to us ...

... par notre guide et on a eu toute les explication du guide sur l'extraction du sel . Il y avait aussi une maison en sel. Et le meilleur c'est que nous étions les seuls ! Cela n'a pas de pris ! on a vraiment bien fait de ne pas prendre le bus ! Les paysages sont encore une fois très différents et grandioses ! Super choix ! Quelle aventure ! Nous nous sommes aussi arrêtés à Sucre un tout petit ...

... We were the only tourists on the massively crowded bus. Bags and people were strewn everywhere. The roads were paltry and bumpy dirt roads of a quality that I hadn't seen since probably motorbiking through Cambodia. There was absolutely no sign of civilization when we were in the backcountry on these roads. If we broke down, we would be camping for the night. This is the area that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid famously ...

... pas de problèmes, je sens juste que j'ai le souffle un peu plus court que d'habitude. Le bus me dépose vers midi au village, j'achète immédiatement mon billet de retour pour le soir et pars me restaurer. Il n'y a pas beaucoup de commerces ouverts. En fait il n'y a pas beaucoup de commerces du tout. Les quelques personnes que je croise dans les rues, notamment des enfants, sont tout débraillés comme des ...