House of Jasmines Salta

... over-zealous customs official (Where are you from? What are you doing in Argentina? Open your bag!) We then got a taxi for five more minutes to the bus station because I wanted to hurry by this point; Argentinian time is an hour ahead of Bolivian, my bus was stated to leave at 8.50am and I helpfully had not been told which time zone this referred to. On arrival at the bus station we were mobbed by blokes from various companies offering tickets to various ...

... a new driver this day, he was very serious and constantly chewing coca leaves.

When we got back we decided to go the Synagogue for the service. Caro is a jew, and wanted to see this one. And I must say, it was amazing. The atmosphere was really light, and the place beautiful. I tried to keep up with the hebrew singing as good as possible. Luckily they had phonetic transcrips of the songs. Then they read psalms from the Tora (our Old Testament) in Spanish, and for me it was amazing ...

... Itīs a shame the same cannot be said of our illustrious leader, the Gap tour guide, who on first appearances sadly seemed to lack every virtue I would have expected of a tour guide. I will be reserved in my opinion as itīs early days but I am doubtful this chubby, beady-eyed Brazilian whose English and local knowledge are both somewhat below par will add much value to our trip other than holder of our plane tickets and insurance details. Perhaps I ...

... scanners/etc., it was open until 3am and it was the cheapest internet I found in Argentina (ARS1.50/hour)! As I sat in the cafe, a cacophony of noise came from the streets as I had fortuitously arrived for the Exodo Jujeno parade. During the War of Independence, General Belgrano orchestrated a mass evacuation of Jujuy in order to evade the loyalists to Spain as the revolutionaries were outnumbered, ill-equipped and dying from ...

... traditional whitewashed hillside villages, ranging from 2500m to 3500m above sea level. We met Lynton on the bus from Mendoza, an Aussie schoolteacher from Melbourne and the three of us decided to hire a car and drive around the twisty turny dirt roads of the area for three days, in what became a definite scenic highlight of our whole trip so far. Multicoloured rocks pushed up by tectonic plates and volcanic activity on the eastern ...

Lundi 9 Arrivee  a Salta a 9h30, Valerie me quitte pour laeroport.. jachete mon billet pour Bariloche via Cordoba (arrivee Bariloche prevue mercredi 11h ie 38h de bus!) pour le soir meme 21h. Journee dans Salta, belle ville la place principale est canon:  grands et beaux  edifices et surtout enormes terrasses avec un parc central! manif de la police locale pour des salaires plus ...

... at me. Having safely negotiated the turns and driven through Saturday night Salta (a pretty intense experience in itself with no traffic lights in the centre just pure nerves and a heightened sense of adventure) we found some parking about two miles from our hotel. I consider it lucky that we didn't have a prang as most of the cars in Salta seemed to have never faced an MOT. The next morning Pete went off nice and early to catch his bus to ...

... er uns passieren. Seit wir San Antonio in die richtige Richtung verlassen hatten, ist die Landschaft immer gruener geworden, und nun fahren wir durch richtig saftig gruene Taeler, was nach einer Weile im staubigen Hochland mal wieder ein Genuss ist. Auf den letzten 40km vor Cafayate aber wird die Landschaft richtig interessant. Ueberall bietet sich ein neuer Anblick, mal auf bizarre Felsen und mal auf das gruene Flusstal. Wir beschliessen, diesen Flecken Erde nochmal ...

We arrived in Salta on Thursday after 20 grueling hours on 3 different buses from Colonia Pellegrini. Our first bus left at 4am and arrived in Mercedes at 8am. It was practically a school bus trekking down a washboard dirt road at about 20mph. We left Mercedes around 11am and took off for Corrientes, which took another 4 hours. We got there around 3pm and left for Salta at 6pm. The buses are much nicer here than in the ...