Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We hadn't booked anywhere for our stay in Salta but the girl we met on the train from Uyuni had booked into Corre Caminos Hostel so we tagged along with her to see if they had any room for us. Luckily they did so we got into a twin room with private bathroom. It wasn't the best, the bathroom was quite dirty with a leaking toilet which ended up blocking by the end of our 2 day stay! The floors of the bedroom weren't clean and neither was the one tiny wardrobe so we had to keep all of our clothes locked in our backpacks or piled on top to keep them from getting dirty. We also didn't get any towels when we checked in which we´ve been used to so had to use our travel towels. We weren't all that impressed! We went for breakfast the next morning and, although we weren't expecting much as our past experience of Argentine breakfasts are that they are not all that great, we were surprised how crap it actually was. Only one table was set up, messily I might add, with 2 flasks of warm coffee, sugar, a couple of stale bread buns and a sticky tub of jam. That was it. No cutlery, no milk, no butter...... The next morning was the same so we took our own breakfast to the kitchen but couldn't even find a spoon for our yogurts! It wasn't very well stocked at all if we had wanted to cook for ourselves and it was pretty dirty. It also had a coffee/tea machine but that didn't even work. We weren't too impressed at all and were glad we were only staying for 2 nights.
As seems to always happen in our travels so far, we arrived in Salta on Saturday night so our first full day was Sunday when hardly anything is open and the streets are deserted, it´s like a ghost town. That´s when me and Rob always seem to bicker at each other cos we are bored! lol. We did get to go to one of the museums which were open and saw some real mummies which had been perfectly preserved, they still had hair and skin and were in full original clothing....freaky! We didn't do a lot in Salta the couple of days that we were there, it was really only a stop off before getting to Mendoza so we didn't have to travel for 24 hours.
We got another 18 hour bus to Mendoza on the Monday night which is still in Argentina, about 3 hours from the Chilean boarder. Our first hostel was rubbish. They didn't seem to have our booking for the two nights but the helpful receptionist showed us to a private room with a bathroom. It had a set of bunkbeds in and that was pretty much it. The room wasn't much bigger than the size of the bunkbeds so it was very cramped. The bathroom was dirty with a shower where the water ran straight onto the bathroom floor so would have flooded it in seconds. The toilet flush was in a cubbyhole in the wall where a few tiles had been knocked out and when we flushed it it flooded the bathroom floor! We quickly asked to move and were put in a different room which was much nicer but we had to share a bathroom which had no lock on the door and the separate screen for the toilet had fallen off. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the streets looking for a different hostel for the next couple of nights but most of them were fully booked due to it being Easter weekend. We did manage to find a nice-ish hotel which was free for the Wednesday night so we suffered the hostel for one night and, after a s***ty breakfast (which we were told was available from whatever time we got up, but we ended up having to wake the receptionist up to ask for it!) we hiked our bags down the road to the hotel. The room smelled of pee and we had a cockroach as company, but it was definitely a step up from the hostel!
On the Wednesday we spent the morning and early afternoon trying to get booked onto a winery tour but most of them were fully booked so we booked on one for the Thursday and decided to spend the rest of the day getting pissed! We had a drunken walk back to the hotel around 2 am, stopping off at a corner shop for munchies and also a childrens playground for a play on the swings and roundabout etc.! It was great fun! lol.
The next day we got up early for breakfast and, suffering hangovers, hiked our backpacks out of the hotels to a nearby apartment block. The only accommodation we could find for the Thursday night was a posh apartment for only a little bit more than the pee-smelling hotel, so we thought we would treat ourselves after having such crap accommodation for 2 nights. This apartment was absolutely gorgeous! We had our own little living room, kitchenette, double bedroom with a massive bed so we didn't have to be anywhere near each other! and a lush little bathroom, complete with fluffy white towels wrapped in plastic, soap, shampoo.....ahh it was lush! We both want to own one just like it! We took the opportunity to catch up on a bit more sleep and try and sleep our hangovers off before we started our winery tour later that afternoon.
On the 5 hour wine tour we visited 2 wineries and an olive oil factory. They were all really interesting and the best part was we got to sample some of the fine wines and yukky olives at the end. No matter how many times we try olives we just cant stomach them! The wine was good though, we could have drank a whole lot more if we weren't still slightly suffering from the night before....
We said goodbye to our lush little apartment the next morning and set off for the bus station for yet another bus ride to Santiago, Chile.
Santiago is a huge modern city. We checked into a cute little hostel which was run by a lovely lady from Argentina called Grace. She lived there with her little boy so it was really like renting a room in her house. Grace was fab and when we arrived she pointed out all the places of interest on the map so that we could find our way around over the next couple of days. As it was Easter weekend everywhere was closed on the Saturday evening when we arrived, but we did find a little supermarket open so ended up with a tin of tuna for tea (again!). We knew that the place would be like a ghost town on Easter Sunday so we managed to get booked on a tour which took us to a couple of nice little towns not far from Santiago - Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. These towns get a lot of tourists visiting so there were plenty of shops and restaurants open while we were there.
Valparaiso is a historic town which has 11 really old elevators throughout the town which date back to the 1800s which take people down from the hilly parts to the lower parts. Only 9 of these elevators still work and we got the chance to ride in one. It was very old and rickety! There was a nice little beach in Vina del Mar which we stopped off at and had lunch at a nearby restaurant. It was quite a cheap meal by Chilean standards - $10,000! It took us a little while to get used to paying out thousands of dollars a time for things! We had to take a photo of a MacDonalds sign advertising a burger for only $990 - the most expensive burger in the world!
Easter Monday and everything was back to normal in Santiago. Our flight to New Zealand wasnt until 11 pm so we had a few hours to kill. We managed to find a post office and send home a parcel of stuff that we had collected over the last 3 months. There were things that we couldnt take to New Zealand - a few souvenirs which were made of wood etc - and stuff which was just adding weight to our bags so we were glad to finally get rid!
Ok, so now to come clean about a little incident which happened in Rio.....Rob actually lost his mobile phone due to being mugged by a couple of Brazillians on our fourth day! It was quite a scary experience and nobody could do anything to help as the muggers often carry weapons, but luckily nobody was hurt and they only got away with his phone. It could have been a lot worse as we've heard so many bad stories from people we have met about being mugged and held up by people with guns and knives so we count our lucky stars! It definitely made us a lot more wary of people and although it probably spoilt our experience of South America by making us feel on edge all of the time, at least we didn't get too complacent and have it happen to us again.
So we have had a few dodgy moments in South America but all in all we have absolutely loved it and will really miss it. We'll find it strange not having to try and communicate in Spanish anymore and will probably miss it a bit but we are still really looking forward to getting to New Zealand.
We have had an absolute blast in South America, an experience we will never forget.....
----------------------------------------------------
Things we managed to tick off our list during our time in South America.....
* Learning to speak a little bit of Portuguese and Spanish
* Rio Carnival
* Viewing the beautiful waterfalls at Iguazu Falls
* Hiking up a volcano
* Swing jumping from a bridge
* White water rafting
* Visit to Inca ruins at Machupicchu
* Very scary bike ride down the world's most dangeous road in Bolivia
* Beautiful Bolivian salt lakes and sleeping in a salt hostel
- comments