Arrival in Salta
Saturday March 14, 2015 (Argentina, South America)
Well, that was one heck of an overnight bus ride! It was our first experience with Suite-level service on the bus. At that tier, the seats recline to full horizontal! We left Buenos Aires at 7pm on the 13th to arrive in Salta the next day at about 5pm. Doesn’t everybody love spending 22 hours on a bus? We almost didn’t make the initial departure in BA because the terminal is a lot bigger than we expected and we hadn’t pre-printed our tickets. Those digital confirmations don’t work worth a damn — they need to see it printed on paper! Anyway, we were the last ones on the bus and it pulled away about a minute after we boarded. Close call!
The bus ride itself was a middling affair. On the plus side, the seats did in fact recline to horizontal, and we were provided with blankets and a rectangular prism of hard foam mildly resembling a pillow. On the minus side, we had an elephant seal snoring the night away a few seats behind us, as well as an old woman who insisted on setting her phone to maximum notifications at maximum volume. A volley of angry glances in her general direction did nothing to stop the onslaught of chiptune renditions of Christmas carols. We were displeased.
Our arrival in Salta went well. We had a quick run around the town to get acquainted (and to get rid of some of those soggy bus legs). There are many beautiful churches in Salta and a smattering of nice public plazas and gardens where the locals congregate. Our intent was to book a day trip for tomorrow to see the town of Cachi and to head up to Cuesta del Obispo. We got the trip booking done, but it was starting to get dark at that point. We decided to try to head to a vegan restaurant we’d read about. As we started to make our way there, a massive downpour started. We arrived at the restaurant soaked only to find that it was closed. At about 7:30pm. Weird. So we stopped in to a pizzeria down the street and called it a night.
By the time we started the walk home from the restaurant, water was streaming in torrents down the streets and made pedestrian navigation nigh impossible. Every path seemed to include a 6 foot river of water between the road and the sidewalk, so our “walk” home turned into a track and field competition of trying to get from road to sidewalk and back without completing soaking our running shoes which we had yet to change out of. We failed, and both had soaked feet by the time we returned to the hostel. Tomorrow is the day trip and hopefully some pretty pictures!