San Pedro & Purmamarca & Salta & Cachi

​After the hot springs we visited during the Uyuni tour we were dropped of at the Chilean border. The border was just a building in the middle of nowhere. There was only a check on the Bolivian side, so we had to drive for a couple of hours to San Pedro de Atacama to get the entry stamp for Chile. At the hot springs it had been quite cold, but in San Pedro it was really hot. Atacama is one of the driest places on earth, and there is a very clear sky which makes it easy to see the stars at night. So during the night we did an astronomy tour. An astronomer told us a lot about the stars we could see through his telescope, and he showed us several different types of stars and he pointed out some constellations.​

The next morning we had a relax-morning during which we didn't do anything. After that we rented bikes and we went to the bus terminal to check for busses. Unfortunately, there was only one bus to Salta each day and all busses for the next couple of days were already full. This meant we could only leave San Pedro on Wednesday.. On top of that, transportation in Chile is a lot more expensive than in Peru or Bolivia, so the prices of the bus tickets were a bit of a shock.

We made a bike tour through the mountains around San Pedro. We went wrong somewhere around the road because we never reached the place we set out to see, but we had a nice ride anyway. We ate our pepernoten along the way to celebrate Sinterklaas!

In the evening Svenja, who had traveled together with us for quite some time, left to go back to Peru. She had to catch a flight in Lima. Ariana and I decided to go hitchhiking the next day, because we didn't feel like waiting for a bus for several days. In the morning we went to the highway to the Argentinian border and we saw that there were already three other people hitchhiking. They had been there since 5 o'clock that morning! No one had picked them up.. We joined them in waiting for several hours. At some point we looked at a truck resting place for trucks that wanted to take us, we asked tourist vans that normally went to the Bolivian border whether they could take us to the Argentinian border and some others looked for a car to rent but nothing worked. Then two others came and they went to look for a tourist organization in the center that could bring us to the border. That worked! The seven of us had to pay something and they brought us to the Argentinian border.

However, when we reached the border, they wouldn't let us pas walking. We had to pay extra for the vehicle to pas back and forth (the driver wanted to go back to Chile of course) and we had to pay a 'holiday tax'. Apparently it was a holiday the day after, that explained why the busses had been so full. We didn't see anyone else pay anything, so we were probably part of some corruption there, but at least we could pass into Argentina.

And then the driver left us there, at a tank station in the middle of nowhere, six o'clock in the evening. We still had to get to a village somewhere.. Luckily, there was a family that wanted to take Ariana and me to Purmamarca, a village with nicely colored mountains in the direction of Salta. So we played 'ik zie ik zie wat jij niet ziet' with two Argentinian girls and with our limited Spanish we were able to gain some knowledge about Argentina. We were really lucky with the family that took us along!

In Purmamarca we had some trouble getting money, since the ATM didn't work and we were unsure how much pesos we should try to get for our dollars. We were told that there are two different exchange rates in Argentina, a formal one and an informal one, and that you should make sure to get enough pesos for your dollar. If you get it from the ATM directly, for the formal rate, you will get a lot less pesos for your euro or dollar than if you would go to the street and exchange it for the informal rate.

We visited the colored mountains in Purmamarca, we walked around the village and then we went to hitchhike to Salta again. This time it took a while before someone stopped, and when they stopped they told us that they weren't going right at that moment but if we would still be there in an hour they could take us. And so it happened, the couple with a baby took us to Salta an hour later. Their English was really good and we had a nice conversation. They also let us taste some typical Argentinian candies and mate, a kind of tea you drink from a shared bowl with a metal straw. Once we reached the city they showed us around a bit, which was really nice too! The nature changed a lot during this trip, we went from dry mountains to green fields in a couple of minutes.

In Salta we mostly just walked around the city, we visited all the plazas and a park. We also did our laundry, which really had to happen, and we had some nice ice cream. Argentina has ice cream shops everywhere.

From Salta, we took the bus to Cachi, a little town on the way to Cafayate. We took this road instead if the faster direct road to Cafayate because it takes you through much nicer surroundings. In the evening we saw some sort of gathering of all the local people, we think it had something to do with the ongoing elections. There was a lot of music and speeches and it ended with fireworks. The next day we continued our trip to Cafayate!