Today is our last day in Argentina - we are both going to be very sad to leave as it has been a fantastic country with loads of freindly people, brilliant food and drink and some fantastic scenery. We are off to Bolivia tomorrow which should be incredibly cheap from the reports we have had.

Salta is a large town in the north of Argentina it is famous for empenadas, they are like mini cornish pasties, beef, chicken or cheese - absolutely delicious. We took a day trip into the Andes again here - the scenery was so different from the Andes in Mendoza, very barren almost desert-like. We followed the route of the Tren a las Nubes (train to the clouds), the train doesn't work anymore so instead we took a minibus trip which worked out cheaper anyway!! We followed the train line up to about 3800m, some of the viaducts that the train crosses are very impressive feats of engineering. To get to a salar (old lake, now a bed of salt) we had to cross loads of scrub that was desert-like at over 3000m, some of the cactuses were huge about 500 years old! We also saw many herds of wild alpaca and wild donkeys that were left by the spanish many years ago. The salt lake was ok, bit worn out in the tourist areas though - i think the Salars in Uyuni (Bolivia, our next destination) will be far more impressive. We finished our day at a small village called Purmamarca, in the hills above this town there are 7 different coulours in the rocks, blues, greens, purples, reds, yellows etc and were called the 7 colour hills - original! I tried to explain why the colours were different - more teaching practise! The trip was really enjoyable and our tour guide Fernando was great, even if we did get home with numb bums!

Sunday we walked up the 1070 steps to the top of the Cerro San Bernardo hill (and 1070 down!!) that gives great panoramic views of the town, we even had a picnic at the top! We had fantastic views, even if they were a bit hazy. Last night was the Copa America final between Argentina and Brazil, we had originally planned to go out partying (Argentina were big favourites and had been playing really well all tournament) however, they lost 3-0. Football is a funny old game and anything can happen in a final, dissapointed we went out to drown the Argentine sorrows!!

Today we went to see Transformers in the cinema, we both thought it was great, though after watching the film in English we half expected everybody to be speaking English when we left - funny what you can forget in 2 hours!! Sarah got excited when she saw Harry Potter was on at the cinema, only to be gutted when she realised it was only available in Spanish dubbed!! We hope its stopped raining at home - we have only had 3 wet days in the past 5 weeks!!

Ciao for now Andrew and Sarah x x x

p.s. we have only been able to upload this now, problems with the website. More blogs and photos to come!!!