Sunday 13th July and the whole day was about sitting on a bus. Most of it in a desert. Most of it in the dark. We kicked off our day by waiting for the Pullman bus that was an hour late. We were just glad it showed up especially after James nearly had a backy on a bike from a girl from the Pullman shop when he went to find out where the bus was! Old school. Once seated it was a matter of painful border crossings. Out of Chile was quite smooth however the one into Argentina seemed to take forever. Apart from the driver trying to kill a drunk man on the road it was pretty un-eventful! Nothing like a day of Spanish films until we finally pulled into Salta at one in the morning! Big day.

On the Monday we arose ready for lunch. Nice hot showers (they were becoming an issue) and we set off into town for a look around. It become apparent pretty quick that we would like Argentina. It certainly was a lot more like Europe than anywhere else we had been in South America. The place looked good and we had heard that the steak was simply the best in the world. Eager to try, the lads jumped into a rather flashy restaurant and popped down three pizzas. Probably a good job we did as steak was about to become our specialty. After a really nice meal we had a wonder around town and checked out some sights. We were keen for some R and R. After some chill time we went out that evening to the hotspot. There we popped it in a cheeky little number for our first steaks. Oh yes. They are massive and bloody tastey. They come served by themselves and that is all you really need. The place we were in was also putting on a show that night. A mixture of enertainment including dancing, singing and fire eating. There was loads going on and it was a bloody quality watch. Really entertaining and the performers were spot on. We knew however it was time to leave when the female dancer tried to drag each of us up in turn in front of over 100 people to dance. Now whilst we have all successfully fused MC Hammer with Flash Dance s*** for the dancefloor this was no time or place to be popping our moves. Not even the robot would have saved us. We politely declined and then made our exit whilst watching some other Brit make one hell of a nob of himself. There's a time and place for that sort of thing! After our meal we hit a local bar for a couple of lemonades. There we bumped into some guys who we spotted on the salt flats and also crossed the border with. They made our night thouroughly entertaining as whilst one lad was sobre enough for a good convo, his mate was asleep on the table with more straws in his hair than in people drinks, and his other mate, Kipp, insisted on swinging his T-Shirt around his head and proclaiming 'we can do what the f*** we want' on the dancefloor. It takes allsorts. Unlike the bouncers in England who would have giving you no less than a bloody good hiding for such behaviour, these guys took it in good spirits and after the shirt was on he was aloud to stay. (Kipp later had a taxi ride home from the police after falling asleep at a bus stop - kids these days). It was a great little evening and not that quiet for a monday night!

On Tuesday we had another early miday start. Headed off into town to an Irish pub for some brunch. Bloody hell you get those things everywhere. Stocked up we decided to get ourselves up the Gondala and get a birds eye view of Salta. A nice casual ride up and and look around. It was no NZ in terms of luging but a steady afternoon all the same. That evening we went out for another steak meal. This time we accidently ordered champagne and then sat back and decided life wasn't all doom and gloom! We certainly don't live the pot noddle life style, that is for sure. After a delicious meal we went for a bit more bar action. There we bumped into Ozzy Ryan who had grown a ginger tache in our honour! He was rather chuffed with his effort but at 29 if you can't grow one you're in trouble! After another cheeky night we hit the sack. This was our last night in Salta.

The next day we hit some shopping. Good look around town before lunch. Everywhere shuts down for a nap between 1 and 04:30 so there wasn't a great deal to do apart from drink coffee and chill with the locals. We had a bus to catch that evening so we may have tripped into the Golden Arches before heading to the terminal. We had heard the best things about buses in Argentina and our first one was a massive letdown. We had booked late and semi carma was all they had left. We were determined this was to be the last time we would roll in such medicore fashion! Next time we'd research and knock it up a class or two!