On Tuesday we set off on the drive to Salta via some pretty impressive scenery - quite Grand Canyon-like. We stopped at an amphitheatre and another canyon/gorge thing called the Devil's Throat which were created by wind and water erosion. It's hard to capture the scale on photos. There were a couple of little stalls there selling delicious sheep's cheese tortillas and llama salami which we bought - yum!

Enroute we had a rather embarrassing situation with the boarding school veteran. She asked someone to ask the "driver" how long it would take to get to Salta. Driver? How bloody rude. We told Michael who then pretended to tip his cap and started to call us "m'lady"

Salta is kind of the adrenalin capital of Argentina. Having done all of this stuff in NZ, I decided it was a good opportunity to just chill out and not do a lot. On Wednesday Bill and I decided to finally have our date (the one we were supposed to have in Pucon) as the girls were going horse riding. Jonathan joined us and after a rather ropey breakfast we headed up the cable car. It was bloody freezing. Probably would have been a fairly good view except it was very bleak and cloudy. We then headed back to the hotel via a tourist tat artesan market before having a rather long lunch. We had a very funny evening. The girls and I went out for dinner with Michael, Gaetano, Bill and Jonathan which ended up being a very funny night. After eating we went to an Irish bar and proceeded to play a very silly game involving everyone acting out an animal (no sounds allowed) which is theoretically a drinking game although we only had one drink and we were the only people in the bar! We then asked them to change the music and we started to do the truck dance - all 6 of us crammed in a tiny booth. We finally got thrown out at about 1am!

On Thursday morning, Sarah went riding again so Michelle and I decided to have a mooch around town. There are loads of one dollar type shops and we ended up loading up on a lot of useless crap but it was great fun! We mixed quite a bit with local life as we were trying to find an adaptor to fit 2 pairs of earphones into a laptop. We got shipped from shop to shop with everyone saying they didn't stock it (one guy in a shop drew us a picture to help us explain it to other shops!). We finally got to a pokey little hardware shop where we had to take a ticket for our turn and they had one! Success! We also decided to buy some skipping ropes to try and get fit (at some point) - not that wise when we are about to embark into high altitude conditions. The rest of the day was spent lunching and relaxing and then a few of us decided to go out for a civilised meal together to a place called the 'Vieja Estacion' (The Old Railway Station) where I had llama casserole - very tasty although not a meat I would necessarily choose again. It's a bit like veal. There was also a great show of flamenco dancing, singing and random Argentinean folklore type stuff!

I'll post photos from the last few days on picasa in the next hour or so!