We arrived at the border crossing at Villazon at 5am, extremely cold! The process of crossing the border was easy but waiting around was painful. When we did cross at about 8am (Argentina is an hour ahead) the bus terminal on the other side was just a 15 minute walk. With no Argentinian Pesos and no snacks, the following 8 hour bus journey to Salta was incredibly slow (although the bus considerably nicer than the one we had just been on).
Being tired and hungry with nowhere booked to stay, we agreed to go to the hostel of the first person to approach us which we ended up regretting slightly as it was dead and noisy from the main road. Regardless we were glad to arrive and finally get hold of some pesos and food after an hour of walking around as everywhere was closed for the afternoon- Argentina has an extended siesta from 3 til 7.
We changed hostels the next day and planned to have a museum day, although luck continued not to be on our side as they were all shut for some kind of holiday. We took the gondola up the mountainside for a nice view of the city and then had ice cream in the park.
For dinner we found a Spanish style restaurant called Los Cardones which had live music and dance. The prices in Argentina are significantly more than we have been used to paying (the equivalent of 8 pounds for a meal rather than 4 in Bolivia) but still good value compared to UK prices!
On the 22nd we signed up for half a days horse riding at a ranch which was recommended by the hostel. It was just outside of the main city and the countryside was beautiful as well as the ranch itself. Nathan had his first canter! The horses were well behaved although they were clearly just trained for following as it was hard to get them to do anything different to the group. We had a good group of people (about 12 of us) which made it fun too as we met people who were travelling the opposite direction that gave us advice on where to go.
We rode for 2/3 hours and then had a bbq for lunch (a typical Argentinian asado) which was really delicious - they insisted we ate a lot of food and topped up our wine glasses continuously - we only managed to empty the glasses once! We agreed it was the highlight of Salta as although the city was nice and sunny it hadn't really offered us much else.
At 9pm we headed to the bus station for a 17 hour ride to Mendoza - the wine region!