Hola,

So Salta.... we arrived from Mendoza after ANOTHER marathon bus ride and got a taxi straight to the hostel courtesy of the hostel (nice touch). Was nice and big including pool table and swimming pool. We headed straight out to book rafting, our bus to Atacama and generally have a scout around town. The city is beautiful definately a must see for all you culture-vultures. Lots of beautiful churches, buildings and plazas. The main plaza was lined with orange trees something that Chloe shrugged off in an instant but I found quite surreal, fresh oranges good for eating!! The city clearly has a lot to offer and you could easily spend a couple of days wondering around and taking it all in, we managed to do that in an afternoon so much was left unseen I feel! Managed to book rafting for the next day and then headed to the local butchers to buy a casual kilo of Bife de Chorizo for about 3 pound 50 pence... ahh the perks of Argentina then went to hunt down a classy bottle of Mendozan plonk, what with us now being sophisticated wine lovers! Early bed ready for rafting the next day.

As we were heading to the to the collection point in the morning I managed to boot the crap out of the pavement and cut my big toe open so not a great start to the day! 2hrs later arrived at the river and found that the owner had 4 labrodors mum, dad and two pupps, without doubt the most beautiful dogs I have ever seen. The dad dog (named Wakey!) actually came on the raft with us all the way down the river.. more on this to follow. So there were four of us in the group obviously me, chlo and two Argentine guys from BA who spoke perfect English which was great had a good laugh with them! Our instructor was a semi-balding german who took an instant liking to Chloe and whos intial banter descended into pure sleeze (Bloody Germans -obviously excluding any avid German readers of our blog!!). The river was grade three so nothing too strenuous but still pretty fun, as I mentioned Wakey joined us on our trip chilling out in the raft as we paddled our guts out, or so I thought! Chloe later admmitted that at times she was "pretending" to paddle, the cheek of it!! The sleezy German made it his mission to drench Chloe at every opportunity and she was close to falling in a couple of times but managed to stay on board. However Wakey did fall in, in the middle of a rapid, one minute he was there then bang gone, the instructer nearly wet his pants and was about to jump in to save him but the dog managed to struggle to the edge of the raft and was dragged back on board noticeably shaken!! Post rafting we enjoyed another BBQ which again was great, played with the pupps and signed up to go ziplining, which was the highest in Argentina! The zip wires were great about we did four that all went over the gorge with beautiful view down the river and surrounding mountains, the highest was about 500ft. All in all a great day!

Our mood on the final day in Salta was dampened by rain (honestly I dont know how I come up with this stuff sometimes!) So we chilled around the hostel watched the United v Spurs game which annoyed me further and then headed out in the evening for our last meal in Argentina... yup more steak!!

One final misshap was to follow and that was the following moring when I discovered that I had somehow managed to lose another bank card and then we discovered that when Chloe went to pay the bill the day before they had only charged for one of us so with our last pesos having been spent on a juicy steak the night before and no means of getting any money out we were pretty worried especially due to the fact that our bus was set to leave in about 30mins. The guy paid it for us in the end and we promised to Western Union the outstanding balance when we arrived in Atacama (which I can say we did as good honest British citizens!)

So to summerize loved Argentina but definately ready to move on by the end of our time in Salta.

xx