After our penguin tour in southern Chile, we made our way back to El Calafate in Argentina by bus. For this, we had a really nice stopover of 1.5 days in Puerto Natales, where we took a closer look at the town during our stopover.
Then we crossed the border again to return to the starting point of our Patagonia adventure, El Calafate. This time, we crossed the border with just one hour of crossing time, as entry into Argentina is apparently a bit easier. Upon arriving in El Calafate, we had booked a really nice hostel for the last few days, the America del Sur, which is highly recommended. Here are some photos as proof =) We used the last few days for organizational matters, such as booking a hostel in Buenos Aires, accommodation in Auckland (New Zealand), booking a tour to Ayers Rock (Australia), and doing our laundry so that we have our complete repertoire of clothes available again in northern Argentina. Originally, we wanted to do our laundry ourselves, but unfortunately, we didn't have the opportunity, so we had to pay €9 for 3.5 kilograms of laundry, which hurt a little ;-)On January 14th, it was time to move on and fly to Salta in northern Argentina. We were really excited about the new environment, but due to flight delays of more than an hour each, we had to be patient. When we arrived in Salta late in the evening, we had to completely change our plans for the next few days, which is very typical in South America. Unfortunately, we learned at the airport that a natural disaster in the form of a mud and debris avalanche had occurred in the region. This affected us in the sense that our planned tour to Chile (San Pedro de Atacama) had to be completely cancelled, and the tour through the north of Salta had to be postponed for now due to a complete closure of the road. The booked hostel was also far from satisfactory, so we immediately looked for a new accommodation for the following days. We found a very good hostel again and moved there the next morning. Since the original goals of our stay in northern Argentina were not possible for the time being, we planned the next few days with the help of the tours offered in the new hostel (Salta por Siempre). First on our list was a visit to the city of Salta. The capital of the eponymous province is located in the Valle de Lerma at the foothills of the Andes at an altitude of 1,187 meters and is known for its old Spanish colonial architecture in the old town. With over half a million inhabitants, it is the 8th largest city in Argentina and definitely worth a visit, as we quickly found out. During our stroll through the city, we also became interested in the prices of electrical goods in Argentina. Since these products are mostly imported and high tariffs are levied due to the protectionist economic policy, they are disproportionately expensive compared to Germany. For example, a Go Pro Silver costs €622, a Samsung S6 Edge costs €948, and a Kindle Paperwhite costs €195! Since the north remained impassable for us for an undetermined period of time, we had booked a tour to the also very beautiful south to Cafayate. The €32 tour per person offered a lot, including a drive through the Quebrada de las Conchas (Gorge of the Shells) into the wine region La Viña, a visit to a winery including wine tasting, and a stay in the city of Cafayate. The nature in the region and the delicious wine have absolutely convinced us. We couldn't resist buying a bottle for less than €3. We spent the next few days in Salta and desperately tried, as we did in Patagonia, to find postage stamps. This led us to a post office, where, to our dismay, a queue of more than 100 meters was waiting for entry. We could only capture this with the help of the panorama function on a photo. It was no longer explainable to us by the fact that people in South America like to stand in line ;-) and so we tried to explore the background. In Argentina, the post office also serves as a kind of bank, and people receive a kind of social assistance from the government twice a month. The high inflation in the country, the still difficult economic situation, and the difficult issue of cash, where we have often observed long queues of people in front of ATMs, provided us with some clarity, and it was fully understandable to us that the poorer population would stand in long queues to receive government payments. After that, the highlight of the stay in Salta was supposed to take place on Wednesday, the tour through the Andes and into the Argentine salt flats, but it had to be canceled again and postponed to Thursday due to the still impassable road. Since we had already booked a return flight to Buenos Aires for Friday, this was actually our last chance for the tour, which many other tourists in the last few days unfortunately failed to do and had to leave without the tour. However, we were very lucky and the tour actually took place =) and it was an absolute highlight in every way. The experiences of the day tour felt like a whole week, so we will focus exclusively on that in the next post... Stay tuned =)
