Salta - Argentina, Steaks, and Paved Roads

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Crossed into Argentina very quickly thanks to a German guy on our bus that explained to the border cops that we had a bus booked on the Argentinian side of the border that was leaving in half an hour...should have seen the envious looks we got from the thousand people lined up as we waltzed by them and straight to the window...and to think all they needed to do was be stupid enough to book a bus on the other side of the border that they had no chance of actually catching without help from the border police.

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Jo had been looking forward to Argentina for the last two months..well actually probably the whole trip and I was also quite eager to get stuck into the steaks so we already had high expectations and got to say Argentina is one place that lives up to the hype.  As soon as we crossed in it became immediately apparent that we were in a well developed country, the road changed from an unmarked pot holed road to a double lane highway with road markings which we hadn't seen for five months.  The bus was clean and ran well and even felt confident when stowing our luggage underneath that we would actually see it again.

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Ran into Justin and Kay at the bus stop as they had coincedentally booked the same bus as us headed to Salta.

Got to Salta a few hours later and was immediately impressed even the bus station was nice.  Booked into a hostel called hostel Iguana and then went out for a big mixed grill meal although we had to wait until 7:30pm for the restaraunts to open as the crazy Argentinians dont even think about eating dinner before 10pm..which took a bit of getting used to for people accustomed to eating at 6pm.

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Next day our mate John (who we also met up in Quito) turned up out of the blue with a German mate of his Daniel.  Would like to say we spent a few days getting to see the sights of Salta and the surrounding wineries but we didn't, instead we spent it celebrating being in Argentina by sampling all the quality food, wine and beer for the next five days.