Another slight change of plan

From Villazon we had a taxi combo across the border to Quiaca, during which we suffered our biggest disaster yet; I misplaced my green Tiger jacket top somewhere, possibly in the train station or in the taxi. I was distraught but have since bought a Puma replacement. There are no Tigers in South America you see.

We got a bus to Salta, marked by some hoorrid treatment at the hands of the bus people. After 150 buses we think we know the score and we were expecting Argentina to be maybe a bit more civilised than some others when it came to the buses. Well, the buses are certainly pricier (2-4 USD per hour opposed to 50 cents an hour in most other Latin countries) and yes, you can pay extra and go first class and get steak and wine (though we never saw it - it is a bit a myth - only if you pay through the nose) but we were not expecting the conductors to do nothing - all the tickets are prepaid and their are liggers at the bus stations who get out the bags and ask for tips while the conductors stand about... but at Salta we booked on a bus that was about to leave and Anna ran to get some food and drinks as thhey told me there wasn't a food stop. So we load the bags, I wait at the door and the conductor starts to get shirty. Then they try to close the door with me in it - and this is a proper big two storey luxury coach we are talking here. I have already explained she is just buying a drink - and then they start driving with me standing in the door well. Then the manager comes out and gets shirty (having just sold us the tickets) and they start driving away with our luggage before Anna comes in the nick of time. The company is Andesmar, they have the prettiest offices but they are bunch of tie-wearing used car sales-types, the food was terrible, the driver couldn't park the bus in the first bus station bay, and the bus was two hours late, and of course it made a long lunch stop - ar**holes. We had to get Andesmar a second time and they bodged the veggie food for Miss Deli - this lot deserve to be punished. I am so glad I got that off my chest.

Anyway, we arrived at Salta, which was quite a charming small city with a cool zona viva (music and bars area) and we spent most of our day there in the LAN airline office. We realised that we might be doing the wrong thing in planning to go to Melbourne to work for 6 weeks in order to fund that time plus a week in New Caledonia and two weeks in Perth. The combination of my ineligibility for the working holiday visa, our mutual dislike of work, the cost of living in Melbourne, horror stories about backpackers staying hostels for months,not having organised any free (houseswap, housesit or similar) accommodation - and the risk - the risk that we could work two jobs and still not make enough to cover the 9 weeks - and the potential - the potential to turn our month in SE Asia (veritibly rushing from Singapore to Bangkok) into a three month plus chill fest... well, it was big carrot to dangle, particularly as we had not really put down any roots. Since Whistler we had not had longer than 6 nights (Little Corn in the rain) in one place and we had not had that zen escape that we look for - especially on a trip this long.

So we tried to change our flights. They couldn't do it in Salta. They couldn't do it in Lan Cordoba. But at American Airlines in Cordoba we struck a rich vein. After a brief scare when it appeared that Lan had not rebooked our Easter Island flights as they had said, and finding out we were double booked by Finnair to New Caledonia, we got the new flights we wanted and then we got more, a lot more. Just as I was about to ask for the bill, which should have been 125USD each for a Oneworld ticket route change, a lovely AA representative handed us 520USD flight vouchers each. Over 500 bucks of free flights each - T-riffic. We had already changed our flights to fly on 6.12 from Auckland via Sydney to Singapore, and also to fly on 6.11 from Santiago via Auckland to Christchurch on NZ's southern island to get cheaper van hire and avoid backtracking. As a bonus also didn't include the Caracas-Lima flight we had not taken so we had a spare flight and decided to save time and money by flying from Cordoba to BA. When they gave us the flight vouchers we realised we could also save a 23 hour bus ride by flying from BA to Comadoro Rivadavia, the nearest airport to the penguins and whales in northern Patagonia. This was a tough decision because we could also bought return flights from to see the waterfalls at Iguazu - and we could have also got flights all the way to southern Patagonia to see the Glaciers national park. We reasoned we will see glaciers in NZ and Iguazu will have to wait until we come to Brazil - and moreover we wanted to see 350000 penguins.

So, happy, we got the bus to bustling Cordoba where found Tinajas, Argentina's largest all you can esat restaurant. The country is famous for its beef and steak but I will remember Argentina for the amazing steak sandwiches that we were regularly served in bars and cafes - I could never resist a "completo" normally arriving with lashings of salad, mayo, fried eggs and a pair of minute steaks a top a couple of large slices of bread. Unfortunately it was also impossible to escape the curse of white bread in Argentina. But back to Tinajas: food disneyland. For 10 USD so about 5... 6... 7... 8 pounds (little currency joke there for the sterling crash fans) you had access to high quality cruise ship style fare including an enormous meat grill counter as big as a house. This place had capacity for over a thousand. We were there three hours from the start and it was awesome. We would go back.