Salta, Argentina - Day 3

Today I took another tour north of the city which had highlights of “train to the clouds”, the salt flats, and a 4200 meter marker. The train to the clouds is a train that goes up an extremely steep hill that uses a method called switch backs in order to ascend very steep mountains. The train goes from left to right on the track in a “Z” shape up the mountain instead of going straight up or around. The salt flats were amazing and provide some interesting pictures with the white background as a background to reduce depth perception. The 4200 meter mark (13,800 ft) was a marker on a hill that we drove up to and it was the highest elevation that I had been to so far. Just for perspective, the highest mountain in Europe is the Mont Blanc Massif in the Swiss Alps and that sits at about 4800 meters (15,775 ft) above sea level. Denver, the mile high city, is 1,609 m (5,280 ft). We DROVE to 4200 meters.

So I had a reservation to stay in Purmamarca that evening and get picked up by a car to go to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile the following morning. I would normally take a bus to San Pedro but the buses were fully booked for 2 solid weeks because it was the Argentinean summer vacation period and a lot of people are traveling. So I guess my question would be if you have that much demand that your booked solid for 2 weeks why not do one of two things – 1. Raise your prices to lower demand or make more money 2. Increase the supply of buses temporarily??? Helllooooo, no bus company should be booked solid for 2 weeks straight, rent some crappy busses and crappier bus drivers and fill the demand. Anyway so I had to pay $110 dollars for a 6 hour taxi ride. The travel agency, which had a monopoly on the cab rides to San Pedro, is loving the bus companies right now.

So I arrive in Purmamarca at 7pm and go to the hostel where I had a reservation and for some reason the hostel doesn’t have the reservation. So this girl from the tour and I walk around the town with our bags in search of a place, but every place is booked solid. Then we find out there is a rock festival going on in the next town and all the beds are taken. A Rock Festival? In a village in northern Argentina? OKAAAAAAY so how are they going to have enough electricity to support the concert? I don’t think the town had internet, and the village electricity was probably generated with a bunch of kids running on a hamster wheel or blowing on a wind turbine. We finally find a person’s house that put a ton of beds (like more than I’ve seen in one place outside of a mattress store or higher than I can count) in one room. Well beggars can’t be choosers and at this point in the night my back hurt from carrying my bag around for an hour or so. Thanks rock concert.

Salta, Argentina - Day 3