Argentina.5: A Salta

Argentina has made the experience of taking a long bus ride as much like flying or taking a train as is possible.

After you purchase your ticket ($45 one way to go to a city 1500 miles away), you can wait for your bus in the "terminal" where a large board overhead announces the next departures. Jessie and I sidled up to the wall and rested our packs there while we waited since, as she said, "This is the only place in Buenos Aires where someone tried to rob me."

Fair enough. Some 20 minutes later, our bus popped up on the screen: "16.00 -- A. Brown -- SALTA." We walked outside to gate 29, where the bus slid in to its spot and stopped at the chocks on the ground. A baggage guy took our bags from us, tagged them, and gave us receipts as if we were checking in to a flight. The driver ripped off portions of our tickets and gestured us upstairs.

Our assigned seats were in the economy section, which still wasn't half-bad. With the bus about one-third full, it was easy to take a double seat and stretch out, which I began to do as the bus slid out of the terminal.

BA's bus station is on the edge of the nicest part of downtown, but the back of it faces one of the worst villas, or slums, in the city. We sat near that for about fifteen minutes before traffic cleared and we were on our way out of the city, gaining speed almost like a train would.

A half-hour outside the city, we stopped at another terminal and took on a few more passengers. We were visited by men selling everything possible -- empanadas, water, magazines (including porn, which one guy bought), and even pillows.

Finally, we started gaining some real ground across the plains. These were some incredibly flat and repetitive plains. The four-lane highway, divided by a grassy median, stretched out imperceptibly far in front of us. To the side, we could easily have been in the US midwest, with nothing but fields broken occasionally by lines of trees.

I read my book as the sun started to go down, burning the sky an intense orange. They turned on our movie -- Man on Fire, a Denzel Washington movie about kidnappings in Mexico. (Umm...)

Even though it was barely 7, I started to snooze. The previous night's bought with a bit of traveler's sickness had left me fatigued, and I dozed fitfully until the bus pulled off and stopped.

The drive came upstairs and announced that we would stay there for thirty minutes. Curious, I got out and stretched my legs at what was apparently a bus stop in the middle of nowhere. It was cold and incredibly dusty.

Inside, I bought a small chocolate bar and noted that it was 9pm -- we had only been going for about 5 hours. Quite a way to go. Back at the bus, the driver and a few others were examining the back with the light from their cell phones, it seemed to be some kind of electrical problem. Care to purchase a flashlight, caballeros? I reboarded the warm bus and read as long as they had the lights on.

We pulled off, and I gave up on consciousness. With my hat over my eyes I leaned the seat back and tried to doze, but had to pull out the earplugs to deal with the snoring man behind me -- coincidentally, the same one who had bought the porn. I had some odd dreams, including one where the headmaster of my old high school (bald, for some reason) was trying to get me to work there. Yikes.

The bus stopped several more times, but I woke hours later when I noticed it was light out. I sat up and looked around, as did Jessie. A man walked back with a cup in his hand, muttering ¨cafe." Excited, I walked up front and poured myself a little plastic cup of some of the sweetest coffee I've ever had. "Coffee," I informed Jessie, "but it's ridiculously sweet."

"Ooh, just the way I like it!" she cried, going forward for a cup of her own.

We caught the attention of someone further up on the bus. "Are you speaking English?" a young man asked. In his dark green military-style jacket, he was emulating some kind of clean-shaven Che Guevera.

Accustomed to being largely incomprehensible, I answered slowly. "Si."

"Where are you from?" he answered, again in perfect English.

"United States," I replied slowly, not sure if he was trying to practice English or something.

"Oh, where?"

"Washington, D.C."

"Cool. I'm from Rhode Island."

I relaxed, feeling that instant connection you get from meeting someone of the same culture in a foreign land. Our new friend had recently gotten accepted into law school and was spending his summer traveling through South America from the bottom up, starting with three months in Buenos Aires and now moving on to Salta with an eventual destination in Colombia.

We talked about the details of how he planned to get there. "I think I'm going to fly to Bogota," he said. "Apparently southern Colombia has a lot of kidnappings."

"Kind of ironic, the movie we watched last night, huh?" I noted.

"Yeah. Well, things are improving in Colombia, last year they only had one American kidnapped. That's a big improvement from several years ago, when it was like ten."

"Sweet."

We slid back into our seats for the last 140km of the trip. Now we could start to see what we came for -- the famed Andes. The terrain started rolling and the road wound through the foothills. To our right, I could see our first softly folded range of mountains, lightly draped in snow and shrouded in low-hanging clouds. It was very Gorrillas in the Mist.

For another few hours we cruised on. At one point, snow covered the tops of the trees around us. The bus was warm, but not well insulated -- my right leg was freezing next to the window. We wouldn't be able to confirm it until later, but this was the height of Argentina's cold snap. Not fun in a country that doesn't seem to believe in heat. They probably just think they can tango to keep warm, I guess.

The vegitation outside grew curious. It seemed mostly to be a dense, low forest that changed to heavy shrubbery. I noticed random prickly pears, though -- tall, treelike ones, not the wide, bushy ones I know from the American Southwest. Later was an even more unusual sight -- saguaro cacti, usually found in the driest environments. With all the vegitation around, this was by no means a dry place, so I surmised that saguaro seeds must have made their way here from the drier areas to our west.

We finally pulled into the estacion two hours late, after 22 hours on the bus. Remarkably, between sleeping, reading my book, and staring blankly at the scenery, I hadn't felt like it was a particularly long trip. No more torturous than a plane flight across the U.S.

We disembarked at the station and retrieved our bags. "You mind if I walk with you guys?" asked our Rhode Island friend. I sized him up, and with my finely honed powers of intuition, decided that he was unlikely to be an axe murderer.

"Sure. I'm Eric"

"Oh, right. I'm Chris."

Chris, eh? Sure, if that's your real name.

My mystery novel thoughts aside, Jessie set out to find us our hostel and promptly set us marching off in the wrong direction. Fifteen minutes later, we wisely deduced that we were indeed headed down on the upside and traced our steps back to the bus station.

Another fifteen minutes of walking in the chilly wind, and we found our way to Hostel de los Cardones, which for some reason had an image of a kangaroo and the words "Down Under" on it. Maybe they have shrimp on the barbie, I thought.

After checking in to our cozy room, we took our new friend "Chris" off to find some lunch. La Monumental lived up to its name. Without really letting us look at the menu, the waiter ordered steak and fries for us.

But this was no ordinary steak. Much like men have waxed eloquent about the beauty of Helen of Troy, we three could have composed sonnets in honor of this delectable slab of cow. It was grilled to perfection on the outside, pink on the inside, and muy jugosa. With just a bit of salt already on it, this Picasso of la pampa needed no A-1. Brothers and sisters, believe me when I tell you it was a holy experience made even more moving when the check came, setting us back only $7 including our drinks and tip.

Chris later explained the reason why we could get beef so cheap here -- and when I say cheap, I should point out that the mediocre bife at any old parilla runs you a measly $2. No shit they eat so much of it.

Exporting beef here is apparently heavily taxed, which keeps meat prices ridiculously low. The beef lobby lacks the clout of my good friends in the National Beef Cattleman's Association, and politicians here are afraid of doing anything that keeps red meat out of the price range of everyday Argentinians. And so it is that they chow down so frequently on the divine bovine.

We wandered around the town of Salta (did I actually mention at any point that's where we are now?) ducking out of the cold to drink coffee and libations and booking a tour to sights in the Andes.

The famous Train to the Clouds is broken. Instead, we shall take the...er, Bus to the Clouds. Vamonos!