When our bus from the mountain finally made it back to the bus station (on Fiday the 19th), we all took some time to look around the station to see what company went where and how much everything cost. After talking to a few different companies we became frustrated becuase there was no comapany who could take us to all the places we wanted to go. We decided to rent a car. Because there were five of us, renting a car seemed to be the best solution because we could see everything we wanted to see and it would end up being cheaper as well.

Saturday. 20th. we woke up and while Jess and Nick went to pick up the car, Dakin and I went looking for somewhere to buy a rope to tie bags to the top of the car. Being caught up in the moment, as well as being in a race against time- the Saturday elongated siesta, I didnt realize that the place where I could buy “ropa” was actually a clothes store. Of course it is, because “ropa” means clothes, not sure how I missed that one, but I quickly realized my mistake. After a quick game of sherades we learned that the proper word sounds like “cuerda” for “cord”. Everything closed for siesta by the time we made this discovery. We ended up carrying the extra bags on our laps until we reached a mall where we were able to find a kit with webbing and a wench. PERFECTO!

Please bare with me on the lack of puntuation as every keyboard is different here and I can never figure out what to hit, example- i have to hit ctrl alt 8 to get an open parenthsis.

Because we never got around to doing any wine tasting in Mendoza, which is the popular thing to do there, we decided to try out a some wine on our own and check out a low key “bodega” -spanish for winery, right outside of San Juan. We had a few failed attempts at actually finding a bodega by following signs that may have been put up ten years old and were never moved, but we finally found one. We knocked on the door of a house, who had a small sign by there mailbox, and politely asked if we could try some wine and possibly buy some. She waved us in and started pouring wine into a little shot glass. We all agreed the wine was delicious and bought 4 bottles for our trip, as well as 2 jars of honey, and 1 jar of marmalade. The wine bottles were 4 pesos a piece, a little over a US dollar, and would probably go for about 20 US dollars if purchased in a stor in the States.

Our first night stop was Valle de Fertil. When we were pulling into our camp site we saw a group of girls all dressed up walking together. Dom was quick to the punch, “Donde esta la fiesta?”- where is the party?. They went on to tell us that there was a club right around the corner from our camp site. So we set up camp and Dakin, Dom, and I made our way to the club, the only club in prbably a five mile radius of this town.

Day 2-

Quickly after waking up we made our way to “Valle de la Luna”, “The Valley of the Moon”. There were some pretty incredible rock formations as well as a landscape that resembled the surface of the moon.

After we left the Valle de la Luna we drove through some very arid landscapes and it was at this time that I learned to drive a manual car, successfully, for the first time. As the sun went down, approaching Chilecito, we pulled over to watch the sunset and have a glass of our incredible wine we had purchased.

Day 3-

I awoke in a campsite that looked a lot less sketchy than it did when they woke me up, upon arriving, to set up camp. There was a pool which seemed clean and an also an excellent alternative showering, since there was nowhere to shower. Day 3 was a lot of driving becuase we hadnt picked up much ground in the past two days. We drove through a number of small pueblos (spanish for small town) and some detours that took us 100 km down dirt roads made for some excellent scenery.

Day 4-

We made our way to the Ruins of Quilmes. The Quilmes tribe resided there starting around 1000 AD and held there ground through fights with Incas and other tribes until, in 1600, the Spanish took over the city and deported the majority of the 2000 Quilmes Indians left to Buenos Aires. Other things we stopped to see on the way through the red cliffs to Salta included “El Garganta del Diablo”- “the throat of the devil” which was a narrow crack in the big red cliffs, and an amphitheatre where a band was playing. Both seemed more like tourist bait than natural wonders. Locals set up tables (with stacked rocks) and tried to sell their necklaces, bags, and rocks to those who stopped.

When we arrived in Salta, we found the hostel that sounded the best in our guidebooks. Nick and Jess took the car to the gas station (”Servo” in Australian dialect) to top off the tank and clean it out a bit. The company who had rented the car to us actually had an employee ride to Salta on a bus to pick up the car and drive it back to Mendoza. When the sneaky little shit, who had come to pick up the car, was checking the car to see if everything was ok, the radio magically stopped working from the second he set foot in the car. He put on a nice little show acting like he was trying to fix it by blowing out the head unit, but it wasnt until we decided to check the fuse that the radio miraculously came back to life. We assumed he had messed with the fuse when Nick and Jess had their backs turned becuase right when the correct fuse was pushed back into place, the radio started working as it had fifteen minutes before.

Total cost for our car rental, food, camping, and gas was 450 pesos per person, a little under 150 USD. This included the 100 peso feast we cooked when we arrived in Salta.