Mendoza to Salta - It can be astonishingly difficult to get bikes transported by bus...

When we wanted to pack our stuff to leave Mendoza, I noticed that I had a flat tire, so we first had to fix that… So we left quite late and we didn’t get very far before I again had a flat tire, so we decided to fix it another time and for the moment just exchange the tube… About 26 km out of Mendoza we stopped at the intersection to Lavalle and both something for lunch and then we put us next to the street and tried to hitchhike (we decided not to cycle the about 1220 km from Mendoza to Salta, as it is mostly Pampa and we want to spend more time in Bolivia and Peru…). But we weren’t lucky at all, after several hours still standing at the same spot we decided that we need to do something else… And as it would get dark soon, we cycled back to Mendoza and went to the bus terminal, we wanted to see if we find a company that would take us and our bikes (we heard that often they don’t take bikes…) to Salta. And so it was: We were told that there were 3 companies running from Mendoza to Salta, but all of them told us that we’d have to send the bike separately and in a box and that they would not be transported in the same bus as we. Well, that was definitely not what we wanted. So, what do we do? We just looked for another office of one of the companies we already asked and there they told us that if we take the wheels off and put the bikes in a box and bring them to the terminal about 4 hours before the bus leaves, they would take them with the same bus as us. Well that already sounded a little bit better, but it was still not what we wanted. But then we had another idea: There was a bus just about to leave to Salta, so we just looked for that bus and asked the drivers if they’d take our bikes the way they are (we speculated that there weren’t a lot of people on the bus and therefore only little luggage), and surprise, surprise, they said they’d take the bike! Obviously we had to pay for them and we suspect that that money was a very good tip for the drivers, but never mind, we got the bikes, all our luggage and ourselves into that bus and then had together just about $ 50 (about 5 dollars) left, as we had no time to get more money… But well, we had a 19 hours bus drive in front of us where we anyways couldn’t spend too much money and we’ll have to take care of that as soon as we’re actually in Salta… It was a long 19 hours, but we slept most of the night, watched some movies and played Bingo, where you could even win a bottle of wine :-). 

Playing Bingo on the Bus... :-)

Once we arrived in Salta we were surprised that our bikes looked pretty ok, it really seemed as they survived the journey with no bigger problem! So we looked for a hostel, which wasn’t as easy as we hoped for, as the first two we went to were closed, but finally we found an open one and stayed there. And we had to make sure to get some pesos again and get some food before I suddenly got a fever and went to bed early. The next day I felt better but still sick so I stayed in bed while Stefan went to explore the city a bit and hiked up to a nearby hill from where you have a nice view over the city. 

Salta's Cathedral at night

View over Salta from the Cerro San Bernardo

As in the evening I still didn’t feel good, we decided to stay another day in Salta, but the next morning we nevertheless had to get out of the hostel as they had to clean whatever and threw out all guests. So once again we had to look for a hostel, but we found a really nice one, it’s a bit more expensive, but very clean and quite. And this day we really just didn’t do a lot in order to relax and getting well again for our next big adventure: Crossing the Andes again over Paso de Jama…