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When I first turned up in Salta I was a little disappointed; I’d heard so many great things about the city that during the first few days I thought to myself, “Is this it?!” However, I’ve now started my third week here, and the town has really grown on me - almost everyday I discover new parts of it! I now rate it up there with Mendoza.

Spending time over the last two weeks with my friends has been great, but today John will head up north, and Helen has already been gone a couple of days so now I’m feeling a bit lost without them. On the up side I’ll be able to get back to working on my Spanish now.

I’m planning on staying in Salta another week, before heading up north. I’ve heard some great things about Purmamarca, Tilcara, and Iruya. In truth, I’m trying to stall leaving Argentina for a long as possible because I like it here so much, and I’m not sure what I’ll find up north. Perhaps, I’ll take John’s suggestion of spending some time in Bolivia and Peru for a while then returning to the sanctuary of Argentina afterwards.

The news reports from Bolivia are worrying, and more so is reading the thorntree forum about it: there are stories of protesters, riot police, road blocks, threatened military coups, dynamite attacks etc, mostly centred around La Paz. Thankfully I have a friend currently travelling through the country so I’ll hopefully get some first–hand information from him. It could be another 2-3 weeks before I reach the border so maybe the situation will have calmed down.

After 3 weeks in Córdoba I finally managed to buy my bus ticket to Salta. Hostel Tango was my first experience of hostels in a good many years and it was quite a change from what I’m used to. When I travelled around Mexico, a couple of years ago, I used to stay in posadas. Which in my experience where used by the locals to have a quickie, or to crash after a hard nights drinking at one of the bars. So it was quite new to be surrounded by fellow travellers.

I chose Tango because on the website it said it was great fun. This turned out to mean they play the music very loudly almost all the day. I got used to it after a while. Besides that I had a good time there. The food was very good, one of the guys had a playstation so we got to play games and watch some rented movies. And there a very good bar just over the road. All in all an excellent place to stay if you want to visit Córdoba, Argentina.

Leaving was an experience, not a nice one. The Mercobus turned up late. I asked the woman at the desk who said it was about half an hour late. No problem, I thought. Around the time it was supposed to arrive a number of this company’s buses arrived and chaos broke out. Riot police formed a line in front of the buses and some protesters started shouting at the staff. It was then I discovered that lots of the Mercobus buses had been delayed (because of the protest?) and there was a backlog of passengers wanting to leave. This was made harder by the riot police getting in the way. Fortunately, there was no fighting and after another 10 minutes my bus turned up and I managed to get on. What a relief!

I’ve some good films on the buses in Argentina, unfortunately on this occasion I was subjected to watching, “The day after tomorrow”. Boy, it really does suck!

So who am I? My name is Iain, as the blog title says I’m from Scotland, but at the moment I’m travelling around South America. I’ve been travelling for longer and longer periods.

In my early 20s I travelled around Europe a couple of times. Fortunately, I later got the chance to live and work in the Netherlands then Germany, for three years. Going back to the UK to live was hard after that. Since then I’ve visited Canada (4 years ago), then Guatemala, and Mexico (2 years ago). I’ve now reached the 5 month mark exploring parts of Argentina - mostly - but I’m now in Bolivia, which is much more dangerous feeling since the recent riots.

My plan is to keep on heading north until I reach Guatemala. I miss that country, so I’m looking forward to seeing it again.