I knew that getting out of San Pedro would be a challenge, but I thought I had timed it right. I was wrong.
Timing is pretty difficult in Latin America for a North American. Punctuality is encouraged and expected more than most places in the world short of Japan. To try to plan trips and meals and a life in a place where noone is on time and nothing ever happens by the clock is something of a challenge. Hence, I am stuck in Chile.
San Pedro is a tourist trap. In the purest sense of the word. The bus for Salta, Argentina only runs three days a week. It runs Friday morning. It left about an hour before I arrived. Timing.
There are a couple bus agencies that leave out of San Pedro, but for wheer honesty, I recommend Geminis. The other main agency told me a bunch of crap to try to get me to spend my money there. The moneychangers here are also ridiculously crooked. Use the ATM for mey if at all possible. San Pedro is also riddled with tourist agencies offering all manner of things to do like:
- Bike Tours
- Sandboarding
- Geysers
- Sightseeing
Me, personally; been there, done that. So I decided to use the couple days respite I had been given and catch up on some writing and learn the town. San Pedro really has one main street; Caracoles. You’ll find most of the restaurants here and a good number of gift shops. San Pedro also has the cheapest bandannas I have ever seen. Even cheaper than Wal-Mart in the USA, which is no mean feat.
The most important thing in San Pedro is this: do not eat cheap meat or consume cheap milk products. Things like cooling and refrigeration are considered something of a luxury this far out in the desert. Hence, many of the budget restaurants, simply do not have refrigerators for their food. It is not uncommon for the meat to simply sit out overnight. Be wary!
Food prices run the gambit in San Pedro, so shop around. I will tell you that you can pay whatever price you want and eat well here. I will tell you that you should spend a few lunches simply bouncing around to the nicer restaurants and just having a coffee or a beer. Each of the nicer restaurants generally has a special type of small layered bread and some amaaaazing sauces that they serve as a free appetizer. This stuff is great! There is a restaurant on the main drag that serves a vegetarian lasagna that I maintain is the best Italian food I have eaten in my entire life. I wish I could remember the name of that place.
I spent a pleasant couple days in San Pedro simply catching up on my journal writing. unfortunately, I didn’t write much about Chile, just about the other countries I had been lazy in documenting. San Pedro also has blindingly fast internet when compared to anywhere in Bolivia so I was finally able to back up all my pictures. Though, as I was holed up in a hotel room or a cafe writing most of the time, I didn’t take many pictures of the pueblo itself.
The hostel I stayed at, Hostal la Ruca ( a place I highly recommend), had a number of fantastic characters staying there as well. Among the best were Sophie and Nick. A couple who had been off traveling consecutively since 2008. They were full of great advice, neat stories, and smiles. I eventually even swapped ipod contents with Sophie and made off with all her good music!
San Pedro is absolutely perforated by hawkers. Every street you walk down you will be constantly waylayed and hollered at, sometimes even followed for blocks, by people trying to get you to come purchase their services or tours. Get ready for it.
My second morning in the city, I was feeling quite good after a decent nights sleep in the agreeable temperature and decided to go out for breakfast. As I was seated for my 3,500 peso breakfast, an older woman sat down at another table nearby. I asked her if she was flying solo this morning, and she informed me she was with someone.
“Here?” I queried. We were the only two people in the place.
“Well, not in the building, but I have a friend.”
“That must be very lovely for you. Congratulations on making a friend!” I joked. She was not amused.
Eventually she came and sat at my breakfast table and we swapped stories of traveling and the things we had seen. Then things got wierd.
“Well, you don’t seem American at all,” She said.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Well, you know, Americans are quite stupid.” The words seemed to float from her mouth and just hang there in the air for a tencount while I did mental monkeybars to keep a straight face and see where this was going. She obligingly continued.
“Americans, as a whole are so uncultured. They are oblivious to the world around them. They are rude, and ignorant, to be sure.”
I don’t know what my face looked like as she said all this. I was doing my best to keep stoic, but it certainly wasn’t easy. After several more minutes, I realized she actually had completely missed the fact that she had insulted me, my entire family, and the vast majority of everyone I had ever met. She just didn’t connect the dots. Every negative thing she said, she seemed to just be describing her own actions. Finally, I had had quite enough and put some money on the table for the bill and excused myself to go back to my journal.
A few days of rest and relaxation were a godsend after the trundling dust covered frozen highlands leaving of Atacama, but I was on a virginaly tight schedule. I had managed to pad two days into my schedule through sheer luck, but those days had been eaten alive by San Pedro bus schedule. Now it was time to get the heck outa Dodge. On the walk to the bus with Nick and Sophie, I encountered the delightful French Canadian girl from my ill fated Machu Pichy excursion. I feel like a retard because even now I can not remember her name! We talked for a while about what had transpired since we last crossed paths, and I found her to be genuinely good natured and honestly care about the people around her even though were were hapless traveling flotsam. This is of particular note as my experience with most French Canadians has been decidedly negative. Much like the old French woman I had breakfast with in San Pedro.
The bus ride from San Pedro, Chile to Salta, Argentina is no joke. The ride takes the better part of half a day, and covers a great deal of boring terrain and many, many curvy roads. I have gotten into the habit of packing motion sickness pills as I almost lost it a few times on particularly windy bus rides. Sophie confided in me that she often gets motion sick, but bravely declined my last motion pill, saying she should be fine.
This was not the case.
Eventually, Sophie rejoined us from her trip to the lavatory and I gave her my last motion pill in case things made a resurgence and she soldiered on. There was a strange old man sitting next to Sophie who, according to her, had been around almost the entire world. His wife had died a couple years back, and now he was traveling to Argentina, the one country he hadn’t really explored because he wanted to see it before he died.
Our traveling gentleman handed me his camera at one point, refusing to speak English, instead speaking in his native French and gesticulating with sign language. This, I decided, was worth being answered in kind. He wanted a picture of the landscape out my window. Instead, what he got was a fashion show of me, the Canadian next to me, Sophie, and every wild face we could possibly make as he wildly gestured and babbled for me to return his camera to him until we three were all laughing too hard to even lift a finger to click the camera buttons any more. I mean it when I say that this is the hardest any of us have laughed in our entire lives. This simple shenanigan is the funniest (sic) thing I did in my entire Latin American trip. Fun with cameras. Fun with seniors.
At the border crossing into Argentina, I met a monk of the Order of John the Baptist. He had been regaling Nick with wonderful Christian stories the whole bus ride. It nothing else, it made for a good picture.
After a LOOOONG bus ride watching random scenery and the fruits of the dreaded Canyon Lasers ™, we all arrived rather late in Salta, AR. When you get there, take a moment to talk to the employees of the local hostels wandering the terminal; they are quite helpful. There is free wireless at a bakery at the North(?) end of the terminal if you need to do some research. Welcome to Argentina. Let the games begin!