Matt's Mission

Well I quickly learned that the greatest downfall of traveling alone is most palpable while waiting for buses. You can only play one player card games for so long before you lose your mind completely; so you can imagine my dismay when I discovered I was to spend 9 hours in Arica, Chile all by my lonesome. Lucky for me there was an internet cafe just across the street from the terminal and after some long chats with Robyn and my folks the nine hours didn't seem nearly as bad. I still played a great deal of one player card games though and departed some what lucid. However, this layover put some stress on me to reach Salta in time for my pick up on the 14th to head out to the Sayta Horse Ranch. I needed to quick departure from San Pedro, Chile, to Salta, Argentina, but of course, things do not always work out the way you need them to and the next bus to Salta was not until the next day. This actually was a fortunate turn of events in the end as I had no choice but to check out the cool little desert town of San Pedro and spend my first night in a bed in a few nights. San Pedro and the surrounding area is quite beautiful and I thoroughly enjoyed its slendor on a mountain bike as I biked between rocky desert mountains, across mostly dried strems, and through a winding canyon with tight turns and low overhangs for 28KM. I loved every minute of it! Boy did my bum hurt afterwards though. Perhaps not the smartest activity just before heading to a horse ranch for three days, but well worth it.

As I did not have an alarm clock I hit the hay at 7:40 to ensure I would not sleep past my bus departure time. I was tired anyways, so it was an almost justifiable plan. After an amazing bus ride to Argentina filled with incredible flat expanses of desert, rocky protutions, salty, mostly frozen river beds, classic forking cacti, llamas, ducks, and small dear-like critters in which my eyes were glued to the window the entire ride, I arrived to Salta around 9:00PM and met up with my friend Cristina who is Ecuadorian but lives in Buenos Aires. We reminisced over Ecuadorian fun and then hit the hay to head out to the ranch bright and early.

Sayta Ranch was i n c r e d i b l e and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute there. The owner (Enrique) is a teenager trapped in a mid-fifty year old body who cracked a joke about sex every third sentence at least, the horses were well behaved and beautiful, the scenery and wildlife was amazing, the three resident dogs were great and definitely got a lot of attention from me, and I ate more steak of higher quality than I could have ever dreamed of eating. I think I ate more money in meat than I paid for my entire stay there. We also learned to gallop and post, jump on the horse without a saddle and ride bare back, and use a lasso. I told Enrique in two more days I would be a true gaucho (an Argentinian cowboy essentially) and he responded "tal vais dos mas vivas" which means maybe in two more lifetimes. A very fun man. It was definitely sad to leave the ranch after our short stay.

After three days on horse back we took out tender bums North with two other travelers from the ranch and headed to Permacarma where we hiked to view the Seven Coloured Mountains. I am not too sure how it happens, but apparently different compounds are compressed together in layers and upon exposure to the air they oxidize to form different colours. However it happens, it is very pretty. We then headed a little further north to Humahuacha where we hoped to see the White Mountains that our trusty Lonely Planet suggested... Not quite worth it. Sure they were a little white, but not very impressvie.

After our little hike Cris and I hopped on a bus to Buenos Aires (BA), or at least we thought it was to BA. Turns out the women who sold us the tickets decided to play a trick on us and lied to us to put us on a bus to Cordova. Needless to say we were unimpressed and made sure the bus company bought us our next tickets to BA like we were supposed to be traveling to. We arrived 6 hours later than we were supposed to, but we arrived! BA is gorgeous and full of opportunities. I am really looking forward to my couple weeks here. I'll keep you posted!

-Matt