It´s no secret that travel plans tend to change... the weather, illness, and bad luck make sure of that. Rich and I seem to have run into a bit of bad luck lately.
Our plan was to go from Argentina into Chile for about 3 weeks, travel to Patagonia, back up to Santiago, and then cross over into Argentina once more to experience Mendoza. While in Patagonia, Rich finally found an affordable ticket to travel back to the UK for his grandparent´s 60th wedding anniversary. So, we decided that after Mendoza, we would travel to a Northern Argentinian town called Salta. From there, Rich would bus to Santa Cruz, Bolivia to catch his flight, and I would slowly work my way up to Santa Cruz to meet him upon his return. What we weren´t expecting, was Easter. My mother always says that Easter is the highest holiday, and that definitely seems to be true in Latin America. It´s celebrated from the Thursday- Tuesday, and there is a lot of travelers, both nationals and foreigners, visiting their families and beautiful cities.
Before our last day in the park with our new friends in Mendoza to drink out enormous wine, Rich and I stopped by the bus station to purchase some tickets for a bus to Salta that evening. We´ve been buying tickets on the same day, and sometimes 1 or 2 days in advance for our whole trip. We bought two nights in a hostel in Salta that morning, so everything was in order. We went to Andesmar, one our favorite bus companies to get our tickets, and were told all the buses leaving today were full. We tried a few other vendors, and found this to be the case everywhere. Unfortunately, because of Easter, Mendoza was also full, so staying an extra night wasn´t possible. Going back to Andesmar to reconfirm, the ticket salesman told us that yes, all the buses are full from Mendoza, however there are lots of seats leaving from Cordoba. Cordoba is only about 10 hours from Mendoza on the bus. Given our predicament, Rich and I decided that the best thing would be to buy an overnight bus to Cordoba, sleep on the bus, see Cordoba for a day, and catch and overnight to Salta. We bought our tickets to Cordoba leaving at 9PM that night, and headed back to a call center to call our hostel in Salta to change the booking.
I called the google provided number, and was told that this wasn´t the phone number for a hostel any longer, but the man provided me with the number of a hostel. I called that number and was told that was not the hostel where we made out booking. We checked online again, and I called a third number which was disconnect. After scanning various websites, we learned that our hostel had shut down several months ago, and had not yet been removed as an option on the hostel booking website. No other options were pulling online, so we decided to get to Cordoba, and find a hostel there, as we´d run out of time in Mendoza.
A quick overnighter later, we were in Cordoba. I spoke to the tourist information who gave me a list of hostels to call. I went to a call center to try out a few of the recommended ones, and quickly learned they were full. I called all 25 hostels in the list - no one had availability. We looked online, and there was nothing hostel/hotel, nothing in Cordoba, nothing in Salta. When I started to look for camping locations, Rich suggested we catch a 36 hour bus from Cordoba to Santa Cruz in Bolivia. I´m not one for long bus journeys, but even a 36 hour bus ride sounds better then sleeping in the bus station, so we bought tickets for a bus leaving that night. We spent a day walking around the city center, checking out a few museums, and spending the last of our Argentinian pesos on a few good steaks. Then, we went to hostel and asked to pay a small fee to use their internet and showers for a couple of hours, before catching our bus to Bolivia. So, maybe things didn´t go to plan, but it turned out to be a good day in Cordoba, and we have a new plan.
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