3 countries in one week: Chile, Argentina, Brazil

It was 3 days since we crossed from Bolivia to Chile and now we were headed towards Salta, Argentina. We took a bus with our friends Dani and Kinga from San Pedro de Atacama to Salta. It was Friday and we had to leave earlier because on these days the border is full. It took more than 2 hours to go through customs and do the paperwork.The road was very windy but the views were spectacular.

Two stops before Salta we said goodbye to our friends.  After 10 hours on the road, we got to Salta and we realized that it was a long weekend and most hotels were already full. It was 8pm at night and we were walking with our backpacks without much success. We finally found a place, Posada las Farolas, that was a little over our budget but very comfortable and with charming owners. The next day we moved to Tierra Oculta where we met a group of students from Misiones who were there for a conference to tell to university prospective students about their experience. These guys organized a BBQ at night and they were partying until 5 am. However when we woke up they were already awake. We then discovered that they had some problems with the security guard and the police.

The city was very nice. We hadn't been in one since La Paz! We found a good restaurant where we tried the "empanadas de carne". We saw a very good flan that we wanted to have for desert but we weren't able to have it because they closed the kitchen without telling us anything!

From Salta we flew to the Argenitian side of Iguazu Falls. The falls can be visited from the Argentinian and the Brazilian sides. In the former you can get closer to them and in the latter you can see a better panoramic view, according to what they told us since we didn't have time to see them from the Brazilian side.

Since we had so many problems in Salta, we decided to book a hostel in hostelworld.com. We booked the Azaleas place, located between the falls and the town. However, when we got there, it was closed. We waited for 2 hours because we already paid a 10% of our stay, but we finally left. We asked in different hostels but most of them, as we expected, were full. We finally ended up finding a room in Peter Pan hostel, that was actually better than the one we booked online.

We were surprised that none of the showers have curtains and when you get a shower the entire bathroom gets wet.

The next day we took a bus to the falls. There we followed several of the established itineraries. First we took the Lower loop and we crossed by boat to the San Martin island, where hiked to a view point where you could see the falls from really close. We got really wet!

On our way to San Martin island

Views from the island

 On our way we were able to see different animals: Coatis, caymans, and weird birds.

Coati

 

Then we walked the Upper trail overlooking the falls from the top, and finally we took a train to the Devil's throat which is stunning. To get there we had to walk over footbridges placed on top of the falls.

Views from the Upper trail

Devil's Throat

 

The nextday we took a public bus to cross to the Brazilian side. It was the third border we crossed in less than a week. We realized that it is very easy to cross and there is little control. In Foç we stayed at Bambu hostel for just one night as the next day we had a flight to Manaus at 6 am.

Laura cooking in the hostel Bambu

Our NEXT STOP will be a 4 day tour through the Amazon.