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Our exploration of WordPress blogging is almost keeping pace with our exploration of Argentina. 🙂 Enjoy!
A quick reflection about our 10 favorite things about our life in Buenos Aires right now (in no particular order):
Patios de Cafayate is a boutique Starwood property located in Cafayate, a town in the wine country of Salta province. It’s a beautiful property with only 30 rooms in a great location – the landscapes surrounding Cafayate and on the drive down from Salta city are stunning (check out our Salta trip review). We were excited to stay here on our trip to the northwest, particularly since we were able to use those hard-earned Starwood points to pay for it.
We arrived and were greeted very warmly by the front desk staff, then shown to our room. We walked through an interior courtyard connecting to several other patios (go figure, considering the name) and a grand common room with a view out to the pool. Our room was massive and beautifully decorated. The hotel used to be the family home of a winemaker, and the winery still operates next door, on the same property. As such, the hotel sits in the middle of vineyards, making for a beautiful view.
Despite the idyllic property and location, from our perspective it seems that management is missing the mark on a couple of basics that could make Patios truly exceptional. Instead, it feels like a pretty building that’s trying to be a hotel but not quite getting there. Here are a couple of observations that lead us to think that:
Overall feel of desertion
We noticed right away that the hotel feels deserted, as we’d read in several other reviews – there were almost no other guests, and we seldom saw hotel employees while we were there. Most of the rooms are located along a long, grand corridor, and only every 3rd or 4th light down the hallway was turned on – strange. We went to sit in the main salon one afternoon and spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out how to turn on the overhead lighting, to no avail.
The main salon, which looked out onto the pool, was lovely and furnished with antiques. If only we could figure out how to turn on the lights . . .
On our first day, the main salon and other sitting rooms were completely silent – no people, no music playing – which made it feel that much more like we were trespassing somewhere we shouldn’t be. The second day (when we made use of the living room), a TV in one of the adjoining salons was blaring music from the 40s. It seemed like they were trying but just hadn’t figured out quite how to pull off the ambience they were going for. The lack of lights, music and other people gave the hotel a feel that it wasn’t really open for business.
Spider guts (yes, seriously)
When we arrived, we were shown to our upgraded room and were impressed with the size and the quality of the furnishings. The room was quiet and looked out onto the lawn and beyond to the vineyards. The walls had been painted a beautiful sage green color and highlighted the classic crown moldings (which I love!) and the high ceilings.
Pretty nice digs, huh?
However, it appeared that the hotel had a spider problem (which we’d seen mentioned in other reviews on TripAdvisor), and evidence of such problem was left smeared on the walls in both the bedroom and the bathroom. We’re not sure if this was carelessness or an intentional warning to other spiders that may dare to follow.
I'm pretty sure I can make out a leg . . .
If the purpose is to scare off other potential invadors, it’s not working – found another fallen soldier in our shower in the morning. If it’s just a lack of attention to detail, I might suggest that the relatively marginal effort it would take the housekeeping staff to wipe up any such “messes” would more than pay off by improving the experience for guests staying there (especially those who, like me, don’t exactly love spiders).
Hot tub/spa
On our first afternoon, we took a walk around the property to explore and found the spa – a relatively modern-looking building located to the side of the main hotel. We were excited to take advantage of the lovely indoor hot tub, so we ran back to our room to change into our suits and came back. The water in the hot tub wasn’t warm – the woman working in the spa said she had turned it on/up when we first came (we’re not quite sure which), but even 30 minutes later the water was only lukewarm. Which I guess is ok, because it was less like a hot tub (you know, the kind you would SIT in) and more like a pool of warmish water 5 feet deep, with no seats – guess this is a standing-room-only tub?
Hotel hot tub was pretty (though not hot, nor did it have seats) - apparently it's actually a standing-room-only warmish tub. Or, possibly another Devil's Throat...
While we were waiting in vain for the water to warm, we relaxed on the fancy-looking lounge chairs . . . where we noticed all the cobwebs gracing various surfaces in the spa. The floor-to-ceiling windows were streaked with dirt and cobwebs, and the lounge chair next to us had cobwebs hanging off the back.
The late-afternoon sunlight streaming through would have been lovely . . . if not for the shadows cast by all the dirt and grime
And the otherwise-classy-looking candle set on the table next to us (as well as the others placed around the room) was not lit and instead seemed to be a repository for old garbage – yuck.
Looks nice, right? Perfect for relaxing and enjoying some of the local wine
Um, ok . . . but you could have just brought in a garbage can
Breakfast
Breakfast here was better than we’ve had at other hotels in Argentina (sometimes no more than coffee and bread). There was a buffet with various meats, cheeses, fruit, cereal, as well as coffee/tea/juices. And as soon as we sat down, the server brought out a lovely 3-tiered tray of baked goods and offered us eggs made-to-order (which were pretty tasty and a nice touch)! The cookies included in our baked goods tray (yep, cookies for breakfast) were the same ones we’d seen at the small coffee/tea set up in the main salon in the afternoons. We were a bit confused by the little cups of ketchup and other unidentified sauces in the middle of the trays of meats and cheeses, but maybe that’s just an effort to cater to international tastes – we’re not quite sure. Despite that, it was pretty good and gave us enough to go on for our wine tastings later in the day.
Value for money (or Starpoints, in our case)
This hotel was priced at $240/night or 12,000 Starpoints. As we are currently unemployed with no near-term income prospects, we opted for the Starpoints. In retrospect, though, we’re not sure it was worth it. We’ve previously paid only 6,000 points/night for a room in the W New York over the busy holiday season, which would have cost ~$600/night if we’d paid in cash. It’s unclear why the ratio of points to cash is so different here than it is elsewhere, or if it was just this hotel in particular, but this didn’t seem to be the best use of our Starpoints.
Our takeaway
Overall, we’re glad to have had the experience of staying in Patios de Cafayate. It was a lovely retreat in a beautiful location with thoughtfully-appointed rooms. The lack of attention to detail we’ve noted here would be relatively easy to fix and would make all the difference between the pretty good stay that we had and the truly phenomenal experience this hotel could provide. Maybe we caught them on an off-week or during the slow season, but it would be great to see this hotel really take advantage of all it has going for it.
This review is a long time overdue. El Estrebe is a parilla (basically means a restaurant that focuses on steak, for those unaware) that is very close to our apartment–on Pena near the corner of Pueyrredon. We walked by it several times as we were exploring the neighborhood when we first got here and noticed that it was pretty much always packed (with locals) during dinner time–this is all the more impressive given that it is in the middle of a mostly residential block rather than prominently situated on a corner like so many of the popular places are.
We finally tried it after about a month of taking taxis to Palermo for good steak (e.g., Don Julio, La Cabrera, Miranda, etc.), and we only wish we had done so sooner. Not only is the food fantastic (they literally cut our steak with spoons at the table), but it has a great local vibe full of regulars and, even on your first visit, they go out of their way to make you feel at home–in particular, Jorge who is one of the waiters, is very likely to sit down and chat with you for upwards of 30 minutes, even if your Spanish is pretty mediocre :). We’ve now been there several times, and each time we’ve had phenomenal food, great wine and a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
Further details: We’ve tried several different cuts of steak and all have been extremely high quality and delicious. The chimichurri is awesome, the proveletas are awesome, the salads are fresh and they have a great winelist that include some very good wines for less than $AR40 (we’ve found this to be rare at high-end places). We haven’t tried the pastas yet (since the meat is so good!), but rest assured that they have a complete menu.
Highly recommended!
By the way, it’s not just us, they are highly reviewed on the local Yelp equivalent: Guiaoleo
Enjoy!
We just got back from a weeklong trip to Salta and northwest Argentina, and let’s just say that we’re very appreciative of all that Buenos Aires has to offer. We’ve heard that the rest of the country thinks porteños are snobby and that, in reverse, porteños think people from the provinces are unsophisticated and that Buenos Aires is far superior. Got to say, we’re starting to feel more like porteños every day . . . .
Our itinerary took us to see the top sights in northwest Argentina: Valle de Calchaquí, the wine-producing town of Cafayate, the salt flats of Salinas Grandes and the small village of Purmamarca (as well as the two biggest cities in the region, Salta and Jujuy). As you know from Ryan’s previous post, we made the mistake of using a local guide for the first two sights, then covered the rest on our own.
Salta
After our epic 20-hour journey on FlechaBus, we were very eager to arrive in Salta and check in to our hotel. We had heard that Salta is a beautiful and charming city, so we were excited to see it for ourselves. It has a wonderful central plaza surrounded by colonial buildings that are artfully lit at night. But we were somewhat surprised to find that the city is dirty, noisy and really polluted – Buenos Aires is a far bigger city, but the pollution was much worse in Salta.
Salta's main plaza is surrounded by lovely colonial buildings. They've got the lighting thing down for sure.
The Salta region is famous for its empanadas, and we ate them at least once (sometimes twice) every single day that we were there (to be fair, partly because they were good, and partly because there weren’t many other appetizing options). The best we had by far were at the Doña Salta restaurant just down the street from our hotel in Salta – yum!!
We love to eat empanadas as much as we love to play with them!
Valle de Calchaquí
The scenery on the drive to Cafayate through the Valle de Calchaquí is truly amazing – a beautiful landscape as far as the eye can see. Some parts were red, others dusty brown and even green. The colors kept changing around every turn.
These hills had just about every color you could imagine
The drive takes somewhere around 3 hours, depending on how often you stop. We stopped to explore the Garganta del Diablo (interestingly, we’ve identified at least 3 other places in Argentina with the same name, including the crazy 3-sided waterfall we saw at Iguazu) – a huge canyon in the red rocks right off the highway. Ryan climbed up a ways, and I graciously offered to stay below and take pictures (had nothing to do at all with my fear of heights).
Um, this is really high . . . not sure how I'm going to get down
Wine country of Cafayate
Once we arrived in Cafayate, we checked in to our hotel – the Patios de Cafayate (a Starwood luxury property) that used to be the estate of a winemaker’s family – the winery is still operating and is attached to the hotel. The property is absolutely beautiful, but they’re definitely missing the mark on some of the basics to make this hotel truly as spectacular as it could be (review of Patios coming soon).
We like pretty hotels
Cafayate is one of Argentina’s wine-producing regions, known for having fuller-bodied wines than those produced in Mendoza – one of our favorite everyday wines is from Cafayate (Quara malbec, 14 pesos/bottle – that’s around US$4). We tasted at two wineries in Cafayate chosen by our guide and were underwhelmed by both. Domingo Hermanos is located right in town and had a very basic tasting room pouring very mediocre wines (and only 2 of them!).
Wine by the gallon - got to be good
Finca de las Nubes is located just outside of town at the base of the hills. Their property is charming and has a great view, but their wines leave something to be desired. Impressively though, the entire winery is operated by just 5 employees – we saw them applying labels by hand while we were there.
Not a bad view from the winery, even though their wine sucks
Despite our disappointing tastings, we did discover a few great new malbecs while we were there – we haven’t seen these wines in Buenos Aires (though we didn’t know to look for them) so bought a few bottles to bring back with us just in case. Interestingly, we learned that the wines that are available in Buenos Aires are actually significantly more expensive in Cafayate (we saw our aforementioned-standby Quara priced at 25-30 pesos in the wine shops vs. 13 pesos in the big city). Wouldn’t you think they might be cheaper closer to the source, before all the shipping and logistics expenses? Clearly not.
Cafayate itself is a small town – the central plaza is quaint, surrounded by restaurants and shops. We ate at Colorado (owned by 2 Americans who relocated to Cafayate) and Terruno (located on the plaza, relatively good food). There are a handful of wineries/tasting rooms in town and a shop selling homemade alfahores – you can’t miss the massive sign from the main plaza. We bought an assortment to take back to our Spanish teachers in Buenos Aires for our ongoing debate over the best alfahores and conitos.
Ok, so we bought more than a few, but it's for research!!
One other unique activity in Cafayate is to visit the goat cheese farm on the outskirts of town, where we met some of the producers. Our tour of the farm in Spanish was ok, but turns out our goat-farm vocabulary isn’t that great. Go figure.
Hello - I'm a goat and these are my friends
Renting a car
After heading back to Salta for one more night, ditching our guide and reserving a rental car, we were ready to hit the road and explore the region north of Salta. Neither of us had driven in foreign countries before (Canada and Mexico don’t count) and were a little nervous about renting a car and driving to the middle of nowhere. We were lucky to quickly find a car available through Alamo, who we’d read good reviews about. The employees we dealt with were all great – excellent English and very good customer service. It was a bit scary driving in Salta and trying not to get run over by buses, but once we made it out of the city we were good to go.
We hit Jujuy on our drive up to Purmamarca, our base for the next two nights. While some friends rave about the city of Jujuy, to us it just seemed like a biggish, mediocre city in the mountains. We stopped and had pizza for lunch at Chung-King (yep, that’s actually a pizza place, and no, they don’t serve Chinese food at all) and that was enough of Jujuy for us.
Purmamarca
Purmamarca is this cute little village up in the mountains. It’s one of the most popular places to overnight if you’re visiting the region north of Salta, partly because it’s developed a bunch of restaurants and hotels, and partly because it’s situated right at the base of this really pretty hill.
See, I told you it was a pretty hill
And our room on the top floor had a view of the hills (and a broken shower . . .)
Salinas Grandes
We’d read that the massive salt flats were not to be missed and also that they were best viewed toward the end of the day, after all the tour buses have left. So we cut short an intense game of chess in a café in Purmamarca and hit the road. And not just any road. It’s a 1-hour series of switchbacks straight up the side of the mountain to 12,000-ish feet. With tour buses and big trucks barreling down at us. Fun.
So after this lovely drive, we made it to the salt flats just as the sun was going down. Here’s our take on the famous Salinas Grandes: big, wide open space that’s white and crackly-looking. Kind of cool? Yes. Worth 2 hours of driving on scary mountain roads, the last bit in the dark? Maybe not. But we did take a few of the obligatory pics while we were there.
Hello from the really tall shadow people
Probably the most fun part was sneaking in to use the fee-for-use porta-potty after it was closed, then being confronted by a grumpy saltminer wanting her 1 peso on the way out. We were happy to pay, but it’s not our fault she didn’t have change for a 5!
You know this is going to be a classy bathroom with a sign like that
Humahuaca and Tilcara
These are two of the town that are regularly mentioned as destinations on any tour of the northwest. The drive to visit them was interesting, but if you’ve spent time in Northern California, Washington state or anywhere with mountains, I don’t think you’d be blown away. Maybe people get excited by the drive there? To us, it was ok, but not exactly a must-see.
It's a nice change from the city, but it's not exactly the most amazing landscape we've ever seen . . .
Maybe it was the towns themselves? We didn’t even stop in Humahuaca – just drove through and were ready to head back. It was interesting to see an Argentine pueblo, but there are plently of those that aren’t hours from anywhere. Tilcara was a little better. After walking for 10 minutes or so, we had pretty much seen the town so found a place to have lunch (empanadas – what else?) and a café, then headed back to our base in Purmamarca.
Heading home
On Sunday, it was time to make the trek from the small pueblo of Purmamarca in the hills all the way back to the big city of Buenos Aires. Our drive to the Salta airport took ~3 hours, leaving us with plenty of time before our flight. After our previously-posted experiences with FlechaBus and Aerolineas Argentinas, we were done taking chances on our transportation and booked a flight back with LAN. And what a good decision that was!!!!!
In comparison with our experience on Aerolineas Argentinas: LAN promptly checked us in (no waiting in line for 45 minutes because the computers were down and they were trying to come up with a back-up plan on the spot – see AA post). They made announcements in Spanish and English, didn’t combine our flight with another flight going to a different city, didn’t cancel all seat assignments, didn’t even land in another city that wasn’t on the itinerary (in case you’re wondering, yes, every one of these things happened when we flew with Aerolineas Argentinas to Iguazu). Instead, we boarded our flight on time and in an orderly fashion and actually pulled back from the gate 3 minutes EARLY. We landed in Buenos Aires, promptly received all of our checked luggage and were on our way home.
All in all, it was a fun trip and nice to experience a different part of the country. At the same time, it didn’t quite measure up to all the hype that we’d read and heard. It’s a great place to see if you’re in the area, but I wouldn’t call it a must-see international destination. Some of the landscapes are beautiful (valley on the way to Cafayate) and it was wonderful to visit a few villages that are on the other end of the spectrum from life in BA.
Buenos Aires, we missed you.
Well, we’re back in Buenos Aires after a week in the Northwest of Argentina (Salta and Jujuy provinces). Jen is working on a post that will give a full overview of our trip with pictures and so forth, so we should get that up in the next day or so. In the mean time, my priority has been writing a strongly worded post for Trip Advisor regarding the unpleasant experience we had with a guide named Angie that we contracted with in Salta in an effort to help save others from going through what we went through.
To keep you up to date on what we’ve been up to and to provide you with a strong warning in the event that you find yourself planning a trip to Salta you should definitely check out the post along with whatever responses may come from it here at Trip Advisor. Below is my original post if you’d rather read it here:
——————
Title: Different point of view on popular Salta Guide
My wife and I just spent a week in Salta/Jujuy during which we used Angie’s (also known as Giena on Trip Advisor) services as a private guide for the first 3 days. We were extremely disappointed with the quality of her service, her incredible prices and her attitude towards customer service in general. I recognize that she is quite popular here on TA and receives volumes of positive feedback (which is how we found her to begin with), but after our experience with her, I have trouble understanding all of the praise and think it’s very important that TA has a post representing an alternative viewpoint so that other people have a more balanced idea of what Angie offers–had there been a post like this, we would likely have planned differently and had a much better trip. For context, we’re from the US and have been living in BsAs for the last 2.5 months; in that time we’ve developed a good understanding of pricing/cost of living in BsAs (this will be important when I discuss Angie’s pricing).
We hired Angie because of the great things we had read on TA. Unfortunately, due to a series of vague emails, we misunderstood her pricing to be US$250 for 5 days, when in reality it was US$250 PER DAY. We take partial responsibility for not having reconfirmed the total price, but after re-reading the email chain several times, there is definitely room for misinterpretation – Angie never stated it was a per day price nor did she provide a total price for the trip. Further, given our reference points for pricing in BsAs, it would never have ocurred to us that she could possibly charge US$250/day–I’ll get into that more in a bit. Had Angie not handled the misunderstanding so poorly, I would not be taking the time to write this detailed post–as it is, she left us feeling cheated and extremely unhappy.
In the end, we paid her US$500, which we feel was far more than she was worth. What did we get for our US$500? Here is what Angie did for us:
Day 1: 10am-3pm =~5 hours of time together including lunch (~3.5 hours of driving)
Angie picked us up at 10am and drove us to Cafayate with a couple of photo stops at well marked locations right along the side of the main road (e.g., Garganta del Diablo). We arrived in Cafayate at ~1pm and had lunch with Angie at her favorite restaurant in town. Then she dropped us off at our hotel at 3pm or so, and we didn’t see her again until the next morning.
Day 2: 10am-12pm ~2 hours of time together
We weren’t planning to see Angie on Day 2 (assuming that we weren’t paying for her) as we had told her we were planning to explore Cafayate by ourselves, but she told us she’d pick us up at 10am and take us to a couple of wineries so we reluctantly agreed.
She picked us up at 10am, took us to the goat cheese farm and then 2 wineries (each obvious tourist destinations). At each of these 3 venues she handed us off for the standard tour and waited until we were done. My wife had talked to her 2 days previously about setting up a lunch at the last winery and assumed this had been arranged. However, on the way there Angie pulled off the road, called the winery and then told us we couldn’t have lunch there because we didn’t book it the day before (I guess that was our job?). After the 2nd winery she dropped us off in town at ~12:00pm. The only other time we saw her that day was when she picked us up at our hotel and dropped us off at a restaurant for dinner (~10 min).
Day 3: 10am-2:00pm ~4 hours of time together (all driving)
She picked us up at 10am and we drove directly back to Salta on the same road we came down on with 2 stops at different photo spots. At this point, we still didn’t have a hotel booked for Friday night, and rather than helping us book something she just told us to let her know if we had trouble finding something. When we got back to Salta and she asked us for some money in advance is when we first realized that there was a significant misunderstanding over her pricing and that it was actually 4x higher than we had thought. US$250 per day was way beyond what we wanted to pay, so after talking it over that afternoon we told her that we could no longer work with her.
In summary, Angie spent maybe 11-12 hours with us over 3 days, primarily as a very highly paid taxi driver. She booked only one hotel for us (which was mediocre), she recommended a few restaurants in Salta (which were not particularly good and literally had large tour buses waiting out front as their tour groups dined there) and a couple of restaurants in Cafayate–one of which was good (though easily findable on the main square), the other was not. And for that, she demanded that we pay her US$500 despite the mixup what was at least partly her fault (according to her this was a great deal and we were ‘ridiculous’ to have thought she charged less); she had wanted US$1000 for 5 “days” (and yes, 2-4 hours of driving counts as a day according to her). Keep in mind, these prices do not include food, hotels or any activities for you and that Angie told us several times that she never has to pay in restaurants or hotels when on tours, so I’d think her only real cost is her car and fuel.
Also, despite other posters with very positive comments about learning about the history of the region and other local-type info from Angie, we did not have this experience with her at all–her favorite topic of conversation was how much better off we would be if we switched to her preferred hotel in Cafayate (this awkwardly came up at least 6 times, leading us to wonder why it was so important to her). In general, we do not feel that we saw, heard, did, or learned anything in our time with Angie that we couldn’t have easily experienced on our own. We ultimately paid her what she demanded; we probably shouldn’t have.
Aside from the mixup we had, we genuinely feel that US$250/day is an outrageous price for these services, even if they were great. After living in Buenos Aires for 2.5 months, here is some context on what you can get for US$1000 in the capital (which should be significantly more expensive than the provinces):
-1 month rent in a nicely furnished apartment in Recoleta or Palermo with all utilities included plus weekly maid service (we pay $1200/month for a massive and luxurious place)
-15+ fantastic dinners for 2 at the very nicest restaurants in BsAs with great wine/steak/etc.
-6 weeks of 20 hours/week Spanish school at one of the best schools (or ~70 hours of private instruction from a highly qualified teacher)
-1500+ empanadas (seriously)
-80 bottles of very good Argentine wine purchased in Salta (or 150 bottles of the exact same wine if you buy it in BsAs–Salta is much more expensive even for the local wines, not sure why)
-For AR$600 = ~US$155 for the 2 of us, we spent a full day (9am-7pm) in Tigre with 2 wonderful guides that spoke perfect English, gave us lunch, took us kayaking for 3.5 hours way off the beaten path and then served us an incredible asado with 4+ courses of meats. It was an all-day event, we saw and did things we couldn’t have possibly done on our own, we learned tons of things about Argentine culture and the Tigre Delta, it came with great food and it was reasonably priced. Again, BsAs/Tigre should be more expensive than Salta.
For some further context on how much an income of US$250/day is in Argentina, we’ve heard from many friends in BsAs that a high paying job in the capital (e.g., computer engineer) will pay ~AR$8000/month, which is ~US$100/day for 8+ hour days.
To be fair, I don’t know if Angie’s prices are especially high or if they are normal for private guides in Salta. Either way, for US$250 per day, I would expect MUCH, MUCH more for my money, so my first recommendation would be to do it without a guide as visiting the NW is really quite straight-forward (e.g., pretty much everything is on the main road and well marked). If for some reason you feel like you’d like to have a guide, I would shop around and be very explicit about what your expectations are (e.g., I want to see things off the beaten path and experience things beyond what the tour buses do, etc.). If your highly-paid private guide is taking you to the same places the large tour buses go, you’re better off without them.
For the last 2 days of our trip, we rented a nice car from a company with fluent English speakers (Alamo), saw everything that we would have seen otherwise, enjoyed the freedom of exploring on our own, and spent far less than half of what it would have cost to continue with Angie. This took less than 2 hours of planning/setup and could have been done even more cheaply with some advance planning.
Sorry to be so negative, wish things hadn’t gone this way. Obviously many other people have enjoyed their experiences with Angie, so possibly this is a one-off, but I think an important data point for people to consider in planning their trips. Let me know if you have questions either through the forum or through PM and I’ll be happy to provide more detail.
Ryan
Here’s what we did today:
We woke up this morning in this hotel room…
Not bad...
In this hotel (which is free, go Starwood!)…
To be fair, this is actually the winery attached to the hotel
Overlooking this pool…
I guess it's ok...
...if you like pools
Then, we got picked up and drove through this winery…
Somebody put a big vineyard around our hotel, oh well.
On our way to go goat cheese tasting along with a tour of a goat cheese farm…
Good cheese waiting to happen
Then we went wine tasting in a couple of wineries like this one:
Finca de Las Nubes Winery (our 2nd of the day, after the goat cheese tasting)
They had some ok scenery if you're into this sort of thing...
Then we had a half bottle of Malbec and played chess in the town square before having some local empanadas filled with fresh goat cheese. After the empanadas, we tried some of the local wine flavored ice cream and headed back to the hotel for a nap. Now we’re lounging in one of the many common rooms in the hotel
This one actually
We didn’t go to the hot tub today…
...because we did that yesterday
Soon we’ll go to a fancy multi-course meal with a phenomenal bottle of wine. The entire day including the fancy dinner to come will cost us a grand total of ~$45 USD.
So, yeah, that’s pretty much what we did today.
What did you do today?? 🙂
Ok, ok, ok. So everyone here in Argentina pretty much says that when you travel domestically you should take a bus even if it’s 20+ hours each way. While they do mention that it is cheaper as one of the reasons, by and large they say things like:
“Argentina has really figured out how to do bus travel”
and
“It’s SO much nicer than flying”
and
“You’ll get amazing views of the countryside and first class service”
and
“With a cama-suite ticket, you’ll get a seat that fully reclines into a comfortable bed, so when you’re not being fawned over by the stewardess bringing you champagne and a wonderful multi-course meal, you can either sleep or watch movies on your personal entertainment system”
Sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. People have said things like that to us time and again. If I had been exaggerating I would have instead said something like “There’s a back section of the bus with water slides and a stadium seating movie theater; Oh yeah, and lots of pole dancers”
So–while it took us a while to get past our suspicion that no matter how nice a bus is, 20 hours on it would still suck–given all of the enthusiasm people have we decided to give it a shot and purchased our tickets for the 20 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to Salta. We figured worst case scenario we’d get a lot of studying done en route. We dutifully asked around about which bus companies would be best and eventually settled on using Flecha Bus since they were the only ones that offered Cama-Suite which is the highest class of service. It cost ~US$95 each for a one-way ticket (we were willing to try this, but not ready to commit to a roundtrip). Now, while $95 is cheaper than the $200 plane ticket, it’s certainly not free, so you’d really hope that you were getting some value above the ~$100 dollars you saved by trading out a 2 hour flight for a 20 hour bus ride. Wouldn’t you?
We didn’t know what to expect, but given all of the hype we were fairly excited when we left for the Retiro omnibus station. The station is kind of like an airport with multiple levels and lots of different gates (called puentes).
Retiro: More impressive than your average bus terminal
We nervously awaited our bus’ puente to be announced and soon caught our first glimpse of what would be our home for the next 20 hours. From the outside, it looked fairly impressive.
20 hours... I could do 40 hours in a bus that fine!
It’s fair to say that seeing the outside of the bus and getting our luggage loaded was the peak of the trip. It was pretty much all downhill once we got inside. Perhaps the best way to continue is to address how the actual experience compared to some of the great things we had heard…
Jen at the peak of her excitement (before the journey began)
The vast majority of the ride it was night time, so nothing exciting to see out the window. While the last 4 hours or so were daylight and it was somewhat interesting to see what was outside, it’s likely the same thing we would have seen on approach to landing if we had flown–because yes, it takes the bus about 4 hours to go the same distance a plane goes while on its 10 minute approach.
There were a few TVs mounted to the ceiling and strategically positioned such as to be difficult to see. And they played 4 movies with the volume on for the whole bus to hear whether you wanted to or not; the first one was “Over Her Dead Body”; the second was something with an alligator; the third was something about a deaf swing dance champion and the final movie was about the life of Mother Theresa<—seriously, if only we could have somehow made it louder.
After you find the TV (hint: top right) see if you can find Waldo
We were given champagne, and in very classy, brand new champagne flutes
You might think this looks old and broken... Instead, try to think of it like premium stone washed jeans--classy right?
sigh… We received 3 “meals” throughout the trip; one was a pre-dinner snack, followed by dinner, followed by breakfast. Breakfast and the pre-dinner snack consisted of the exact same shrinkwrapped styrofoam package with some cookies, a cereal bar and some unsalted crackers.
This looks so good I with I could have it twice...
Nice!!! I do get to have it twice!
Dinner was an entirely different shrinkwrapped styrofoam pack with an unidentifiable sandwich, a dessert thing and some breadsticks. Also, we got a heated up tin foil thing full of potatoes and what we think was chicken gizzard.
Mmm mmm good. Just like Mom used to make (sorry mom)
In case you were wondering what Jen thought of dinner (hint: that face means she didn't like it--it's subtle, but if you look closely you can tell)
Dinner also came with wine. Which reminds me–drinks in general were tons of fun given that the cup holder on the very bumpy bus ride was about double the size of the cups that they gave us. That worked well.
Now imagine filling that with coffee and then guess how many bumps on the road it would take before it was in your lap.... Correct answer: 2
Service was comical. The stewardess (or whatever the appropriate name for a bus server is) literally tossed our meals to/at us from a few feet away each time. I guess that in retrospect we are glad that all of our meals were tightly shrinkwrapped, otherwise it would have gotten messy. When not throwing “food” at us, she was nowhere to be found.
It was clear that this was an old bus when we got on. When we first sat down though, we actually thought the seats were old school, but reasonably comfortable to sit in. Attempting to sleep in them was a hole (misspelling intended) different matter though. They do in fact lay back into beds, BUT, there is a massive bump right where your pelvis is (imagine sleeping on a speed bump), which regardless of what position you try is extremely uncomfortable and you sort of get the feeling that if you were to somehow fall asleep despite all of the bumping and the noise from the weird alligator movie playing on the TVs you can’t see, you would wake up having lost the ability to stand up straight ever again–lucky you, odds of falling asleep are not high (besides, if you did fall asleep, you might be awakened by a styrofoam food container smacking you in the face compliments of the friendly serving staff from the other end of the bus).
Amazingly, even less comfortable than it looks
This one was really a suprise… we had a fancy overhead panel with lights and stuff, but we were surprised to discover that, when turned on, the lights were only just bright enough to be able to see what time it was on your glow in the dark watch if you squinted. Seriously, the overhead lights were not even close to being bright enough to be able to read–given that 12-14 hours of this trip took place in the dark, that kind of sucked (at least there were movies…)
Yeah, these were useless
To be fair, no one had actually told us that we wouldn’t freeze to death; I guess we just kind of assumed it and we all know what happens when we ASSUME… but really, even with 2 blankets each and our heavy coats on, we were still freezing for most of the ride. Yay hypothermia!
In case you were wondering--the bathroom sucked too (by the way, never follow a bus... pretty sure this opens directly to the road... classy)
I really hope that this is an aberation and we somehow ended up with a bad bus, because if this experience is in fact representative of high-end bus travel in Argentina, then I have no choice but to never again trust any of the people that recommended it–or alternatively assume that this is a standard hazing/prank that they play on new people (if so, well played)
And for anyone out there that may think this sounds picky or elitist or whatever, here is my thought–If I walked into this expecting a really crappy bus ride (similar to Greyhound in the US), then I would indeed be blown away by how nice it is, BUT… people here consistently say that despite the 10x longer travel time, this is a much more comfortable way to travel and that seems crazy to me. I can accept the idea that if you’re looking to save some money and willing to put up with 20 hours of discomfort this is a lower budget way to travel (though the margin isn’t that wide–I’d say this should cost more like $30), but to really make a quality/comfort comparison vs. flying is a little bit ridiculous (unless of course there are much better buses out there… if so, let us know!)
Very good odds we’ll be flying home.
Update: We have since heard from our guide here that everyone agrees that Flecha Bus sucks and that everyone seems to really like a different company called Andesmaar which apparently does have good food, comfortable seats, wifi, personal entertainment systems and maybe even pole dancers. Oh well, we’re still flying home (and not on Aerolineas Argentina)
Update: We have now heard that Andesmaar can be very bad as well. Apparently it varies by route.
After hearing so many great things about Salta and the northwest of Argentina, we’re off this evening to check it out for ourselves. Planning the trip has been fun so far – we’re hoping it pays off when we get there. More to come, but in the meantime, here are a couple of thoughts on the major parts of trip-planning so far:
Decision #1: How do we get there?
The two options are flying or taking a bus. Our default would normally be to fly, but after our last experience flying with Aerolineas Argentinas, we’re open-minded about other transportation options. We’ve vowed to avoid Aerolineas whenever possible, and flights on LAN (the only other carrier covering the route) would have cost us almost as much as our monthly rent. Which leaves the bus.
Going to Salta is like crossing the entire country of Uruguay . . . 3 times
Now, you may not realize that Argentina is big. Really big (see map). We’re about halfway down the east border of the country, and we’re going to the far northwest. That’s a long way. Hence, it takes ~20 hours to get there from Buenos Aires. Yep, that’s almost a full day. We board at 6pm tonight and get in sometime around 1 or 2 in the afternoon tomorrow.
Apparently, bus travel is great in Argentina. They have numerous classes of service, including the “cama suite” that we opted for – supposedly seats that lie completely flat, have full curtains and includes all your meals (and wine with dinner – yay!). So we’re giving it a shot – will let you know what we think on the other end.
Decision #2: On our own or with a guide?
Turns out that a lot of the stuff you go to Salta to see isn’t really in Salta. It’s an amazing region with incredible landscapes and natural wonders, but they’re all spread out and all take a full day to visit. So our choices were to (1) rent a car (crazy expensive), (2) join a bus full of tourists (could be fine but we’ve heard it feels a lot like cattle herding for the Salta tours) or (3) hire a private guide to take us around for a few days. After reading unanimously positive reviews about one particular guide in the area, we decided to book her. We’ve had a bit of trouble connecting on email so don’t really know what our itinerary with her is going to be, but we’re trusting all the good reviews on tripadvisor and hoping she’s booked our hotel for us by the time we arrive (after the aforementioned 20-hr. bus ride – think we’ll be excited for a room and a shower by that point).
Wish us luck on our epic bus journey – we’ll post more from Salta!
We haven’t put up pics lately, so here it goes. Click on the read link below to get a link to the latest album.
Latest album: Buenos Aires Pics
