So, after a reasonable amount of stress and tension we arrived in Buenos Aires, on schedule, and both of us. This was a relief as British Airways had been unable to tell Rick whether or not the flight from London to Buenos Aires would fly and Lufthansa had told me that while we would definitely leave Frankfurt they were not entirely sure where we would end up and that there was a small chance we would have to divert to Brazil- a country I need a visa to enter. Had we left two days earlier Rick would have ended up in Buenos Aires after a 6 hour layover in Brazil while I would have been stuck in San Paulo, presumably unable to leave the airpot, for 2 days. Need I say we were both very happy to see each other at the airport and swore enerv to travel separately again!
After dealing with bags and immigration and so on we got a taxi into the city (having been strongly warned that the local bus was not safe) and set about looking for somewhere to stay. We settled on the Gran Hotel Espana, an awesome, if ancient, hotel that screamed of a colonial past. Our room was on the top floor next to the elevator, which made strange whirring noises like a spaceship attempting to take off- in some ways it was rather calming, which was a blessing as it continued all night! The elevator was one of those ancient contraptions that requires you to pull across two screen doors in order for it to operate, and it kept me wonderfully entertained. The second elevator was an even more ancient contraption and was actually manually operated which is incredibly awesome but it appeared to only be for staff use so I was unable to try it. This was no doubt a good thing.
After settling in we set off into the city to organise a bus to Salta, our next destination. We wandered around a few of the sites to get there an both agreed that the city was big, busy and dirty and we should head up north and get out into the outdoors as soon as possible, we figure we can fully explore Buenos Aires at the other end of the trip when we're in need of the type of luxury you can find in a big city.
When we got to the bus station we decided to indulge in a bit of luxury and travel 'suite class' to Salta. We figured it was only an extra 16 euro and given it was approximately an 18 hour bus trip it would be well worth it. The next morning we said a sad farewell to our wonderfully characterful room and set off towards the north.
