We are in Salta, after many hours on buses. album link.

vital stats

• Location: Salta, Argentina.
• beard state: I found a razor. I'm happy about this.
• steak tally: 7

We left Mendoza on the bus to San Juan. We found ourselves with a hour and a half layover there, almost all of it went into talking to bus companies about tickets. Transactions that would be trivial back home are nightmares of spanglish and pointing here. We then headed out into the desert - miles and miles of desert - to San Agustin de Valle Fertil (which everyone calls Valle Fertil). The bus ride was pretty comfortable, apart from whenever we crossed a dried up watercourse. Rather than bridging the drop, or filling in the drop, the road just dropped down and up again. The bus driver, being used to this sort of thing, thought slowing down was weak.

The name comes from the valley being more fertile than the desert, not because its more fertile than, say, Ireland. Its a really nice place and we recommend it. The hostel reviews on tripadvisor were scary, so we checked into a hotel. Turns out this was a wise move as the local campsite also appears to be a scrapyard, and shortly after we got to the hotel, it started to hail massive stones. This would have made getting the tent up something of a challenge.

The reason people come to Valle Fertil is that its the closest place to two parks in the desert, Talampaya National Park and Ischigualasto Provincial Park. These are still well over a hundred kilometers from Valle Fertil. Both parks are colossal, but both let visitors into a small area of the park by tour only. Both are famous fossil grounds, and one has rare and enigmatic pteroglyphs. Both have all extremes of weather (burning hot with no shade in the day, freezing at night, high winds, and sometimes snow lying on the cacti). I think they don't want people stealing stuff or being sunburnt to death.

We went on the tour of both, which is a 11 hour day. We got a local driver to do the driving. I would suggest that route for other folks interested in visiting - rather than taking two trips over two days. We think the three days of travelling there and back were well worth it.

Talampaya had a tour of the canyon system, miles of desert, red rock shaped by wind and water, and traces of the civilisation that lived there 6000 years ago. The pteroglyphs are tiny and hard to see - its incredible that people found them again. The canyons have a smear of green where the river has shrunk too, but there are traces of water a few feet up the canyons walls. Fear the flash flood.

The view out over the desert looks like nothing else I have seen. The rock formations are fantastic. I'm hoping the photos do them justice.

We whizzed off to Parque Provincial Ischigualasto. The landscape here is like another planet. My first impressions were of a dry dusty landscape and a wind that threatened to blow the doors off the car. The on-site museum protects the fossils from the wind and the water.

The tour is conducted from your car - in our case the ranger rode in the front seat - and it was excellent. This would not be a place to bring your own car, unless you hate the paintwork. The landscape lives up to the name Valle de la Luna - valley of the moon. A barren, lifeless, dusty gray landscape, marked only by the ravages of the wind and the occasional rainstorms. The ranger said this was the closest to the moon surface we could go to without leaving Earth. We saw fossils in the rock, more wildlife, and spectacular rock formations. Having the ranger explain the local bird life was great. Hopefully we'll stick up some of the photos from Laura's camera.

We spent the morning afterwards wandering around the town - the local museum was either closed or being used to store loud, violent dogs - and up by the lake we saw birds and an iguana. This is the first time we have seen one in the wild!

The bus back to San Juan was much the same, though it was carrying a couple of cops. As far as I can see, the police in Argentina are either slackers of the highest order, or never bother to take their uniforms and guns off. One does see them cuddling their girlfriends while in uniform. We still have not been shaken down.

San Juan is off the backpacking trail, so us with our crazy backpacks was the talk of the town. Much discussion of the size of Ireland compared to Argentina, the greenness of Ireland, if we were German, and my or my mum's view of Scottish independence.

We had many hours between buses in San Juan, so we went out for dinner. The steakhouse not merely had a window into the kitchen (watch the flames! Watch the chef hacking giant lumps of meat then tossing them onto his barbecue), it served the largest steak I have ever seen.

Of course, by the time we had eaten, we were massively short on time, leading to a fast taxi ride and a sprint up the bus station steps. The bus was a bit late, saving our bacon. This was a 16 hour overnight bus trip, and we had been worrying about it. Turns out that the bus ride was pretty nice - more comfortable than anything up to business class. Seats recline, wine and dinner at your seats (wine great, dinner terrible), tons of leg room. This put British public transport (and every airline I've flown with) to shame.

Salta is very nice, though we haven't seen much of it so far. Having spent three and a half days on buses in the last week, we want to be based in Salta for a while. The plan is to head back into Chile for the new moon.