Day 65 - 08 Feb.2012 - El Galpon

The rain showers we saw on our way must have been much stronger on the Argentinean side the last few days. Last night we spoke to some Brazilian turists who came up the Andes from San Salvador de Jujuy. They spent 10 hrs for 160km with most of the time waiting to be able to pass the road where landslides blocked the way. The owner of the hotel made some phone inquiries about the status of the road down and we decided not to take the gravel road of Ruta 40 to San Antonio de los Cobres as previously planned but to continue on the paved RN52 towards San Salvador de Jujuy. The RN52 was open again and was passable with bigger cars like ours.
Before we set off, we went for a quick Sightseeing tour through Susques, which has an old village church dating back to 1598. Unfortunately the courtyard to the church was closed and we could only see the church from outside. In general the village gave a rather sorrow looking appearance to us and we were glad to have stayed in the hotel out of town. The road on the way down the Andes was indeed covered with landslides and passing would have been more difficult with a normal car as the trucks created deep tracks into the gravel. Further down we passed through villages where the water masses must have gone right through them taking everything with it and flattening the nearby plantations.
We arrived in Salta and after having looked at some hotels and their prices, we decided to search for the campsite, apparently the biggest camping municipal in Argentina with a massive swimming pool, which was unfortunately without water.
After we checked in it started to rain and we waited a bit before we put up the tent. Having waited for more than one hour and with more rain to come, we decided to skip the camping for today and drove off. Sightseeing in Salta in heavy rain is as well not a pleasure and so we decided to leave Salta altogether and continued our way in hope to find a hotel along our way. All the coming villages and towns are not touristic and hence are not appearing in our guide anymore. We continued some 160km more till we reached the little town of El Galpon and we stayed in probably the only hostal in town. As there was no restaurant, we bought some cheese and yoghurt and had dinner in the hostal.