Roach Motel

I stayed in the grossest and lonliest hotel that I`ve seen thus far last night. I arrived in Tucumàn at 11:00 at night. Dan had said his goodbyes and left me with the advice of being sure to take a taxi and not to risk walking to my hotel when I arrived in this unfamiliar city. 11:00 is early in Argentina, though. The restaurants are packed, people are still hanging out in plazas, and the bars are just opening. Given this, I was awfully tempted to avoid the taxi expenditure considering that I spent double what I was supposed to last week. However, after the security guard at the bus station looked at me like I had twelve eyes when I asked him if it was safe to walk alone at that hour, I went ahead and caught a cab. When I walked back here this morning, I was glad I had gone with the more expensive transport option. The three blocks closest to the bus station are a really bad neighborhood. It was bad enough in the day time. I would have been totally sketched out walking through there at night. Lesson learned.

My Lonely Planet guide book had  recommended  this specific hotel, so I headed straight for it after finding out as much as I could about getting to Cafayate the next day. Relieved that the cab driver hadn`t tried to take me to the hotel the long way, I walked in the front door and asked for a room. The cheapest is a shared bathroom, so I went for it. The guy showed me two rooms with the bathroom in the hallway in between. They were the dingiest, most lonely looking little rooms I had ever seen. The paint was peeling, the single lightbulb dangled from the socket, and the framed poster hung a few inches away from the wall at the top. I scraped my ankle on the metal trimming that was pulled back off the bottom of the door and thanked my lucky stars I have an up-to-date t  tetanus  shot. The toilet in the bathroom was missing the tank cover (I later found out that flushing it requires a Rube-Goldberg set up), the mirror was rusted over in places, the sink had come off it`s mounting, and 1/2 the tiles on the shower floor were missing. The only bug I saw, though, was an ant in the sink. The towels smelled clean, and the sheets weren`t stained, so I took it. I really wasn`t in any position to go looking for anything else. I set my alarm for seven so I could get up and walk back to the bus station to catch the earliest to Cafayate (which I found out was at 6). So three hours too late, I have no choice but to wait here until the two o`clock bus. So, I fed myself breakfast, did some reading, and now am catching up on my journal entries. Departure time is now t-minus 40 minutes, so I think I`ll have some lunch before I embark upon another eight hour bus ride and another night-time arrival in an unfamiliar place.

Cafayate is supposed to be wonderful, though! The desert up there is really well known for it`s gigantic sandstone landforms. Can`t wait to see it!