Onward travel to Santa Fe

Well, I got up about 3pm (I just didn't want to get out of bed, as always) and dragged myself out about 4:30pm. Went over to the very nearby bus terminal. The area is quite cool in a slightly down at hell way, it was quite lively. There are three train stations down there which I wandered into as a passed, which was somehow quite cool. (The trains don't go to many places as far as I could tell, and my guide book says the same.)

I asked a couple of companies about buses to Santa Fe and they seemed to like running the services at about 4-5pm. So you get there about 10-11pm. What a great idea. I could hardly understand the first guy, in fact I didn't get the times of their buses clear at all. It doesn't help that annoucements are blaring out.

Anyway, I found another company which does about five or six services a day. I get the impression Santa Fe isn't a major destination and this company is probably a bit of a specialist. Anyway, I booked an aisle seat (the guy did the Argentinian "sh" pronunciation of "ll" when he said "ventana o pasillo" and since "pasillo" isn't a word I was familiar with, although it was clear from context, I unintentionally copied his pronunciation when I said "pasillo" :-) ), semi-cama, on the 1:30pm bus tomorrow for ARS90. I just need to sort out a hotel or something now. The one place on hostelworld.com seems to have low ratings (based on only 3 reviews) and is not very cheap (about £25/night for a private room, since I'm on my own and have to pay for a double) and expedia.co.uk seems to have one insanely expensive place at about £100/night. So I've dug up what my shoestring guide says is a pretty decent hotel and filled in their on-line reservation request form, which I suspect is going to mean they don't get back to me in time but we shall have to see. That will be about £30/night, but that's for somewhere pretty decent by the sound of it, and I don't think there's much chance of finding a "lively" hostel very easily in Santa Fe, so it's not as if I'm passing up a chance to meet people by going to this place. I got a bit of a shock when I dug their web page up as they use the $ symbol to indicate ARS. So I thought it was nearly two hundred USD a night for a single. I think I'm right about this, but I can see potential for a scam there where you only find out the price was USD when you check out.

Anyway, I just hope that hotel gets back to me in the next few hours. I ate at a cheap but OK cafe near the bus terminal after I got the ticket, but being a touch weak I think I may go out for an hour or two now while it's still light and for the early part of the evening, just somewhere round here, then try not to get back here too late. I have to check out by 10am and I need to pack, but if I do pop out for a bit now then I guess that gives the hotel time to get back to me. I could and perhaps should just stay in all night (I didn't want to leave earlier to go and sort the bus ticket out) but I'm not going to. With luck the 10am checkout will stop me pushing things too much anyway.