Rodrigo to the rescue

    Thursday evening we found ourselves in a little bit of an unexpected somewhat risky situation. Right after we returned from our excursion to the salinas grandes, we found a bus going to San Martin, a town near Calilegua National Park, the next location in our itinerary. Two hours on the bus, and then a couple kilometers from San Martin, our bus stopped in traffic, and we realized after 15 minutes or so, our bus wasn't going anywhere. The locals on the bus who live in San Martin were getting off the bus, and told us we were close enough to walk into town. So we grabbed our stuff and started walking. Outside smelled terrible, and we decided it must be from the local factory. But once we reached the town, we saw what was causing the traffic and the smell. Wage protesters from the factory were blocking both sides of the one way road with a burning tree, preventing cars from passing. We didn't quite know what to do as we arrived at this scene, and paused with a little hesitation, until a man speaking on a telephone saw us and immediately told us to keep walking and don't stop until we go into the gas station. He started walking with us away from the protest to make sure we were going the right way. The six of us American girls stick out in any crowd, with our camping packs and blonde hair, and knew immediately that this wasn't the best place to be at the moment. It was around 6 pm, too, and starting to get dark.
    We told the people in the gas station we wanted to get to Calilegua to camp, and they didn't seem to know much about it. They told us not to trust the taxi drivers, and that taxi drivers won't take us into the park anyway this late. We were too far to walk to the bus terminal in San Martin, too, where we could've found a micro into the park, but it seemed really dangerous to walk anywhere with the riot going on. Our other problem was that we were planning on buying enough food and water in town to go camp for two nights with 6 people, and the gas station had nothing.
    With all of this happening all at once, we didn't really know what to do, but then came the man who helped us earlier to the rescue. He introduced himself as Rodrigo, and apologized if his proposition freaked us out, but he offered to drive all of us to wherever we needed, including the grocery store and then all the way to the camp spot. He gave us a brief summary of himself: devoted Christian, divorced, and has a kid in Tucuman. We made the group decision that based on our options, the best choice to make was to trust Rodrigo, stay together, and to get as far away from the town and the protestors as possible.
    So although the first thing we learned as kids was to not get in cars with strangers, we did this anyway. And Rodrigo turned out to be the biggest help we ever had. He waited for us as we speed grocery shopped for our camping trip, gave us two names and numbers of people to call in town who could help us (because he was going out of town the next day), drove us to the camp site on a rocky dirt road that I'm sure his car was not meant to handle, and waited again as we talked to the camp rangers about where to camp. On our drive he was pointing out all the dangerous places for us not to go, and explained that workers from the factory protest their wages every day, twice a day during Monday through Friday. Noon to 4 pm is the best time to try to get through town without encountering the protestors. This man was our savior. I literally don't know what we would've done without his help. We tried giving him money, but he wouldn't accept it, only told us that now it's our turn to help someone else out. He told us he'd been having a bad day, and helping us out was the perfect way to distract him from his worries. We were so fortunate to find him.