We arrived in Salta mid afternoon on wednesday after the 18 hour bus trip from Mendoza. Had booked into Las Rejas hostel which is very friendly, welcoming and a really good place to relax for a few days. We didn´t do a whole lot in Salta as we were waiting to met up with my aunt´s and their friend on monday so we basically spent 5 days reading, chilling out, drinking coffee and watching the crazy drivers negotiate junctions in Salta. Lots of the junctions have no lights or give way signs and it appears like its all a magic way of tearing thru junctions as fast as possible so as to miss any other traffic and/or pedestrians and/or cyclists. We eventually firgured out that its a flow ´rule´... if the cars on your street are moving then keep driving otherwise you have to stop. Saw some very close escapes.
Salta is a colonial city with some colourful old churches and convents. Its a good place to just stroll around, visit the artesanal markets and shops, walk or take the cable car to the top of a hill near town or just sit in one of the plazas and people watch. There´s not a huge amount else to do but its very cheap there and the local Salta beer is good too. Empanadas, tamales (a corn kind of pattie wrapped in corn husks and steamed), and locro (a stew with corn and meat - quite tasty) are some of the regional foods we tried and it was good to get a change to pasta and parrilla! We also found a little lebanese place which was quite good and very cheap. Saying that I seemed to get at least one hair in every dish we ate - maybe I was just unlucky as there wasn´t that many bald people about but its a bit off putting.
On monday afternoon we transformed from ordinary, tight ass backpackers into POSH packers who rented cars, drank wine all afternoon and stayed in hotels NOT Hostels ;) as we were now going travelling with Nan, Helen and Robyn. There can be many names for our little group of 5 including 2 aussies, 1 canadian and 1 irish or Dunk + 4 broads or Dunk and too many women or 2 aussie + 3 cantillons plus many other ruder varieties - just use your imagination!
We picked up the rental car (a renault Logan for just over 1000 pesos for 4 days, plus an extra 120 as we returned it 3 hours late - very reasonable between 5 of us - from Noroeste car rental) and headed out to the airport to collect Nan, Helen and Robyn who arrived on time - it was great to see them all again and kind of strange too catching up in such a faw out place. The 3 ladies had packed lightly luckily as out packs filled half the boot at least. We headed off towards the hills and Cafayate which is about 180kms drive south west of Salta via Quebrada de los Conchas (aka Quebrada de Cafayate). The drive started off thru low lying farmland planted with maize, sugarcane, tobacco and not sure what else. It was a bit cloudy so we couldn´t see the tops of the mountains but it was very easy going on a nice asphalt road all the way. After about an hour we started to climb thu the Quebrada (canyon) and the scenery changed dramatically from green and flat to dry, dusty and mountainous. The drive for the next hour to Cafayate was stunning as we creeped up the canyon thru spectacular mountains, rock and earth colours, rock formations - its really impossible to describe the wind and water sculpted landscape of amazingly intense colours and variety. We passed thru areas that looked like castles, towers, columns, pinnacles, etc plus there was cacti and tough desert bushes everywhere. We arrived into Cafayate just before sunset tired but elated from the beauty of the scenery. The first place we tried which I thought I had made a reservation for was full - somehow they had managed not to get my email ... altho they had got one and replied to it ... anyways they recommend another hotel - Portal del Santo - which was very new, modern and comfortable and just a block from the town square. The guys running it were incredibly friendly and welcoming to us. Dined at the El Rancho in the town square which was ok altho nothing spectacular.
Cafayate is famous for its Torrentos wineries so the next day we headed out to the Etchart winery and gate crashed a tour (which was in Spanish) and got to sample some of the local wines. Not the best to be honest so we didn´t purchase altho it was cheap. From there we visited the local goat farm which was fascinating. Got a free tour which was really interesting and we were shown some goats, told all about how they feed them (they eat alfalfa, leftover grape skins for fibre (its like a rich purple pulp), some seeds off the local trees and other stuff - we could have done with some of that variety ourselves on some parts of the trip!), the milking parlour (they milk 400 goats once a day - takes 2 hours and each goat produces 1-2 litres of milk) and where they make the cheese plus we got to taste the cheese which is probably the best goats cheese we have every tasted. Bought plenty of it anyways!! Went back to town where we got empanadas for lunch from the ´House of Empanadas´just off the square ... they were great!! Fresh out of the oven and loads of different varieties. We drove back out to the canyon again to see the colours and sand dunes in the full light of day ... so amazing. The hotel has full parrilla facilities so we decided to avail and cook for ourselves that night. Myself, Dunk and Nan went shopping whilst the others took a siesta but the shops didn´t open til 7pm (siesta is serious in this part of the world) so we visited another couple of bodegas and the pub. Got another tour in Bodega La Esteco ( I think - its across from Bodega Nanno where we tasted Tannat wine - very bland - but all the wines we tasted there were pretty low quality) which showed us the grape compressors, bottlers, etc - really interesting and good wine too (or maybe we had numbed our tongues at that stage) so splashed out on a couple of bottles which cost us a massive 30 pesos (6 euros for 2 good wines). Ahhhh its tough being a posh packer. The bbq area in the hotel was fab - full on asado, wood oven and parrilla grill plus all the tools required to cook up a great feed. Was a good fun night (except maybe for Dunk slaving over the stove) - the guy in the hotel was very impressed that we managed to cook everything properly altho he said he had the local pizzeria number ready if anything went awry!!
Next day we headed off towards Cachi over mostly ripio (gravel) roads which turned out to be much more remote, narrow and slower then we expected. It was an incredible drive thou and the scenery was just stunning once again - rock formations, sand hills and amazing colours and scenery all the way. We stopped at Antagasacto (!?) for lunch which is just after Quebrada de Felchas (Canyon of Arrows) which was amazing. From there we passed tiny, remote settlements where everyone seemed to be out in the fields picking peppers and putting them out to dry on the ground. This place has an untouched for centuries feel about it (especially the roads which were not built for 2 way traffic) with the Andes looming tall and dry in the background, green valleys full of crops and pampas grass and irrigation channels running alongside the road. Seeing is beleiving here and even the photos will never do it justice. We stayed in El Cortijo hotel in Cachi which was a funky little boutique hotel - think its my favorite spot of all the hostels and hotels we have stayed in and very welcoming once again. Cachi is a lovely town with an immacutely maintained square. Lots of little artesanal shops for the ladies to browse (and buy in) altho we stayed in the little cafe on the square drinking beer instead ;) there´s also a church with cacti ceiling and confessional box. Really interesting little place and we could easily have spent longer there. Dined at a little restaurant just near the church and tried some of the local goat stew which was very good.
On Thursday we headed back towards Salta thru Valle Encantado but first thru the National Park de los cardones which is a park to protect the 6m tall candelbra cactii. We passed over a 3400m pass and then into the park with its 100s of cactii standing tall.There´s a 14km straight stretch of road which is just amazing to drive along with all the cactii on either side and snow capped mountains in the background. We then drove over an area that was similar to the altiplano of Bolivia and Peru so very flat, dry and high altitude where we saw some vicunas and donkeys. From there the road heads to Piedra de Molino which is an incredible lookout over the Valle Encantado which has steep, velvety, green slopes and deep valley winding all the way down thru Quebrada de Escoipes towards Salta. Its stunning and remarkable in the dramatic difference to what we had seen in the first couple of hours that morning. We headed back thru Salta and then headed north on the Ruta 9 to Jujuy - this was another amazing transitition in scenery as we now drove on a narrow, one lane sealed road that climbed steeply up thru dense cloud forest all the way to Jujuy. The poor brain was having troubles keeping up with all this scenery and environment changes!! We drove thru Jujuy which is surrounded by massive green mountains literally towering above the city in the north. Its like something out of a sci-fi movie really and hard to absorb fully. We headed north for another hour to the famous little town on Purmamarca which has 7 colours of sand in the hills just behind town. We left the cloudforest behind just outside Jujuy and changed back into more high altitude style scenery of the Andes with dry, desert -scape all the way to Purmamarca. Purmamarca is a sweet little place with a great market and artesanal shops - even I was slightly excited by the shopping there - well for about 10 minutes anyways. We stayed in a fantastic hotel - La Comarca - which was built in adobe style with beautiful gardens and blended perfectly into the landscape. The hills are breathtaking with the intense colours and formations.
On friday we allocated the girls an hour for shopping which was reduced to 20 mins as there was some sleeping in done instead. We then headed west towards the Salinas Grandes up and over a 4100m pass which was very beautiful and scenic again. Saw shed loads of vicunas again - seems like they live on very little water as there wasn´t much up there. The salt flats were very impressive and we drove onto one little area where we could watch the locals mining the salt ... what a terrible job shovelling salt all day in that exposed area. Didn´t linger too long as it was very glary and quite high altitude so headed back to Purmamarca for lunch (and some more shopping!) before returning to Salta via Ruta 56 and 34 which were much quicker then Ruta 9. The drivers in Argentina tho are reckless and its just scary watching some of the manouveres. Anyways we got back safely to Salta, got the ladies booked into Hotel Salta (slightly jaded and rustic but perfect location) on the main plaza and had a quick snack before heading to the bus station for the 22 hour bus to Buenos Aires.
We had an amazing 5 days of continously changing scenery, gourmet drink and food (aside from one service station lunch of toasties!), hilarious entertainment from Nan and Robyn singing along merrily (including some fine examples of chicken sounds much to Helens´s delight NOT), gorgeous places to stay, unbeleivable scenery (I know its worth mentioning again) and just happy, fun times. We´re now in Buenos Aires after a less then fun 22 hours on a bus (I nearly cracked on this one - TG its the last one) and relaxing here for the next week til we all head back to Ireland (Nan first on friday, then me and Dunk on monday), Australia (Robyn on saturday) and Canada (Helen next week sometime). We missed going to Boca Juniors on saturday night as the tour agent we booked thru told us the wrong date (MUPPETS) so we might go and see River Plate this weekend instead altho thats the hurling equivalent of going to see Offaly playing instead of seeing Cork play so we might spend the dosh on something else. I even bought a Boca Juniors cheap imitiation jersey but when I tried it on about an hour ago realised it looks just like a Tipp jersey so going to have to flog that before we return to the rebel county.
1 week of 7 months travelling left which is a bit of a strange feeling as its gone really fast but by the same token I cant wait to go home and catch up with everyone and not have to look at that bloody backpack for a while again!!
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