Hola chicos! Que pasa?
We set off on another local beaten up bus towards to a rustic little town called Cachi (as I type my favourite Aerosmith song is playing in our local coffee shop! - Note this is Susan this time, so apologies for the digressions en route!) We drove through one of the most scenic drives yet, climbing to roughly 4000m above the clouds and through an escarpment laden with Cactii, which felt like being in a Spagetti Western, with actual Gauchos (cowboys)and rugged scenery. I started to feel the vertigo in my feet, no sympathy from Gordon, mind you! So four hours later we arrived in Cachi, which best ressembles a little one-horse, shall we be pc and say 'slightly behind the times' town, but which exudes a certain charm, one of the REAL Argentinian villages we've seen. We strolled through the village past the Artesian market, the simple, but charming little provincial church, up the hill to the colourful, but distinctly eerie, cemetary, where empty morgue-like cubicles awaited their future 'occupants' (very Stephen King-esque). We swiftly made tracks! Just around the corner we discovered the local airstrip famed for its extensive cocaine importation in the 70's and 80's. Seeing as it is now a disused airfield, we regressed into childhood and pretended to fly down the runway. We wrapped up the evening by treating ourselves to some local grub and woke early to be told we could not make our way south to Cafayate (pronounced Kafashartay)and had to return to Salta yet again.
Another scenic five hour drive took us through the mountainous Quebrada de Cafayate, which was illuminated by the late afternoon sun, highlighting a palet of red, ocre and green hues. We were greeted by a Cafayate in full festival swing, buzzing and bustling with locals celebrating their final festive evening. What a great ambiance! We came across a decent hostel called Ruta 40 (part of Hosteling International) where we met a few interesting characters, namely a quirky Canadian, Marty, and a Brazilian who was biking from Southern Brazil to the driest place on earth, San Pedro de Atacama (Chile). After hearing about his exciting bike tale, this is when we really felt the urge to buy a second hand set of wheels, to make our travels easier. Coincidently, just outside the hostel a banged up old jalopy was staring at us: a 1950's citroen 4X4, adorned with numerous travel stickers, 'blessed' with rosary beeds, also with a missing driver's window (filled in with plastic), no fuel cap, and god knows what else wrong with it...we wanted it. Buying this was imminently destroyed when the owner told us he would sell it for 20000 pesos (£3000)...this was him clearly ripping off the tourists, when the car was not worth more than £500, later confirmed by some locals.
On the second day we took a local trip for £10 each, which included two charasmatic, absolutely bonkers local guides, Gustavo and Jorge, traveling around the Quebrada for six hours. What we enjoyed the most was mingling with the tourists, the majority of whom were Argentians on holiday, and the fact that the whole tour was in Spanish. They loved having us as one of the only foreigners and cheered us on as we climbed one of the rock faces to the top. We saw some impressive rock formations (would have been great for bouldering) and they made for some good photographs. We stopped off at a local mud shack, which sold all the necessities, namely empanandas and Gustavo, our 'loco' guide, brandishing his stick showered us all in flour and confetti as a ritual of the local festival. Good fun. I soon forgot about empanadas and left Gordon to stuff his face and chat up the local chiquitas, while I went to play with the llamas, who were really frienly! On this occasion they didn't spit at me, but did nearly pee on me!
We finished off our final evening in Cafayate (we really recommend this town as a good example of an authentic Argentinian village) by going to the best empanada cafe in town (we just had to do it!) Note empanadas are little and about 40p each, so we aren't complete pigs (well it does depend on how many you eat hehe!)
Would you believe it, but again we could not head south as we planned, and had to return to Salta for the fourth time! Unfortunately, on the night we arrived in Cafayate, there was a massive rain storm. This resulted in a landslide on the main road between Cafayate and Tucuman (from where we planned to press southwards to Cordoba.) The forces of nature were against us. Due to the landslide, we had to alter our plans somewhat, so we caught a bus to Cordoba.
14 hours later we arrived in Cordoba, where we found one of the friendliest hostels conveniently not far from the bus station. We were originally going to Wwoof on a farm near Cordoba, however, the more people we spoke to and the more we investigated temperatures in Patagonia (under 5 degrees in places), we decided to skip the farm, stay one night in Cordoba and head southwards as soon as possible. For us Cordoba was a city of contrasts. From research we had perceived this place as the cultural hub of Argentina , and, although we did discover a few intersting spots, namely an old police detention centre where underground political activitists were executed in the 70's/80's, as well as a few churches and museums, we weren't overly inspired. Saying that, this stop over was primarily to pick up some camping gear for Patagonia, and you would need longer here to really get to know it, so we may return to the region on our way north at the end. A Colombian volunteer at the hostel invited us for a night of Salsa, which turned out to be cheesy latin music and not alot of Salsa, but it was a fun night, with a few Salsa moves added to the mix. Fully loaded with a tent and camping gear, we decided to press south, an exciting prospect!
I might have slightly miscalcaluted the route from looking at the guidebook and sent us on a 16 hour (delightlful) bus ride to a place called Neuquen, a 6 hour detour from where we wanted to be. Oops! (Gordon was very forgiving, just like he was when I dropped his point and shoot camera in the sand earlier in the trip - note this camera doesn't work anymore). I lay down on the floor in the bus terminal for an hour much to a local policeman's surprise, that said, after a long stint on a bus here, lying flat for an hour was sheer luxury!
We arrived in San Martin de Los Andes, after a long stint on Ruta 40, which is comparable to Route 66 in the US. As we drove through San Martin, we noticed the contrast between the typical villages of the north and this village with its Austrian/Swiss Alps feel and roads aligned with wooden/log chalets. It rests at the foot of the Andes and in the winter is a ski hub. This really is the antithesis of the 30 degree, wild west northern heat to the local cool, wintery atmosphere. The local national park, Parque Nacional Lanin, will be our home for the next 5 days as we are going trekking and camping around one of the lakes. We have stocked up on lots of freeze dried food and will dump the majority of our rucksacks to lighten the load for the trek.(Gordon has volunteered his services as my sherpa!) We will return to San Martin to collect our gear and then head down to the southernmost tip of Argentina. A long blog, but hope you have managed to have a tea/whiskey/scrabble/biking/climbing/lunch (or whatever you are doing back home) break.
Hasta pronto chicos!
A little break on a longh rickety bus overlooking our scenic drive
One of the local eateries in Cachi
Local church, nice and simple, not ostentacious and golden
Transport in Cachi. Works 60% of the time, everytime....
Laurant and Virgine from the farm, we bumped into them in Cafayate
Quebrada de Cafayate on our tour
Gustavo and Jorge, our two local guides around the area
Susan feeding the local llamas
Gustavo bringing the local festival to Susan's head
Big landscape
Big scale mountains
Garganta del Diablo
Our tour at the end of the day
Cafayate local store
Cactus and wine!
Man and dog on bike, what a way to travel
Cute dog
This is what we wanted, but for £3k, you must be kidding me.
Gustavo, our guide
Quebrada de Cafayate
The local mud shack selling pottery
Gordon with the locals and Gustavo, very nice people, very friendly
Llamas posing for the camera
Enjoying the mountain walk
The council kindly asking the tourists not to use one of the local mountain features as a potty, it seems some of the tourists decided to ignore this request
Gordon hanging around, back to his more primative roots
The locals making some extra money in Cordoba, the less well off locals tend to get a bit of cash for picking up after the local businesses everyday, one way the government is trying to clean up the streets and help the locals earn some cash
Our breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next 5 nights of camping
Susan with one of the San Martin de los Andes local's
The local tour bus
The Austrian flair of San Martin de los Andes