***Extras - cultural observations

This is a quick extra blog as we have a few minutes in San Martin de los Andes before we head southwards.

During our first month or so in the country, we have made some cultural observations about the locals and the country while travelling about and meeting people. So, here we go, in no particular order...

* Mate - by a large margin, the locals' favourite tipple. It's a green herb (Herba) tea that is drunk in a small pot, known as a Mate (pronounced maa-tay) through a metal straw. Everybody drinks it here, from the cool southern regions to the piping hot northern regions (where it is said that it actually cools you down - Susan is a firm believer and Gordon thinks it's a load of tosh). Very tasty, drunk with sugar, is bitter in taste. The tea is drunk whether in the street, on a journey, one the phone or just simply driving your tractor to work!

* Breast feeding - by far, the most open country to breast feed in public that we know of. Whether in a restaurant, on the bus or in the park, it's happening!

* Locos drivers - Step on to the street and if you have not looked properly, you may have no legs seconds later. Speed is of the essence especially in the big cities. Zebra crossings are purely decorative.

* Tostados - This is ham and cheese sandwich with no crusts. Absolutely everywhere! The majority of long distance bus meals include one of these. For those at home, this is the equivalent of a toastie.

* Caramelo - Exactly what is says on the tin, this is typically served with breakfast on toast but you tend to find that the Argentinians stuff this extremely sweet paste into every bit of pasty that they see.

* Empanadas - Well, you know our thoughts on those tasty little morsals...

* Paridilla - Essentially, it's a bbq. It's just outright tasty.

* Capibaras and Llamas - Susan did not feel this list was complete without mentioning two of her favourite animals to date on the trip. Susan won't be leaving South America without a Capibara as a pet and, if all else fails, will smuggle a Llama back home to the Dales.

* Waterfalls and holes - We failed to mention this is one of our previous blogs. Whilst at the farm, Susan slipped off one of the skinny path that we were clearing, landing arse first in to a substantial pit of thorns, which, if had not been there would have been fatal (serious steep cliff). Gordon, appointed the local surgeon, was to spend the afternoon tweezing thorns from Susan's derrier. Note - if these thorns (2cm long) get in you fully, they don't come out until they want to. Susan really could have done with a doughnut.

* Wild boars and hornets - It turns out, as we have been informed this morning by a park ranger, that we are entering the season of the hornet. We both have zilch experience of hornets. We have been advised not to follow the example of the wild boar in Parque Nacional Lanin. This foolish creature tends to run at a hornet's nest in an attempt to head butt it out of its territory. The, rightly so, pissed off hornets attack the boar and if you turn up a couple of days after the incident, the boar is no more than a stack of bones. We have been warned.

* Sugar - We have never seen this much 'pop' (coke, fanta, sprite, etc) drunk in one nation. People walk around with 3 litre bottles of coke and several straws connected together to reach the pool at the bottom of the bottle. Even they beat Susan's sweet tooth. We are surprised that the Argentinians still have teeth.

* Buses - We are becoming experts in this field after surpassing 125 hours of bus travel. We have commented on this before, but if you get the right long haul bus over here, the journey passes in no time. Get the wrong bus and you will have an irritatingly slow and uncomfortable journey. For those who may travel, over 8 hours get Cama Coche, under 8 hours, get semi-cama. Noteable companies - Flechabus, Andesmar, Via Bariloche, Chevallier and Mercabus Ultraplus. REMEMBER: NEVER RIO URUGUAY

* Gaucho - An ideal portrait snapshot. The Gaucho is the traditional cowboy of Argentina who has been emmulated by many locals, i.e. the attire is evident but the way of life has been lost.

* Latin Spanish and Spanglish - We have been very pleased that when talking to the locals they enjoy communicating in 'Spanglish' (the Spanish/English that Gordon is currently learning). Also, Susan is coming to terms with the dialect/pronounciation that is different from Castilliano, where the ll is pronounced 'sh'. That said, the locals are more than happy to communicate with us and seldom break into English.

Well, that's a few observations and occurences while we have been here. We're pretty tired from our little bit of trekking in the last couple of days so will sign off there. Unfortunately, our 5 day trek and camp was cut short when Susan twisted her ankle while falling off a waterfall, but we'll go into that in our next blog.

114 bus hours, muchas empanadas, a landslide and we find ourselves in...PATAGONIA!

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....

Marcus Rueda buses, Susan was happy to have a little stop to take care of the vertigo

This is the reason for vertigo and it did get steeper

Getting high now...

Local Cachi man, he wasn't in any particular rush, nor was most of the town

Our welcome to Cachi

Our hostel for one night

The 'morgue' like cemetary, very eerie, chilling even looking at this pic again

Susan 'flying' on the cocaine runway

I fell asleep on Susan's lap, when I awoke, my hair seemed to be in bobbles and newly 'styled', as if you could fault my hair...

Susan purchasing a bottle of one of Cafayate's finest from Bodega Etchart

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

Gordon with one of the locals

Rabbit food, Salta and helado

The time came to head east towards the Salta region, not before the 'charming' Johnny in the Flecha bus office made us a sneaky little deal where we didn't get what we asked for, long story short, if you ever travel in Argentina, don't travel with Rio Uruguay. (It's 100 times worse than london buses and you can find old food inbetweeen the seats, yum...)

24 hours later, after a brief hour stop in Resistencia, right on the Paraguayan border, we arrived in our favourite city thus far, Salta. A beautiful, colonial city with a charming, chilled atmosphere, it all centres around the main square, Plaza Julio. This is where we discovered and devoured the best Argentinian 'Helado', ice cream (Muy rico!). We spent two nights in the town in a really friendly and relaxed hostel called Corre Caminos (the first time we actually chilled out on this journey), and had our first homemade Argentinian steak Paridilla (bbq). Here we also met a Canadian that turned out to be going north to the same organic farm as we were. Small world.

Back to Salta. The town boasts a pink cathedral but don't let the colour put you off and it was very majestic. We also checked out the local mountain that hovers over the city via cable car and then walked down the south side by a few thousand steps. Fantastic views of the city and surrounding mountains.

After our short stint in Salta, the three of us (remember the Canadian?), pressed northwards to Jujuy (pronounced ghuughuwy) where we hoped to be picked up by the owner of the farm, but as he wasn't available, we had to spend a night in 'Ghuuguwy'. The next morning, we headed to the bus station after a dismal night of pouring rain, with rumours that the bus wasn't heading in the direction we wanted. Thankfully it turned up, and the bus was about as clapped out as every other old bus we had taken, but that was part of the fun. Slowly the bus made its way through town picking up all the locals and we witnessed the slow morning greeting ritual that takes about 10 minutes per handshake.

An hour an a half later after meandering through the lower Las Yungas region, we arrived at Tilquiza. Luckily, a French couple, who were staying at the same farm guided us on a 3km uphill hike through mud, water, jungle and more jungle (only to inform us that as we entered the jungle, the massive spiders go up when it's wet and it was very wet...Susan was bricking it!) We arrived at the farm, Aldea Luna Natural Reserve, exhausted as our backpacks are pretty heavy with rubber boots and wine, to a small breakfast before being guided to the corn field for our first day of work. (Volunteers on the farm work 4 hours in the morning and have the afternoon free to explore the 1000 hectares that are on offer)...As I type, Susan has just received a Submarino, hot milk where you place a bar of milk chocolate over it while it melts into the milk...tasty.

We spent 11 days at the farm, a fun experience where we learned a lot about other travellers, in particular the locals, and got a few tips on organic lifestyle and how to live off the land. The only draw back was the lack of meat as we lived a strict vegetarian diet during our stay. We came to the conclusion that some of our views on life and the world are somewhat different to some of the other volunteers who have a more holistic view on the subjects. However, we approached it with an open mind, as you have to do with these farm experiences, and it led to some great discussions and conversations. We came across a couple of characters that you wouldn't find at home, a couple of tarantulas, a diamond headed snake (poisonous) and the foot print of what could be best attributed to that of Sasquash (or however you spell it).

So, 11 days of hard graft on the land; digging, seeding, hauling logs down mountains, macheting, and much more, we got a lift with the owner back to Jujuy where we intended to go north to Tilcara, Pumamaraca for some more country views. However, there was a carnival in the Jujuy region, which meant every bus heading north for the following two days was chock-a-block. So, we returned to Salta for one night with the aim to move southwards. Another excuse to indulge in the tasty Grido Helado. This is where we leave you this time, folks, we are about to move towards a town in the local wine region called Cafayate.

We once again leave you with a few images of our travels. Hope all is well back home....

Salta - the pink 'majestic' cathedral

Enjoying some refreshing watermelon for lunch

View of Salta from above

Iglesia San Francisco

Our first empanada - basically a small, hot, tasty cornish pasty, much better than Ginsters

Balut bus - Gordon and James en route to Jujuy

A refreshing drink in Jujuy while awaiting our bus

Chocklo - one of inmates of Aldea Luna, he liked to find shade in our porch

The communal area in the 'restaurant' at the farm

Luke and Dave from Austrailia

Food - over 100 ravioli were handmade for lunch

Le Toq - Laurent designed the board - it was a game played in the quiet afternoons and evenings, to much cheer and excitement

Paulo Coehlo and Fyodor Dostoyevsky - powerful stuff

Hugo - one of the furry friends - 5 mutts who lived there. Took a distinct liking to horse manure

Susan in her bakers boots - Jujuy had a somewhat limited selection

A hen before it's fed its feast of worms for the day. Yuk.

Susan relaxing by Rio Tilquiza. A nice spot to read and walk

Our dorm for the 11 days.

We call it home....

After a hard days work....smelling pretty bad....

Just when skinny dipping is a little too far, this will do

Enjoying a 6 hour Sunday stroll along the river

Rural head gear...helps dry the hair after diving under some waterfalls

The rare footprint...the locals claim it's an ant-eater, we beg to differ

Beautiful morning sunrise before breakfast, Susan got up nice and early to grab this awesome shot