Salta & Cafayate

                                                      ARGENTINA!!!!! WAHOOOO!!

SALTA

29/8

Ah god I loved Bolivia but really there is only so long I could spend out of civilisation! I loved being back in a nice hostel with hots showers and general niceness!

So Iv been travelling with Todd and Simon now for almost two weeks which is a long time in gringo land. We are a good little trio and were having good craic along the way. Today however was an Aideen day as I like to call them.

I headed out to explore Salta which is an ok place but my lasting impression of the city is of shoe shops and hot dog vendors!
Dont get me wrong it does have its nice spots, one in particular was the square where is where I spent the majority of the day. It was a beautiful sunny day so I wandered around (with my book of course) & sat and had lunch in a cafe on the square. I accidently caught mass in the beautiful cathedral when I wandered in so I stayed and it was lovely. I finished off the day with an ice cream and headed back to the hostel.

Now one reason we picked this hostel was because it had a free dinner every day. Little did we know at the time the dinner was at Argentinian dinner time ..... 10pm!
Argentina operates on a completely different daily schedule to anywhere Iv ever been.
A typical Argentinian day goes something like this. Up early, siesta from 1pm to 5pm, shops open till 10 pm, dinner at 10/11pm.
Its crazy, EVERYTHING closes between 1 and 5 and Argentinians that go out for dinner do not go to dinner till very late in the evening. I really like the siesta idea as it means I get to have one too!
After dinner we hung out at the hostel bar and sampled many many glasses of Argentinian wine!

30th/8

So it was late out of bed today and then a walk to the bus station to purchase our bus ticket for the following morning to Cafayate.

After a chill out day I decided to head out to dinner with a few Irish girls staying at the hostel. It was time for my first Argentinian steak! In true local style we headed out late and found a wonderful place to eat. My steak was delicious. We headed out afterwards and by the time we got in it was 6am..... my bus to Cafayate was at 7am. Ooooops, lucky I packed last night eh?!. No point in going to bed, so Todd and Simon found me swaying at a computer when they came down to leave. The trip to the bus station was entertaining to say the least!

The bus to Cafayate was four hours long... I slept the whole way!!!

CAFAYATE

31/8

So I had my lovely steak, it was no time to try some lovely wine. And where best to do it but in the region of Argentina that produces 70% of its wine. I was basically going to heaven!

I wasnt in the best shape of my life when I got there but I trooped on. Now there were four of us; myself and the two lads and Jeeke a Dutch girl who came with us from Salta. We headed to a hostel that was highly recommended and settled in. We then headed off to taste some wine!!

Cafayate is a remote little town with a lot going on. Its a small place but on every side of the town their are hundreds of sprawling vineyards. The one we chose to go to today was apparently the best to tour. Today was my first ever wine tasting experience and it was pretty cool. First we were given a free tour and then we got to taste. Roll the wine in the glass to see its 'legs', sip, gargle (sort of), and swallow. It was gas though of course by the end of it the four of us had not sipped, we had more gulped!!!

We bought a few bottles of wine here and then walked back into town through the vineyards. On the way back we stopped at the house of empanadas. Empanadas are everywhere here in SA, they are small pastries usually filled with meet or cheese and they are delicious. After we had stuffed our selves we headed back to our hostel and drank our wine in the courtyard.

1/Sept/2011

Bloody hell its September... only a month left eeeek!!!!
Had a lazy day today and went out for dinner for a traditional dinner of a massive plate of meat. Iv no idea what the hell we were eating but it was good! I think my Salta anitcs had caught up with me as I was very tired so I headed to bed early.

2/9

The road to Cafayate from Salta has some spectacular scenery and amazing view points. A lot of people hire a car to drive this road but that was a little too expensive for us folk. So today we found a local taxi man that was willing to drive us up the road and give us a private tour at a very good price. He picked us up from the hostel at 1pm and off we went. We made numerous stops and we walked for a while at impressive locations that had unique and strange rock formations. You think you have seen everything there is to see in terms of scenery and landscape and then boom theres more!!!

We got back into town at 5ish and went for something to eat. Desert today was wine flavoured ice cream! It was aazing, 1 scoop white, 1 scoop red yummy.

Unfortunately today we said goodbye to Todd as he was heading off into Chile to do some skiing. After we had said our goodbyes we stocked up on the wine and made good use of our hostel courtyard once again!

3/9

Simon & Jeeke also left early this morning (Simon with a banging headache I'm quite sure!). So after 3 weeks of having travel buddies I was back on my own! My next stop would be Mendoza and I had booked a bus for 6pm. Today was a blog day. I sat in the sun and at one point it got so hot my laptop fried. I nearly had a heart attack as I thought my baby was broken (how people travel without a notebook/laptop is beyond me). I also took a sneaky trip back to the house of empanadas as they were the best Iv ever had... gourmet, as someone else said! 6pm came around in no time and I hopped on my 21 hour bus to Mendoza.