Salta (Argentina)

After Cafayate, we spent 3 days in Salta, in northern Argentina. We found accomodation in a big old colonial house (with internal courtyards and 70´s style furnishings) which was run by an 87 year old Spanish lady who handwrote every detail in her big book (including age, marital status, occupation, date we entered Argentina, etc) and had no computer system whatsoever!

Salta was a nice city to explore, with a number of good museums. The most fascinating we visited was the archaeological museum which documented the discovery of 3 inca children (aged 6, 7 and 15) who were found in 1999 on a nearby mountain in the Andes. The children were sacrifices and had been there for around 500 years but were perfectly preserved due to the climate at the high altitude (6700m). Only one of the children was on display, but it was amazing to see how well preserved her hair, teeth, hands etc were as well as her clothing and sacrificial objects.

We also enjoyed (once again!) sampling the region´s famously good empanadas!

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Quebrada de Cafayate

While in Cafayete we spent an afternoon visiting the quebrada (ravine/gorge) just north of the town. The landscape of the quebrada is spectacular, full of rock formations eroded into distinctive shapes (some with nicknames like "the frog") and in vibrant red and brown colours.

We´ll let the photos speak for themselves...

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Cafayate (Argentina)

We took an overnight bus here from Mendoza (about 20hrs north) - the landscape changed dramatically as we neared Cafayate and passed through valleys surrounded by hills covered in lots of cacti. We arrived on the Friday night of a long weeked and (apparently) with a famous musician playing in town that evening so almost found ourselves sleeping in the plaza with all of the accomodation around town seemingly fully booked! We eventually found a room for the night at a hospedaje (basically a family home with a spare room) which we shared with a girl from the US who was also having difficulty finding accomodation.

We enjoyed a couple of days here checking out the local handicrafts around this very relaxed town, seeing the quebrada (see separate post), and visiting the local wineries and sampling their famous torrontes variety. We also tried wine-flavoured icecream for the first time here, and it was pretty good! (we both liked the malbec flavour better than the torrontes).

On our last night here we experienced Argentinian hospitality as a couple from BA invited us for a BBQ dinner (Argentinian style) that they cooked at their hostel. It was a fun evening learning more about the Argentinian culture while eating plenty of good meat!

This was definitely a favourite place of ours in Argentina!

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Mendoza (Argentina)

After Iguazu we had a marathon 32hr bus trip down to Mendoza (we ended up deciding to break up the journey by staying in Rosario for a night). Mendoza is in the west of Argentina, close to the border with Chile, and is a well known wine region - producing 70% of Argentina´s wine, and specialising in the Malbec variety. It also has great views of the Andes.

We stayed a day longer here as we were both sick, but after spending a couple of days relaxing around the many plazas and cafes in town, we recovered in time to hire bikes on our last day and cycle around some of the wineries in Maipu (about 30mins south of Mendoza) and visit the wine museum and the awesome chocolate and liquers factory - amazing! Our favourite winery was Familia di Tomasso, which is over 140 years old and serves up fantastic homemade meals, including the most amazing tiramisu!

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Iguazu Falls

The Iguazu falls are located at the Brazil/Paraguay/Argentina border and are truely spectacular, with 275 individual waterfalls about 80m high (taller than the Niagra falls!) along over 2km of the Iguazu river.

We met a couple from England on the bus to Foz do Iguazu, so we spent a fun couple of days seeing the falls with them. We firstly visited the Brazilian side (the sunny photos!), which gives more of a panoramic overview of the falls but also includes a walkway to the base of Garganta del Diablo (Devil´s Throat), which is the most impressive of the falls and marks the border between Brazil and Argentina.

That night, after crossing the border to the Argentinian side, we did a moonlight walk of the falls. Seeing the falls under a full moon was awesome! We were stoked to get the chance to do it, given the moonlight walk only takes place on 5 nights each month around the full moon.

The next day we visited the falls from the Argentinian side, which is part of a large national park (full of walkways through rainforest and vibrant coloured birds and butterflies) and enables a much closer view via a number of catwalks over the waterfalls. A highlight here was the speedboat trip we took which went to the base of some of the waterfalls and had us completely saturated by the end of it!

The falls are definitely a highlight of our trip to date.

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