After reluctantly leaving Salta, we set out for the quite small town of Cafayate. First we took the road least traveled Hwy 33 and made a stop at the National Park Los Cardones a large park full of cactus with some reaching heights of 30 meters. Next we spent a night in Cachi a pretty tinny village with a lovely municipal camp for only $5 usd they had hot water, only in the evening hours. They had an indoor pool that they were getting ready for the season and clean tidy sectioned off sites, overall one of the best campsites we have visited in our travels. At over 4000 meters high the night was bitter cold so we only stayed the one night and the town was cute too clean park with cobblestones laying the streets and cozy restaurants and bars.
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| Cafayate where the hell are you |
Next day we took Hwy 44 south and should have known better since the number 4 in Chinese is a bad luck number. It was a long bumpy, dusty and sometimes dangerously narrow and it took us a little over 5 hours to drive 160 km. When we finally arrived in Cafayate, we made a stop in the lovely town square to get information at the tourist office. On the main road south of town we found Luz and Fuerza campground they had wifi and 24hr hot water for only $5 usd a night. We planned to stay a week to catch up on the blog so we pitched our tint but to make things worst as we try to erect this thing a huge sand storm hits, we managed to get it up but the tint and us were covered with sand after. A few hours later the winds calmed down enough to cook and clean up. The camp had a great location on the main road and only 5 minute bike into the centre of town.
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| my favorite part of any tour the tasting |
We only manged to visit one winery and regret not seeing
more. Bodega Nanni, a family run company that had an English guided
service they have tours going on everyday from about 10am to 4pm. The
wines they make are organic so don't have a supper long shelf life but
tasted great, tour was free but the wine tasting cost us $2.5 usd each.
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| Jieun was getting tired of BBQ meat everyday so she made some kimbap |
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| they sure love there wines ice cream flavor too |
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| beef that melts in you mouth and to help digestion a bottle of the finest |
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| typical breakfast for Argentinians media lunas |
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| not only beef they BBq |
If you like to wine and relaxing this is the place to be with lots of wineries offering free tours, a wine museum and the pace of life just crawls, its easy to stay here for a while. Restaurants don't start serving dinner until 9pm which was kinda of late for us so we only eat out once but we quickly befriended a local butcher that spoke English and we were regulars for the week. He recommended good cuts of meat and how to cook it Argentinean way and we must have ate beef 5 of the 7 nights but we also matched it up with some great Cafayate wine. Some spots that stand out for us was a ice cream shop that served red and white wine flavored ice cream and a bakery shop serving up the best media lunas (sweet Argentina croissants) Both are north of town on the main road you can't miss them look for the line ups.
Wow 7 days went by so fast and if we don't leave this place we might be stuck here, like an American family we meet they have been here over a month, but its not a bad place to be stuck next we will head to Termas de Rio Hondo for some natural springs.
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| Cafayate in the rear view mirror |
