Culture in Cachi

Cachi was probably our most "culturally rich" stop while touring the Valles Calchaquíes.  The locals fully embrace their northern traditions, melding a rich pre-colombian history and modern argentine obsessions.   One northern tradition that they are particularly faithful to is that of the Siesta.  We arrived on a Saturday afternoon, without any idea of what to do or where to stay, and found that the tourism office would be of zero help because they close during the siesta.  Which means that they're open from 9-noon, have a break until 6pm, and then decide that they don't really want to come back to work at 6 anyway :)

We had a similar experience at a bakery;  the sign on the door said that it would reopen at 6pm but when we knocked on the door at 6:30 nobody answered.  Upon investigating further (and by investigating I really mean continuing our walk along the sidewalk) we discovered an open window through which we could see the baker -- still napping.

I'm not knocking the Siesta.  Only clueless, time-restricted tourists willing walk around 1) in the heat of the day 2) in the desert 3)in a part of the world where there is a gaping hole in the ozone.

This picture is of the outside of the archeological museum in Cachi, on the central plaza.  The building was beautiful with an enormous amount of pre-columbian artifacts, and some "interesting" paper-mache exhibits.

There were so many grinding stones and metates that the floors were literally littered (hmm, how alliterative) with them.

There were also so many petroglyphs that people have found in their fields that the museum has turned them into a wall.

 Here's a close-up of a llama petroglyph.

Other places we checked out were:

The church (we didn't go in b/c it was packed with families watching their kids make their first communion).

The local library was a neat one-room place filled with REALLY old books.

Check out the Literature section.

And we checked out the soccer (excuse me, FUTBOL) field.

We just stumbled upon this game, and although it definetely wasn't Futbol de Primera A, B or C; it remains the only game I've attended while here in Argentina. [As a side note, this is not to belittle Pedro's efforts in brainwashing me with hours upon hours of televised futbol a la "Clockwork Orange."  He's had such success with me that I even recognized El Principito Sosa walking down the street in La Plata.]

But back to THIS game, Cachi against....Molinos?  I forget who the other team was, but I cannot forget their fans.  I have never heard such colorful language coming from 13 year-old girls before.  Across the field from where we were standing, you can see the requisite Hinchada (fan base) pounding on drums and blowing on brass horns.

Even the cops were into the game.

"I want one real bad..."

These pictures remind me of a time when Emily posted grandpa's goats on craigslist and someone sent her an email saying something along the lines of "Hi, I live in Hayward.  How big of a yard do goats need?  I want one real bad!"

 I'm also reminded of the time that a couple of yuppies (also from craigslist) showed up at Gma & Gpa's in their mini-cooper with a golden lab in the backseat.  They drove away with a struggling baby goat on the wife's lap in the passenger seat.  I still crack myself up with fanciful images of baby goat leaping to freedom through the mini-cooper window after a herculean goat-man-woman-dog struggle on highway 101.

But I digress.  Just a few blocks down from the Porvenir de los Andes Winery, there is a small goat cheese factory that gives tours.  Tours that come with a free wheel of goat cheese!  Which would be great, but is slightly less great when at the end you find out that they don't make soft chevre, but rather some sort of semi-hard variety.  It tasted good, but it was too soft to be a yummy manchego-like cheese, and too hard to be even a feta.  It left me unsatisfied.  But the goats were awesome.

Being springtime, there were LOTS of baby goats. And the only thing cuter than lots of baby goats is lots of baby goats in the same pen as chicks.

Some of the little guys were really friendly, like this one who immediately became my pet.

But it is a cruel, hard world.  Many of the baby goats were male and thus destined to be sold to butcher shops.  And as Pedro commented, "this one looks delicious."

Cafayate: mmmm, wine.

Cafayate is a pretty little town that is an up and coming wine destination.  Think Calistoga but located in Utah.  The town is snuggled up to the Andes, which provides just enough water for vineyards.  They say grapes need poor soil -- well here they have it.

Pedro's brother Mariano was able to work his contacts to get us a tour of a very nice high-end winery called El Porvenir de los Andes.  We showed up at the winery at around 3pm in the afternoon and were met by the resident agronomist.   We hopped in her truck and she drove us 10 minutes south of town to tool around in the vineyards.  Driving amidst the vines she described for us the different varietals the winery grows, the ages of various vines, their qualities...a lot of fascinating stuff of which I cannot remember a single detail.  I need to keep a diary.  Or a blog.

In any case, my lack of memory with regards to the finer points of agronomy probably had something to do with the growing sense of anticipation;  we were going to taste the GOOD stuff.  After returning to the winery we were shown the production area, including the beaker-filled laboratory of the enologist (cool).  We then wandered past the display of antique barrels and into...da dum da da!!!  The tasting room!

In the tasting room we got to try all of the varietals of their Lavorum line,  possibly more... they were generous glasses, I didn't use the spitoon, lets say I lost count.

After Pedro, I and the lady conducting the tasting were all sufficiently drunk (around 6pm I think), we made one last stop.  The room where the winery keeps samples of each year's wines.  Pedro hopes to live there one day.

The next day we visited an indigenous reservation called Yacochuya.

It isn't heavily populated, but it was pretty to walk around in.

The cacti were in bloom.

And so was whatever festive plant this is.

We checked out the outside of the funky looking church -- it was locked.

We wandered by some picturesque houses.

The one woman we met invited us to check out her kitchen where she was frying empanadas over a campfire.  The kitchen was a standalone building separate from the house, with a hole in the roof to let out (some) smoke, and walls that appeared to be painted with tar from years of cooking.

One of the best small wineries in Argentina lies on land adjacent to the village.  The bodega is also called Yacochuya.

Although we didn't score a tasting (despite buying a very nice bottle of San Pedro de Yacochuya... taste untasted?)  we did convince the bodega manager to sneek us behind the owner's house to check out their little manmade waterfall.  I'm not sure why, it's a little weird in retrospect.

While in Calafate we also went on a hike in the hills behind the town.  We picked up a couple of hitchhikers on the way to the trail (it was roughly a bazillion degrees even at 6,000 ft elevation), and joined up with another couple of Europeans as we all searched for some sign of the alleged trail.  In the end an indigenous guide hanging out at the campground took it on himself to show us the way.

We originally wanted to hike to some waterfalls that the tourist office in town had circled on our map.  However our guide/companion convinced us that it was a hike best undertaken in the early morning before the earth had turned into a massive clay oven.

We went as far as some beautiful deep pools upriver.  I would have loved to go swimming in them (come on, I love to "swim" in the ditch next to the house in Eagleville, and look how this compares!), but unfortunately I didn't bring a swimsuit and our pesky companions would NOT wander off so that I could skinny dip.  Fie.

Quebrada de las Conchas, Salta

After a few weeks of sweltering in the 100 plus degree temperatures in northern argentina, unwilling to walk anywhere outdoors between the hours of 10am and 6pm,  I finally abandoned my insistence that "backpackers don't rent cars" and jumped on the Budget Rent-a-Car bandwagon.  This slick little 1.4 liter, 2 door Chevy Corsa became our chariot for a week, at the bargain-basement price of only fifty-ish dollars a day and around $60 per tank of gas.

Heading west from Salta capital, we passed by the Posta de los Chivos and the town of Alemania before we came to the main destination of the day; the Quebrada de las Conchas.  Literally the name means Ravine of the Shells, but unfortunately it's meaning in common slang is quite a bit more colorful, so in general these days it goes by the name Quebrada de Salta.

Here Pedro explains that although we have been known to "Pack, Climb & Ski" (granted never all at once), our preferred itinerary on this jaunt would be to "Drive, Park & Snack."

The Quebrada de las Conchas is geologically similar to the Quebrada de Humahuaca; it is a twisted jumble of brightly colored rock strata.  The elevation is a bit lower however, maybe only around 4-5 thousand feet or so, so driving through the ravine was much more relaxing.

The guidebook instructed us to drive eastwards in the afternoon in order to have the best views, but we decided heading westward midmorning was close enough.

One of the most notable rock formations is called la Garganta del Diablo (the Devil's throat).

Technically we weren't supposed to go beyond the first sandstone wall into the Devil's throat, but some returning frenchmen told us that with adequate footwear it was no problem.  Not wanting to return to the car to get my hiking boots, I decided that when they said "adequate footwear" they really meant a combination of flip-flops and bare feet.

I was a bit slower than Pedro, but luckily managed to continue on far enough....

...to be swallowed alive!!  Just like (not at all like?) when the Sand Monster tries to swallow the partially blind Hans Solo in "The Empire Strikes Back"!

Come on, if my glasses had fallen off, it TOTALLY would have been like that.

Post for Dad: Foamer stuff!

As Pedro and I headed west from Salta, capital, towards the Vineyards (and tasting rooms) of Cafayate, we stopped at the tiny town of Alemania.  It was once connected by train to the urban centers to the east, but now that the railroads have been abandoned there are only a handful of families who still live there.

The town in snuggled between red rocky hills covered in cactus.  The bridge into town was once a railroad bridge.

Dad, as you can see, we were thinking of you when we took these pictures.

The train station was built in 1916 and was recently  rennovated; it has a lot of cool architectural detail.  I chatted a bit with a woman who runs a craft co-op inside.  Apparently the town is in such good shape because a few years ago a thriller set in the U.S. southwest was filmed here.  The place does give off a ghost-town vibe; we saw only one person on the street while we were there.