Driving through Quebrada de las Flechas

The drive from Cafayate to Cachi was less than two hundred kilometers as measured by the odometer of our little rental car, but measured by the numbness of our lower bodies it was more like a couple of thousand kilometers.

The enjoyment of scenery pales after 4 hours of driving on washer-board dirt roads, no matter how many idyllic scenes one passes of families riding to town on a tractor or of pastors herding their sheep.

I admit that I became a tad cranky during our journey into probably the most remote corner of the Salta province. 

 Around 50 km north of Cafayate we entered the most dramatic section of the drive: La Quebrada de las Flechas (Ravine of the Arrows).  The road drive right through the center of a dusty ravine that does bear semblance to 70 ft tall arrows pointed at the sky.

To paint the ravine you would need just three colors:  pale grey for the rocks, pale green to dot cactuses among them, and a brilliant blue for the sky.

Equally impressive as the ravine were the adobe houses that we found tucked amidst the rocks, blending in perfectly with their surroundings.  These houses are built out of nothing more than local dirt with cactus timber as support.  Never fear, modernity, despite their rustic construction many were equipped with a DirecTV dish.

After the Quebrada de las Flechas we passed through a long series of hay-filled valleys and low rocky passes.  We had lunch in an tiny town called Molinos that was founded in the 17th century and boasts street after street of adobe houses.

The only real sights to see in Molinos are the church (built in 1693) and the house of the last royalist governor. 

The governor's house has been turned into a luxury hotel with a pool and a beautiful view of alfalfa fields.  We checked; it was out of our price range.  The church boasts that it houses the governor's mummy.  Luckily the mummy is not on display (ew).

The Ruins of Quilmes Antiguo

A few hours south of Cafayate, crossing into the province of Tucuman, are the fantastic ruins of the pukara of Quilmes Antiguo.   The city was founded in the ninth century AD, and the Quilmes Indians were some of the strongest resistors to Spanish colonization.

Much of the city has been excavated and restored, particularly the sections on the mountainsides.  

Making our way up to the higher levels was like trying to find our way through an ancient maze, with the final reward being an incredible view of the valley and unexcavated areas of the city below.  There are no massive monuments or temples, just chest-high walls tracing the footprint of a once urban area.  The only sounds to be heard were those of the wind buffeting the mountain, and of distant Italians egging each other on to free climb a massive boulder in the heart of the ruins.  

I've somehow managed to mess up the formatting of this post, but rather than patiently re-upload pictures, I'll just assume that pictures are worth more than a thousand words.  Since my posts are always less than a thousand words, my work here is done.  By the way, the last two pictures are from the grounds of the Pachamama natural history Museum in the nearby town of Amaicha.  The grounds are the work of a local artist (ie, not artifacts).

"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.

Post for Grandpa: Goats!

Driving west from Salta capital, we stopped at a cute little tourist trap featuring goats.  Not sure what breed they were, but they were cute and climbed all over everything just like grandpa's goats.