La Rioja, Tucuman - Cafayate

It is 4.30 pm and the town of Cafayate is sleeping away its siesta, we find ourselves again in a beautiful little town - this time in the province of Salta. From Valle Fertil we travelled north to a town called La Rioja, a small town but not small enough have the feel that we are looking for - so only stayed for one night in very strange lodging on the ende of town centre...it was run by an old lady as thin as anything with a voice so quiet you had to almost stop your breath to catch what she was saying. The place was as hot a an oven, even in the evening when it was quite pleasant outside, and natural light must have been a big no no to this lady as she kept pulling the curtains shut around the place.

The next morning we took a bus to Tucuman, the 5th largest city in Argentina - so none of that small town feel there. It was a nice town though, and didnt feel quite as big as is really was. The town was also spotted with beautiful architecture and around the plaza many stools selling local artesania.

On wednesday we headed finally towards a small town of Tafi del Valle, hidden in a valley among the andes as the name suggests. It was a pretty wee place, surrounded by the greenest hills and the streets filled with shops selling beautiful crafts, ice cream and the famous empañadas - which Brett has been lucky enough to have tons along the way, where Ive only had the priviledge of tasting one vegetarian one - yum!! Here we were lucky enough to find a very cute mountain cabin for the night for the same price as the hostel - well really it found us, as the owner practically chased us down the street as we were walking with our pack to come and have a look at the place, we had a look went to compare with the hostel and returned, as the wee place with whitewashed walls had already spoken to us both. Tafi felt quite like being in NewZealand, the hills and the mountain air felt just like being in a hidden spot not far from home, and for this although it was a picture perfect wee place we felt as we need to, once again, keep moving on.

Yesterday we found ourselves in Amaicha del Valle - not far from Tafi, but a lot lot smaller, and with a definate feel of being far away...the town roads were all dry grvael, with clouds of dust hovering behind scooters and cars driving along. We ended up sucking up and decided to give camping another go - and so glad we did as we found a great campground - showers with warm water and no toads around ;) Once again we managed also to borrow a pot to cook our meal - might pay to get one our own I suppose... We met lots of lovely people at the campground, and also managed to get a local señor to take us to the nearby Quilmes ruines of local indigeneous peoples of the same name and afterwards up to Cafayate.

Mariano - our chaufer for the day - turned up nice and early to pick us up, prepared with a piece of rope to tie down the boot of his car as we had told him we had 4big packs...it was no problema - he jsut chukced the pack in the boot one on top of another push the boots shut to about half way as it would not close no more, and tied it up with the rope. Along some of the bumpiest bits of the road we had to have a few glances back, just to make sure we didnt leave anything behind...The ruins were very impressive - a whole village of remains of stone buildings, wach towers built up in the mountain and almost the whole wall of the town still remaining. We were told after all our amazement that 50% of the town was reconstructed in the 1970s, a fact that did not make our amazement fade - it was incredible to imagine the life of the people in this hidden valley so long ago. The heat of the day along with the altitude - although only that of 1900m - made it harder than we thought to climb up the hill, but good practise for what lies ahead...


Now we find ourselves camping yet another night in a very established campground only a few blocks from the centre of Cafayate. The heat is still intense, but we got ourselves a wee shady spot and count on the temperature lowering overnight again. Tomorrow we will hopefully find a waterfall that we heard lies along the river not far from town, and perhaps even get ourselves a taste of local wine, as the town if covered in wineries...

Valle Fertil

Our first impression of Argentina was not the best, as everything felt very expensive in Mendoza, accomodation in a 7bed dorm was $25NZ...we were going to do a wine tour on bikes, which sounded lovely, but ended up figuring out itwould have cost us 1/4 of our weekly budget so had to skip it... However, as we loaded our pack on our backs and headed out of the city to a wee sleepy town of San Augustin del Valle Fertil, I think I can speak for both of us when I say we fell in love with the place. As we stepped out of the bus from Mendoza, it felt like we were stepping into another world. Time moved at its own pace at this little township, there was no hurry, nothing was a problem, people sat around talking to each other outside shops and wee cafe´s, everyone walking past was greeting each other - just a picture perfect place... We ended up camping for the first night, and Brett has already shared a few tips for anyone wanting follow on the same line of travel. I´d say I´m a pretty good camper, and nothing that much has really phases me - but this was camping the wild style, and I think it might have been enough of an experience of camping in South America...if it wasn´t for the toads covering the floors of the bathrooms, or the dogs howling outside our tents all night the experience might have been ´tranquilo´like the camp owner assured us...haha but what an experience, let alone to find out the next day why no-one else was camping - the drieness of the time of year draws poisoneous spiders along w the toads towards any source of water (read camp toilets)... but all´s well that end´s well..;)
Miraculously however, despite all the wildness, we managed to sleep in - our tour to Ischigualasto - Valle de la Luna was leaving at 8am, and we only opened our sleepy eyes 10min prior...luckily the slow pace of the town and casual nature of people meant our guide Alejandro didn´t mind waiting for us gringos to get our gear ready (he had waited for us at the supermarket for about half an hour the day before, as he kindly offered us a free ride to the camp groun a wee bit out of town and we asked to have a quick stop to get some food...) - and off we went towards the magical land of the moon in a bumpy minibus w latin music blasting out of the speakers.
Valle de la Luna was something out of this world, a huge area of indescribable landscape which continued as far into the horizonas you could see...amazing rock formations, complete silence that almost hurt your ears and huge red rock mountains climbing toward the sky. The temperature was far above 40·C - an intense heat like nothing I have experienced before, Alejandro informed us that the night temperature can fall way below the zero as well - all of this along w wind and rain (that doesnt fall often) contributing to the formation of the valley.
On our return we decided to stay in a lodging rather than camp another night the wild style, and eneded up staying at a lovely, somewhat rustic hospedaje de los Olivos - a family run accomodation. There we used the kitcthen alongside the grandmother who I could hardly understand, the somewhat grumpy grandfather who howered around but chose to ignore us, the children running around and curiously watching our every move and the two brothers in charge of running the hospedaje always either busy fixing something or sitting outside drinking mate and smoking cigarettes.
On Sunday, me and Brett went on a horse ride around the town and got shown rock paintings and ancient ruins of the local indigineous peoples houses. We were also lucky enough to be provided a mate break w our guide Pedro and his family who came to meet us along the trek. Lovely people, genuinly interested in where we came from, what NZ was like etc. I have spend a lot of time practicing my broken spanish, but feel like its getting better. People just want to chat and are so lovely, it really does pay to know a bit of Spanish travelling around here. We were almost sad to leave this beautiful little place w its people, gravel roads, and one set of traffick lights - but it was time to move along to new experiences....

4 tips for wild camping in Valle Fertil

We just spent an awesome few days in the Valle Fertil, a tiny township near Valle De La Luna.

1. Purchase all camping equipment from home before leaving. In argentina, camping gear is sooo expensive, along with many other things a simple butane tramping bottle costs about 15$ NZ.

we had to borrow a pot, from a friendly loacal to cook any food.

2. Ignorance is bliss, when wild camping, dont ask people what you should watch out for, or really why is there no one else camping at this time of year.

If you enjoy hundreds of frogs, poisoneous spiders, wild dogs and wild horses, then wild camping is for you.

3. Dont camp by river beds, a german tourist camped by a river bed in this desert town and a flash flood swept his tent away.

4. Learn a bit of spanish, the locals in this town are insanely friendly and we had the best time getting to know them, having the local mothers tell us we wer'nt cooking right etc... sharing food and laughs, it was awesome.

Santiago

So we have arrived to South America in the midst of beautiful colours, busy streets and very fast spoken Spanish...;) Our hostel is really lovely, located in Barrio Bellavista- a lively but peaceful neighbourhood dotted with cosy reastaurants and cafes, and away from the madness of central Santiago. We are also only two blocks from Pablo Neruda´s home (now a museum) and the Parque Metropolitano - the first that we anyhow didn´t succeed to visit as we read the opening times wrong...such a disappointment, but at least we will have something on the list for when we return here in about a month. We did however drag our exhausted selves to the park after arriving yesterday afternoon. Foolishly we thought we could walk up the top instead of taking the touristy cable car - only figuring out after a wee climb that the cable car is actually our only choice unless we wanted to walk 6km up the hill...hmm...might have to start reading those maps properly - and before heading to a direcion - that shuld really be our motto for the trip from now on I´d say, after walking in circles in the centro most of the day...and thus missing the visit to Pablo...oh well, you learn as you go I suppose ;) However, we did manage to get up the hill in the parque and witness the amazing views of all of Santiago - so breath taking despite the greay smog hovering over the city. On the way down Brett experinced a close encounter w a scorpion - I didn´t even know to expect them - luckily this individual was a dead one...;)
Anyhow, we did manage to find our way to where we needed to go with my bad spanish and Bretts awesome map reding skills ;) we managed to get a RUT (tax) number sorted, which you need to purchase a car in Chile, found our way to the bus station to book ticket to Mendoza tomorrow morning, managed to order a vegetarian meal at a restaurant and sorted out prices for a SIM card - which we decided to get once we land in Argentina, since they ony work nation wide. In the end, I think we have done pretty well for our first few days, our brains being on slow mo and still tired from the time difference...
We shall post more as we go along, untill then hasta luego y besos para todos!! ;)

Petra.