In Vino Veritas

Due to the fact, that the only bus on Tuesday was full, we booked Andesmar on Wednesday to transfer to Salta in Argentina. Luckily they had space and we got the front row seat (btw. there is no bus on Thursday) so we could take some nice pictures of the landscape between San Pedro de Atacama and Salta.
At first, the landscape is flat and dry until we reached the mountains (then it was hilly and dry) and sometimes we saw a lagune, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. After about 3 hours, we arrived at the border (checkpoint for fruits, vegetables and drugs ;-). As it is normal, you have to remove all your things from the Bus, a drug-dog and an X-Ray checks if you don't have anything not allowed in your bags and then move all back in (with the help of a luggage-guy that later comes to the bus and says "money".... no, not for loading the bus! )

Quebrada de Humahuaca

From there the journey continues through rough mountains to the Quebrada de Humahuaca, passing the city of San Salvador de Jujuy and finally arriving at 19.30 in Salta (slight rain but not cold). Unfortunately, the ATM was not working at the bus terminal, so we had just 20 ARS$ to get to a hostal which fortunately had some beds free for us :-)
 
The hostal was nice and it looked a little bit like a hippy place (Incl. Rasta-men and a family from Belgium that left everything behind and lives there in a dorm, father, mother and 2 year old child) but nice and friendly.

Salta is a nice and quiet place, especially at the 8th of December since they celebrate a christian public holiday (by closing almost everything down in the city) so, we couldn't really visit what we wanted, but it was nice anyway. In the evening, we wanted to have dinner with a Belgium couple that we met in Potosi but at 19.00 when we met, no restaurant is open yet, the people here eat around 21.00 or even later. So we shortened the time with a bottle of white wine before we had a delicious dinner!

Salta

 

Since the wine was so good, we headed next day to the white wine area in Argentina around Cafayate. Here as well, the journey is stunning when you drive through the rough valley before your arrive in hot and dry Cafayate. It is a small town with a lot of Bodegas (wineries) that you can visit and where you can try some of their wines, what we did next day :-) But they don't only do white wines, they also have good red ones :-) which we tried in a wine bar (another tasting of different wines :-) ) and we enjoyed a Parillada as dinner in the evening. The Parillada is basically a BBQ, but with a lot of meat of different origin: Steak, ribs, blood-sausages, pork sausage, chicken, kidney and gut (Darm) :-) (not really tasty)
Next day we wanted to head to a waterfall, but due to a cold we didn't and stayed in town, relaxing and curing the cold.

Garganta del Diablo

 

Welcome to Cafayate

 

Our plan was to head back to Salta and catch the night bus to La Rioja the same evening (since bus rides are expensive and the landscape is not that spectacular around and because it takes about 10 h to get there. So this passed by quickly and after some sleep in the bus, we arrived in La Rioja in the Morning. In the afternoon, we wanted to organize a tour through the two national parks close, but firstly, in La Rioja almost everything is closed between 14.00 and 18.00 :-( and therefore, it looks like a ghost town, just very few people on the street and it's very hot there (around 30)! Once the Agencies were open, we had quite a shock what they wanted to charge for 2 people going to the parks (about 150 CHF each) so we changed plans and didn't do the tours, but went to Mendoza next day.

La Rioja

 Mendoza, the red wine center of Argentina is basically a city in the desert. The water comes from the close Andes but the city itself is very green and has a lot of trees and parks so that the heat during the day is not too bad (it's still hot and they close for a siesta as well). But all in all it's a nice city, without historical center but a nice pedestrian area. So we spent today with visiting the city (and updating the blog which usually takes a while ;-)  )

Mendoza

Mendoza

Tomorrow, we plan to go for another wine-tour and then we'll see what we gonna do.