Cafayate - wine country

From Salta we headed for wine country about 4 hours south. A cute little bus carried us through the many coloured hills. As usual we were accosted by people trying to sell us accomodation, well one bloke on a bike rolled past and handed us a flyer. And that kind of sums up the pace of this little wine town. It has a good mix of gringo and local. We took up our pursuers offer.

That evening we met a young American guy who had been travelling for about 10 months and knew very good Spanish. We also met a couple of Dutch girls and a Danish girl, and together we hatched a plan to head out into wine country on bikes the next day. After interminable fight with poor machinery we headed off and tasted some altogether very nice wines and rode through beautiful vineyards.
We purchased a couple for consuption that very evening. Even if my back tyre decided to deflate itself half way through. After a hot and great day, the cloud rolled in to give dinner its own natural soundtrack and occasional watery addition. We enjoyed a nice dinner safe from the rain and settled into a nice sleep.

Next day, we decided to head to a local waterfall. Not put off by stories of lost missions to find the falls we set off. For approx 3 hours we scrabbled through bush, climbed rocks and negotiated tricky/dangerous river crossings. In the end we didn´t find the bloody waterfall....

Next morning we had a 5am bus to catch for our 20 hour mission south. Unfortunately for the 3rd night in a row the local disc DJ thought the best policy was no sleep at all, this quiet little town needed Disco! We both stuffed in our ear plugs, but with near disasterous results....

My first words really sumed up how that whole morning was to pan out for us..... ¨Tash, its 4:56am!!!¨ we were a bleary blur as we panicked and ran fast for the bus. Thankfully making it and miraculously without leaving anything behind. The previous nights storm had covered the road with mud slides and rocks, which delayed us by an hour. And then we spent a few hours wandering around a town called Tucuman. But eventually the connection was made and we headed for Mendoza.