Salta

Salta is yet another Argentinean city that considers pedestrians an unfortunate by-product of being able to fit so many moving cars and buses between its buildings.

The Andes from a Moving Bus 3: Cafayate to Salta

Well, it could have been an amazing bus ride, but the dirt on the windows made me feel like I was looking at the world through petri dish full of amoebae.

Quebrada de Cafayate

We spent an afternoon being led around the Quebrada de Cafayate, a series of geographical oddities threaded like surreal multicoloured beads on the string that is Ruta Nacional 68. Once again, the thin air made walking a struggle, and the desert sun didn't help either. The landscape had a knack for making you feel your size, i.e. very small. Everything- Angie, the tour bus, the tour guide, the bloody tour group, looked very insignificant against the oxidised mountains rendered deep reds, greens and unearthly beiges by eons of chemical activity. Add to this the fact that our skin appeared to have turned green (eyes overcompensating for all the red in light reflected of the mountains) and it turned out to be a very, very unusual day of walking.

Dining Vegetarian in Cafayate

One bitter evening, Angie and I decided to brave the local restaurant circuit to see what we could consume that wasn't pizza and didn't have a previous life as a creature. The restauranteurs sit outside their establishments spruiking for business, spouting profusely about the quality of the local specialty (baby goat) and giving each other sly, 'haha' glances when they score a gringo or two. One such character barely skipped a beat when we told him 'no podemos comer carne', so we decided to let ourselves be led inside.

I took the safest path on the menu, vegetable pasta. Angie was reckless, and took the eggplant milenesa (like a schnitzel) road, but backed up that with another 'I don't eat meat' affirmation. Just to be sure she added a vehement 'sin jamon' (without ham). (Ham isn't really considered meat here, more of a condiment, like tomato sauce. It materialises in the most unlikely places). The confused look on the now double-warned waiter should have been all the warning we needed to cut our losses and get out of there. But for some reason, we stayed, even after our waiter returned, once again to really make sure Angie didn't want anything slain on her plate.

The food arrived. The pasta was fine. The 'eggplant' was a pounded slab of veal around 60cm square. Angie ate a couple of pieces just to be sure, called over the waiter an he informed us that they didn't have eggplant milenesas. Chips and salad provided yet another 'meal'.

As a nice coda to that unpleasantness, Angie spent the next day in bed with a suspected case of bad-veal-induced-food-poisoning.

Bicicleta

I spent a hot afternoon punishing a hire bicyvle in the foothills above Cafayate. The altitude (I hope it was the altitude and not a severe lack of fitness) made the uphill climbs bearable only in short bursts. Much time was spent sitting on rocks and enjoying the view over the valley.

These manmade waterways shoot through the landscape down towards the wineries.

Cafayate

Cafayate is a small tourist town surrounded by wineries and mountains.

The Andes from a Moving Bus 2: Tucuman to Cafayate

The most amazing four hour bus trip I've ever been on. It took us through fogged out monochromatic valleys...





...into a dark yellow and white countryside where everything that should have been dark was white.




Into the clouds...


And out of them again.



And we ended up in a rocky, cactus infested desert.

Snow in Mendoza

Apparently snow doesn´t fall often in Mendoza, but his morning we woke up and everything was covered in white. On the same day it snowed in Buenos Aires for the first time in 90 years.

Uspallata

Uspallata was used as the base for shooting 'Seven Years in Tibet', a fantastic movie that showcased Brad Pitts 'what-the-hell-accent-is-that?´ German accent. I saw no evidence of his time in the town, although there was an establishment called 'Cafe Tibet' which did not serve coffee.

Uspallata- Hotel Vienna

The Clerk.

Uspallata was only an hour or two down the road, and home to a surreal David Lynch-esque hotel that put us all slightly on guard. The bespeckled octageneric clerk checked each one our party of four in, an excruciating half hour process that ended with a roll call to make sure nobody had left in frustration at being stuck in the lobby for so long. He quickly developed an obsession with Megan, who we were traveling with; it was a starkly one-sided affair that began with several silent minutes of disturbing eye-sex (accentuated by his round, triple-thickness glasses) and culminated in several desperate pleas for 'un beso, un beso' (a kiss, a kiss) when we collected our bags the next day.

The Andes from a Moving bus

Snowboarding in the Andes

Me on day 1.

Snowboarding was one thing we'd definitely not counted on doing on this trip- what honest backpacker can afford to go the snow without resorting to ..urgh... working..., or living in a shoebox on top of 16 other 2 minute noodle eating snownuts? Well, apparently in Argentina, you can enjoy the slopes without resorting to a London student existence.

Sunrise at Penitentes.

Setting a new and horrible record, we got up at 5am to catch the 6 o'clock bus up to the resort. Arriving at the station we were greeted with the seriously unfunny news that the bus was full and we'd have to wait until 10 o'clock to make out way to snow-bearing altitudes. Not impressed, we taxied back to the hostel for more sleep and breakfast, and then got on a bus to Penitentes.

Dogs are everywhere.

After four hours of riding through a breathtaking landscape (dishearteningly, composed mostly of semi-arid desert without a blotch of white to be seen), we arrived slopeside. Here we found clear blue skies, pearly empty slopes and a hostel covered in snow. Without stopping to eat, we hired some gear and got out there. Luckily, our new friend Raphael, who had joined us on this mission from Mendoza, came equipped with 15 years of snowboarding experience, and was on hand to take over teaching Angie how to ride a board when my 'lessons' were clearly not working.

It was small and the hot water was broken, but the location was outstanding.

In line with the bottom of Angie´s collar, you can see the yellow roof of Hostel Penitentes.

The next two days we slid down various parts of the mountain, acquiring snow-legs and having loads of fun. The beginning and end of each day was highlighted by the incredible soreness that makes you wonder if its all worth it. On the second day, a storm sat within in view further down the valley, constantly threatening to cut everyone´s enjoyment short. By the end of the day seeing was becoming increasingly difficult, but we managed to make the most of it and stayed snowboarding until closing time.

That night the storm crept up the valley and by morning we were completely encased in white. Snow had been falling all night, and continued to float down on this, our last day in Penitentes and the day on which we were supposed to be heading back to something more closely resembling reality. As the morning progressed, the snow stopped floating down and started to cut through the air sideways, with increasing intensity. Rumours wafted that the last bus out of Penitentes until the following day would be leaving at 12 noon. Not wanting to miss our chance, we turned up at the stop a full twenty minutes early. At this time it was incredibly cold, and the bus stop was not an enclosed place, it was simply an area on the side of the road where you stood like a snowman squinting into the bleached distance praying that a bus would materialise from the fog at any moment. But by the time 1 o'clock rolled around we realised that the bird had probably flown without us.

Snowstorm from the bar.

Back to the bar to wait for a possible 5 o'clock bus. We waited for a full hour in the excruciating conditions, me on bus lookout and Angie taking refuge inside a phone booth. At 6 all feeling in our toes had gone, it was getting dark and the snow was lashing any exposed skin with icy ferocity. Back to the bar we went, along with our fellow stranded- Marc and Megan- to dry out, warm up, drink a beer and decide what to do next. We ended up in staying in a different hostel (one with running hot water) and once clean and dry, enjoying the feeling of being completely cut off from the rest of the world down below us.

Waiting for a bus that never came.

The next day the wind had stopped, but the snow hadn't. Conditions on the hill were less than ideal, but the promise of fresh powder waiting for me right below the chairlift compelled me to part with another AUD$70 (the cost of a lift ticket and gear hire) and spend another day punishing my body. Half a metre of delicious powder covered the slopes, and I spent the day with Marc and Megan attempting ridiculous jumps and enjoying the soft cushion of new snow every time I caught an edge.

Sodden and shivering (I was, Angie had spent the day inside next to a heater), we escaped Penitentes that afternoon thanks to a scheduled bus that actually turned up on time. The drive out was one of the most spectacular I have ever seen, lots of huge mountains covered in snow and a massive gorge that the bus skirted the edges of (and thankfully, never actually went over). A spectacular ending to an awesome few days.

Mendoza- a Terrifying Hoax

Another restless night on a bus, and we arrived in Mendoza, a major blip on the backpacker circuit. Something about wine tours seem to attract people here...

The Great Bikes and Wines Tour Hoax

What could be more pleasant than spending a lazy Sunday afternoon pedaling our way along winding roads through lush green vineyards, stopping periodically to sample the delights of the local bodegas? That was the scenario we'd conjured up when deciding that pushbike would be the best way to do a tour of Mendozas famous wineries. The reality involved stark, bare, brown vineyards, wine samples well below par, and terrifyingly narrow concrete roads- unbending and roaring with the hellish sound of Argentinean motorists out for a Sunday afternoon drive to the tune of 120 kph.

More dangerous than it looks

These bikes and wine tours surely only stay afloat thanks to the delusions of thousands of idealistic and ignorant tourists- I haven't heard anyone come away with positive reports of the experience. I did come away with a new understanding of the wine making process- and two bottles of wine- but I'm still not sure that the mortal peril I put myself in was worth it.

The Andes are a pleasant backdrop to a unnerving afternoon.

Carlos Paz

The lake is not healthy

Continuing our tour of the cold backcountry of Argentina, we journeyed onto Carlos Paz, a town with an outstanding collection of retro styley hotels. The town is set on a lake, which meant I finally got to go paddleboating (a long held desire that became a merciless, bizarre nautical lust after I was foiled multiple times down south). Hotel architecture admired and lake paddleboated (never want to paddleboat again. Why did I think it would be fun? Uncanny resemblance to exercise), we were done with Carlos Paz.

Lake monster