Tucuman, Salta, Cafayate and San Pedro

Haven´t posted in a while, so here´s a quick update;

Tucuman - where Argentina declared independance, a reasonably OK city. Moved straight out to Salta, a cheap and OK-good city but with not much in it. Got out of there to Cafayate, where they make the other good wines in Argentina, mainly whites (I prefer Mendozian reds though).

Wine tasting in Cafayate was very civilised. You got some bikes, picked a road- there would be wineries on all of them, rolled up and they gave you a taste of each of their wines. Not like Mendoza where everything is miles apart and you really need a car. We tagged onto a party of rich tourists in the Domigos Hermanas winery, they´d opened a bottle of everything even the good stuff (and also some fabulous goats cheese with chilis).

Then the buses started. The LP´s "2 hour" bus trip turned out to be 4 hours of picking up passengers and delivering newspapers. Then a bright and early 7am start to go to San Pedro d´Atacama. Then the problems started, the Paso de Jama was closed. Which they knew- 4300m high, with rainfall for the last 2 days means snow. (Bizarrely, it was only the road that was snowed under, a long white streak - the surroundings were rock salt and grit which is pretty much perfect to avoid snow settling). We got to stay in a hostel ridicuosly high up, the other bus was stranded at the border. There were threats of a democratic revolution on the bus, as a couple of german tourists got slightly peaky with the bus driver, who said little and knew less. Anyway, after endless promises of "oh, it´ll be open in an hour", 12noon, 12noon chilean time, 4pm, 5pm... it did finally open. 4300m is high.

But here we are in San Pedro, a tiny town in the desert with gorgeous scenery, more tours (overpriced) than you can shake a stick at- we´re thinking of just hiring bikes and going the whole 10km to the places ourselves, after the 180km Siete Lagos extravaganza it doesn´t seem too far. The restaurants here are all incredibly groovy, with DJ´s, open log fires with caravanaserai surroundings, great atmostphere. Unfortunately I ate something which has kept me in bed for the last 24hours with ocassional 10m dashes, but, well, if you understand this post I´m probably back to coherancy.

I just finished "The Art of Travel" - aims to answer the question of why people go travelling. I wouldn´t recommend it as a book, the author goes of on wild 30page rants about how some obscure 17th century artist thought. But it got me thinking a bit. After all, ten months -we have all the world in the time- why should we be doing anything? Should we be grabbing the best wines in Argentina (check), aiming to appreciate tons of mountains, aiming to live like the locals, what? Answers on a postcard err - maybe not.

A few observations about Argentina:

• Football. Maradona. Its big, rivalled only by tennis. The only team the Argentinians fear are the Bolivians, who "cheat" by playing their home matches at 3-4000m altitude. Its become such a running joke that the players don´t talk about the height aspect, that the national TV interviewed them before the game with ER-style oxgen tanks and masks. Bolivia coincidentaly has the best name for a football team - "The Strongest", in English (currently bottom of the Copa Libertadore).
  
• Food. I love argentinian steak - it is the best in the world as far as I´m concerned. Most hostels/pretty much everyone does Asados (BBQ´s), where its effectively eat as much as you like sirloin and fillet steak, for about 2 pounds.
  
• Humour. Aparantely, the national joke in Argentina goes something like this (out of the Lonely Planet, so it must be true!)
  
  A psychologist rings up a colleague, at 2am.
  
  "Wake up, wake up!"
  
  "Wha... what´s going on?"
  
  "I´ve got a unique case - an inferiority complex"
  
  "But that´s not unique, many people have that"
  
  "Yes - but an Argentinian?"
  
• Buses. The coach network is pretty damn good, with coach, semi-cama (twice the leg room), cama (3x legroom) and "1st classe" which I never got to try. The bus network is good, there´s always room for one more person
  
• Alcohol. Its a different attitude to alcohol out here, the question really is how drunk do you want to get? With wine at 1gbp and beer at 40p for 1litre, call it double in a restaurant, it removes the fear of going out on a london night and coming back penniless.
  
• Driving. Speed limits, no overtaking signs, pretty much everything is ignored. Cars regularly drive without lights to save battery power. I´m not getting too scared about it, because Bolivia is 10x worse.
  
• Wine. Argentina makes a whole load of wine, 90% of which is table-wine (aka crap). Look out for Perdriel, Salentein, Zapata, Luis Bosca, Bodega Norton reserva´s (cheapest) for the reds (all Mendoza) and Etchart for the whites (cafayate - try their Torrontes). Superplonk for more info.
  
• Prices. We´ve budgeted about 20gbp per person per day (I´m not even going to look for the pound sign on this keyboard) for Argentina, which gets double rooms in hostels/cheap hotels (40pesos / 8gbp), meals out (50pesos for entire day for 2-could cook for less), bus tickets (about 60pesos for an overnight trip of 1000km) and the occasional splurge. If it wasn´t for the internal flights, Navimag trips, good bottles of wine (30 pesos for the good stuff), and our love of food it could be much cheaper. The thing that stands out is the quality - this really is nicer than European travel, for much much less.
  
• Skiing. Mendoza, Barriloche have great ski resorts at about 20gbp a day lift pass. Best time is late August (july is Argentina´s holiday-bit packed aparantely), so if you´re looking for a different summer holiday, get over there.
  

Anyway, we´re going to chill for a bit, then take a 4x4 trek over the Salar dÚyuni to Bolivia.

More trees

More trees
Originally uploaded by Lizzie Roe.

Mans best friend

Mans best friend
Originally uploaded by Lizzie Roe.

Vineyards to the andes

Vineyards to the andes
Originally uploaded by Lizzie Roe.

Wineries

The Avenue San Martin starts in Mendoza and runs through the wine growing region to the south of the city. The scenery is dominated by the 3000 m and higher peaks of Andes.




We caught the bus to Bodega Norton on the first day. We had a seemingly authoritive map that placed all the wineries near to each other, they turned out to be 10km appart, which makes sense when you think how many grapes are needed. Bodega Norton is absoulutely huge, churning out 80 million bottles of wine a year.

It was a bit of a wine education to see them saying that their Bodega Norton range was basically table wine from the huge barrels above, all their good stuff was in the Perdriel range and above - indeed, tasting the Norton and Perdriel wines, they were very similar but the Perdriel was so much smoother.

We went down by bikes the next day, we`d booked a tour at Catena Zapata which I`d heard was very good. It was. Its owner is slightly famous, he only really started 10 years ago and decided to put his best wines up against the best from Bordeaux and California- and they came out on top. Again, the bottle-label is far more important than the year or grape or reserva status - Angelica beats Saint Felician beats Los Alamos.

-the Catena Zapata "winery", actually the showing off building, the wine is made in a huge warehouse behind.

We`ve been splurging a bit on good bottles of wine. It seems expensive at 5pounds a bottle, but its so nice. Its also the foreknowledge that this is the last chance for good cheap wine in the entire trip.

By the way, I`m fiddling with the image settings, so if the web page looks a bit strange thats why. You should be able to get high-res versions of all of these photos by clicking on them and then fiddling about in flickr - click on "All Sizes" in flickr.

Mendoza

Nice city, lots of wine. Very warm. Going on a winery tour tomorrow, well, catching a bus out to the wineries and knocking on their door. Bodega Norton, Zapata, Luis Rosca, a few others if we`re still thirsty. I`ve been trying to find a Salentein or a Bianchi wine, I´ve heard they`re very good. Not a lot here except for wine - well, there`s a bigish city, a huge park, rafting etc, but all the activities require a tour to get out of the city so I don`t think we`ll be staying here too long.

I think we`ve decided on going to Salta via Tucuman and Cafayate, but who knows.

We met up with a Dutch student and a Spanish (Basque) guy, ended up in a big university music festival - the Spanish guy just picked up a local paper and off we went.

The music had been advertised as reggae but turned out to be rock. Crowd surfing began almost before the band started. They definitely like their parties out here.

The sun has been very strong. We felt sun stroked today after having waited to venture out of the shade at 4pm.

Siete Lagos

We Spent 4 days cycling round the Siete Lagos area near Villa Angostura.


It was my favourite time of the trip so far. The Siete Lagos are in the Nahuel Huapi national park so there is very little developement.

We stayed two of the nights in Villa Traful which is a small village on a dirt road, 150km from Bariloche and 60km from Villa Angostura.



The town is situated on Lake Traful. On entering the village you pass through a forest of tall trees whose bending tops sound like creeking door hinges high up. Villa Traful had a slow, bordering on unreal feel to it and I would have stayed longer had I not had to get the bikes back. We had our first oppurtunity to do our own parilla at the hostel we stayed in. We thought we wouldn´t be able to get much in the way of beef in the village but on asking one of the shop keepers if they sold meat, he opened a door behind him to reveal a whole cow.

We had forgotten to take a puncture repair kit (and pump) with us. Luckily or unluckily we got a puncture just going into the village. The owner of our hostel very kindly fixed the puncture but we had a tense morning trying to find a bycicle pump. There only seemed to be one in the entire village and this was at the petrol station.

Views of Siete Lagos









Today we walked through the Arrayanes peninsula. Its a small national park, so called because it contains one of the last remaining groups of Arrayan trees. Apparently these trees are the remnants of ancient forests formed when South America was still attached to Australia.



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We`re off to Mendoza with a 17 hour bus ride tomorrow - it brings home just how big Argentina is that a 17 hour bus ride takes you from the middle-south to the middle of the country. We`re in San Martin de los Andes at the moment, its very nice, quite trendy and upmarket. Had cheese fondue yesterday - there`s a lot of Swiss people in this area- it was weird, very posh cheese on toast. The entire area is so nice, we are definitely going to come back here - absolutely goregous. And tons of skiing if you go july-september, this is the off-season.

We are so lucky to be on this trip.

Top 10 gadgets

In case you`re wondering, we`ve managed to get our backpacks down to 10 and 11kg (that`s 22 and 24 pounds if you`re that way inclined).

Gadgets. Lots of them. Chuck out everything that doesn`t serve at least 3 purposes. Well, sort of. Here are the ones I`ve actually found to be useful:

1) LED lights. These are just the best, they`re tiny (keyring size), incredibly bright, cost a fiver and don`t seem to run out.

2) Gore-tex boots -so nice to walk through a river and not only have dry feet at the end of it, dry boots as well (even on the outside)

3) Trekking trousers - the ones that have 24.3 pockets and zip off to form shorts

4) Fleeces -much, much better than jumpers, lighter, quicker drying, warmer and breathable

5) Wine opener. Everyone always says take a penknife, the only things I ever end up using on it are the corkscrew and bottle opener.

6) Coffee bags (from Liz) - filter coffee, in a bag, add hot water.

7) Hat. Sounds boring, but very useful.

8) SIG bottle - aluminium, indestructable, we`ve chucked it in log fires to heat water up, pretty useful

9) Mini-leatherman. Although for some reason it appears to fold out into a pair of scissors, not pliers... I`ll find a use for it eventually.

10) Eau no. Picked up 2 bottles of this at glastonbury, they were handing it out for free. Its a environmentally friendly concentrated soap/shampoo/clothes detergent.

Two cool dudes and an iceberg

IMG_0108
Originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Caminito (Buenos Aires)

IMG_0065
Originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Whoops - haven`t blogged this yet. This is the tangotouristy area in Buenos Aires, the ex-Italian shipbuilding district. Its OK, its regarded as one of BA`s (the city, not the guy from the A-team) best attractions - we kinda went there to see why.

Moreno Glacier

Moreno Glacier
Originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Panoramic view of the Moreno glacier, with my limited skills in spanish photoshop v3

Bridge over valle Francis

Bridge over valle Francis
Originally uploaded by matthewharrup.

Yours truly in Torres del Paine (ok, ok, slightly out of sequence, I`ll see if I can fiddle the order later)

Bariloche (still)

Ah, good old Bariloche. We`re still here, that must be 9 days now, still tons of stuff to do but we`re getting slightly itchy feet. The hostel is doing another barbeque tonight ("asado"), it was great a few days ago, perfectly barbequed steak and a chorizo (2.40quid) - one guy went up for his sixth steak (not me! I only managed 4).

We went white water rafting yesterday, it was pretty good but the water level was quite low, it was pretty gentle. The guide insisted on doing a "hoorah!" with a paddle-on-paddle thing after each rapid though. Kayaking on the lake tomorrow, hopefully, then we head up to Villa La Angostura for mountain biking through the Siete Lagos (Seven Lakes). Well, sort off, more like 4.5 lakes with a detour to villa Traful in a 3-point turn followed by bus trip and 2.5 lake trip (no panniers, no bikes - 100km with backpacks is not fun).

I really have to rave about Jauja heladerio, 1gbp for 1/4kg icecream in a tub, 30 different flavours, all excellent but I`d especially recommend the chocolate profundia.

The weather`s getting quite a bit colder, we may have to do another 1000 miles north (Argentina == size of india, 1000 miles is nothing). Mendoza, then Salta is the plan, we`ll sort out a border crossing into Bolivia when we`re up there.