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.