The next morning, we got on the road and headed back to Salta. We were almost immediately stopped at one of the police checkpoints. Will passed the breathalyzer and we were on our way. These police checkpoints are very common throughout Argentina. Sometimes you are required to stop and sometimes they just wave you through. This time we did not do the scenic Route 9 back to Salta, but did the highway. The highway actually takes longer, but you don’t have all the twists and turns to deal with.
We got checked-in. I had found a restaurant just down the street that had some good gluten-free options for me.
Then we visited the MAAM, the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology. It’s a small museum that has an exhibit on the mummy children of the Llullaillaco Volcano. These children where scraficed in Incan religious ceremonies. Three children were found together atop a high mountain with their ritual objects. It was considered a great honor for your child to be chosen for this ceremony.
You can’t take pictures in the museum, but they have a “selfie” area. So, there’s a couple pictures that you can take pictures of.
The Argentine museum says it’s a leader in cryoconservation. The children are kept in special capsules that keep the temperature at -20 Celsius as well as keeping UV and IR light filtered. Only one of the three children is on display at any time as they are rotated. On exhibit when we were there, was the boy. He is said to have been about 7 years old when he died.
They also have the Queen of the Hill. She is a mummy that was stolden in the 1920’s and sold to a private collector. She was again discovered in Buenos Aires and her last owner returned her to Salta. She is also on display at the museum.
Later that night we went to Dona Salta for dinner. The restaurant doesn’t open until 8pm. Yes the Argentinians eat late. Most typically eat closer to 9:30-10:00. Will finally tired the Locro and really enjoyed it.
The next morning we were off again for another 3 or so hour drive to Cafayate.
This is another wine region in Argentina. The drive on Route 68 is worth the trip. It’s a very pretty drive with a number of stops to view various rock formations.
Made it to our hotel and from there it was a short walk to the main square. We finally found a salad. We were craving more vegetables in this very heavy meat culture.
That night for dinner, we were told by our lunch waiter to try the grill next door. We did, but so far that was the worst meal we had had.
In the morning, we decided to head to the catarates area. This is a hike that requires hiring one of the local people to guide. There’s a choice of 3 waterfalls or 7. We chose the 3 as the 7 involves steep cliffs that Will didn’t feel comfortable with. The 3 waterfalls is a fairly easy hike. There were a couple places that required that required some boulder scrambling, but nothing too difficult. The “waterfalls” were really small, but it was nice to get out and do a small hike. It was also nice, that Will speaks Spanish and was able to translate what our guide Fernando was saying. Fernando told us that the 7 waterfalls hike is much more difficult with more boulder scrambling and at least 2 of those falls are much bigger.
We then drove back down the road to see the cave, which was said to have some petroglyphs. If you don’t have a Spanish speaker in your group and are merely going to view the cave and the petroglyphs, I would skip this one for sure. This little hike is also done with a local guide and they only speak Spanish. Gabriela was our guide. She provided a lot of history about her people. Some of the beliefs of her people and what happened to them when the Spanish came through and began taking over. Again it was well worth it learn about the history, but the cave was just one room and the petroglyphs were few and most difficult to make out.
We went and grabbed lunch from a place that our hotel clerk recommended. Another great salad. We went for a wine tasting at one of the local vineyards. Not really impressed with the wines. Then walked back to town and had another wine tasting from a bodega in town. We were limited on options as it was siesta time again and many places were closed at that time.
Went to dinner at an Italian place, Como en Casa. Another place recommended by the hotel clerk. For once we were not the first people there for dinner. It was very good.
We were headed back to Salta to fly out the following day. This time on our drive back, we decided to do a couple of hikes on the stops that we missed on the way down. We did Los Colorados, Los Estratos, and our favorite Los Conchas Gorge Via El Paso. The first part of the El Paso hike is hot with no shade and pretty dull, but then you enter a slot canyon. We went a pretty good ways into the canyon until we came to number of boulders blocking much of the trail. We could see that people had gone further, but we decided that was a good turn around spot for us. We made our way back to Salta as we were flying out the next morning.
At the hotel, we tried a bottle of Cabernet from the Piatelli winery at the hotel and finally found a wine that we liked. Walked around the town for a bit, as we were in another part of Salta.
We were off the next morning, flying to Mendoza. Mendoza is the more known wine growing region in Argentina.
We weren’t staying in Mendoza City, but about 30 minutes away in Lujan de Cuyo at the Lujan de Cuyo B&B. It’s a small B&B with about 6 little cabanas. Really cute grounds with a breakfast area, swimming pool and hot tub. They are a little far out from the town center. There’s a small grocery across the street where we were able to get a few items to tied us over until dinner.
They serve an optional dinner at the B&B. So, we planned on having dinner there that night. We swam for a bit and just relaxed until dinner. We picked the early 8pm option. Dinner was excellent!
The B&B had reserved a couple of wine tastings with tours for us the next day. We planned to do the wine and bike. Yes, they have no problem loading you up with wine and sending you out on a bike in Argentina. Luckily we were on a bike trail the majority of the time.
We got an Uber to take us to the bike rental and we were a little confused as to where the driver was going. Turns out we selected the wrong address. The driver helped us get it straightened out and got us to the rental shop. The guy at the bike rental gave us a map of the trails and wineries. We arrived at our first stop, Clos de Chacras without a problem.
We had a group of 4 Brazilians in our tasting that actually preferred the tour in English rather than Spanish. So that was great for the guide as she was going to have to say everything twice. She gave us a short tour of the winery operation after the tour and some of the history about the winery. We had a really good time talking with the Brazilians and they gave us insights into which regions in Brazil had vineyards.
We had to get a move on to our next winery Alta Vista. They have some beautiful grounds with a nice view of the Aconcagua mountain. At 22,838 feet, it is the tallest mountain in the Americas.
It was just us and our new friend from Canada on our tour. We had a really good time there as well. She was doing the Wine and Bike tour as well, but headed to the winery we had just left. We were headed to find something to eat and bike some more. The weather was great. We had a little difficulty getting back to the bike shop for the return, but finally made it back.
Since we still had funds on our SUBE card we just decided to take the bus back to the B&B. That actually worked out really well as the bus stop was just a short walk to the B&B.
That night they were preparing Asado for the guests at the B&B. So of course we said yes to that. It was an enjoyable evening as we spent a couple hours talking to a couple from Belgium and another from France. The food was really good as well.
We were flying to Bariloche the next day. As we weren’t leaving until 6pm we were trying to decide what to do. So we ended up getting an Uber to the bus terminal in Mendoza. They had a secure luggage storage there. Then we were able to grab a bus into the city center to check it out for a bit. We walked around checking out the Independence Plaza and the plazas surrounding it. We had a nice leisurely lunch at Mumbai Masala. It was very tasty. Picked up our luggage and off to the airport.
