Now, as many people will know, I’m quite serious about my wine. I usually get through "a couple” of decent bottles of red each week, and it’s one of my great pleasures in life. It also doesn’t take an expert to know that Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia aren’t exactly renowned for their fine wines, so the last couple of months have been somewhat of a challenge for me. The only good stuff is imported and costs a fortune, so I think I’ve had a total of two glasses in two months. I’ve noticed that I’m eating a lot more chocolate than I usually do and I think it’s a withdrawal symptom! So needless to say it was a huge relief to arrive in Argentina and be able to buy beautiful red wine at a reasonable price. And of course I was particularly keen to get to Cafayate!
It didn’t disappoint!
By this point I had temporarily picked up a travel buddy - a German girl called Kat, who I’d actually met in San Pedro de Atacama and had hung out with on a couple of nights in Salta. On our first night in Cafayate we strolled into town for dinner and ended up bumping into a lovely English couple, Mike and Tori, who we’d seen on the bus earlier that day. We decided to have dinner together and also to visit some wineries together the next day.
The next morning we set off for our first winery, which was on the edge of town so within easy walking distance. Well, not so easy for Mike, who had fractured his foot in Peru, and had been on crutches for around 3 weeks. You feel quite sorry for him but then you see his poor wife, Tori, struggling through the bus station with TWO giant rucksacks and wonder who has suffered most from the accident!
Anyway, the first winery was excellent and probably ended up being my favourite of the day. We started with a really good tour, which was in Spanish, but luckily I’ve visited enough wineries over the last few years to know more or less what was going on. The sight of rows and rows of vines weighed down with grapes, soaking up the sunshine, is really beautiful to me, so I was feeling pretty happy even before we started on the wine! And the day got even better with our first tasting, which was accompanied by some delicious cheese. Ahhhhh. This region is known for a fruity white wine called Torrontés and it was really refreshing and perfectly suited to this climate, but I think I’ll always be a red wine drinker at heart!
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| A sight for sore eyes! |
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| And another one... |
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| And another! |
Another great thing to come out of the day, was that Mike and Tori have rented an apartment in Buenos Aires for Christmas, and they invited me over on Christmas Day for a traditional English Christmas of Roast Turkey for lunch and an afternoon of cheesy Christmas films! I’d been a bit apprehensive about where I was going to spend Christmas, and with whom, so this was a very welcome invitation!
The next day I headed back to Salta and took a night bus to Cordoba, where I spent the weekend. This night bus managed to out-do the night bus I took in Bolivia: not only did it have lie-flat seats but I was also given a blanket and pillow, a glass of champagne when we set off, a hot meal, and breakfast the next morning. Oh and it had movies. In English. What a way to travel!
I spent two days in Cordoba, which was really just to break up the journey between Salta and Buenos Aires. So I literally did nothing except sleep, catch up on my blog and go to the cinema twice! I usually watch a lot of films and this was another thing I’d been missing, so it was good to indulge myself… and take advantage of the air con!
Next stop, Buenos Aires!
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