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Published: April 15th 2006
After all that hard trekking Angus and I decided to see some of the country by car. We did a four day road trip in NorthWest Argentina, starting in Tucumen and heading further North towards Salta. It turned out to be a great way to explore a beautiful area, and we met some other travellers doing the same. The first day we drove up high on a mountain road through hot tropical rain forest. After the desert landscape of San Juan, it was a refreshing change of scenery. The trees went very high and there were hundreds of different species of butterflies. We visited the ruins of Quilmes. These are 1000 years old, where the native Quilmes people lived and defended themselves from the Incas and then the Spanish. The museum was full of pots and other artefacts from the time. We spent our first night in Cafayate. We stayed in our most favorite place yet in Argentina. It was a B and B ran by a local lady who loved gardening. The place was full of flowers and plants which you could admire from the balcony.
The next day we drove on an off road track on the ruta 40
through remote villages to take us to the village of Cachi. (The hire car company had specifically advised us against this, but Angus managed it well without doing too much damage to the car..... apart from one breakdown in the middle of nowhere which Angus recovered by bump starting the car.) We drove through Valles Calchaquies, full of cardon cacti, from which the locals can use wood. Cachi is a quiet laid back village. We drank local wine with some New Zealand travellers who had been working on the dinosaur remnants further South. We ate dinner in a local cafe, but frogs and lizards the owners kept in quite poor condition rather put us off our food.
The next day gave us ever changing scenery. We started off driving down a mountain road with steep drops and hairpin bends. We got views of the whole valley. We then drove through the Quedebra de Cafayate which is a canyon valley with bright red canyons climbing steeply on either side. There are unique formations of the red rocks which have been given names such as 'Devil's Throat', and 'The Toad'. On our last day we visited the Pachu Mamma museum which was
a nice find. It was full of tapestries, sculptures as well as information about the local geology and people. During our four day trip we gave lifts to a few hitchhikers, who were all quite interesting characters.....
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