Advertisement
Monday 30th April - Cafayate to Tafi del Valle
A 2pm bus to Tafi helped facilitate a nice leisurely late start and a walk around town to purchase some of the infamous wine ice cream. Stacie had the tinto and I got stuck with the blanco as she said it tasted like dirt and she was right. Mildly tipsy, we headed off on our 2 hour bus ride to Tafi through the mountains. We arrived in a sleepy village with buildings dotted sporadically across the mountain side which gave a slightly odd feel to the place but nonetheless it had a really nice quaint feel to it and we popped out from our new farmyard estancia to buy some local cheese and salami.
Tuesday 1st May - Tafi to Tucuman
Today is labour day and a bank holiday in Argentina so the few people that bother to work here, who are probably from somewhere else in the world, joined the rest of them for a day off. This meant another late bus at 4pm and a chance for some window shopping for Stacie and an opportunity to talk to our estate llamas. We arrived in Tucuman about 3
hours later which was yet another city that Lonely Planet described as being delightful but was in fact a complete dive. We walked into town for 20 minutes to a hotel listed in the book to be amazed at being quoted about $60 a night, more expensive than almost anywhere we stayed in America, for a room in a building which had clearly seen better days and turns out had about 3 rooms occupied out of 50. After turning down the fantastic opportunity to stay here, we arrived back almost 3 hours later having walked most of the way around town and back to the bus station with my 25kg of luggage on my back, been unable to get a night bus, declined the chance to pay $45 a night to stay in a hostel where the bathroom was 200 yards away from the bedroom and very reluctantly decided our only option was to walk back to the archaic hotel we'd turned down originally.
Wednesday 2nd May - Tucuman to Cordoba
Hotel Versailles, I think trying to model itself on 1640s France, actually had a pretty decent breakfast which was a rarity for Argentina where you typically got
served a dried up bread roll from last year that broke all your teeth and a cup of coffee which blew your head off. We then had the pleaseure of a 9 hour bus ride to Cordoba, accompanied by the regular "we own the Malvinas" signs, followed up with a trip to a hostel which had conveniently not received the reservation we'd made and paid for a double room which resulted in my first nights sleep in a bunk bed since I was about 8. Don't get me wrong, we're having an amazing time and experience but I just enjoy slagging off the Argie Bargie's and it makes for better reading than saying everything was just splendid!
Thursday 3rd May - Cordoba
We decided it was time to leave our bunk beds behind us and moved on to to The Garden Hotel in the centre of town. As we near the end of our trip and the prices keep going up, we're ever more watchful of how we spend the pennies so opted for the cheap double that looked like it'd just been fumigated, when we could have gone for the deluxe room for an extra 15 quid.
Friday 4th May - Cordoba
Today was our chance to pay homage to El Che, Commandante, with a visit to his childhood home in the lovely town of Alto Gracia, 1 hour from Cordoba. Amazingly it costs a tenner to get into this little house of about 6 rooms but it was well worth the money and always will be for admirers of the infamous revolutionary. As we left we were greeted by a large group of Israelis, who incidently only ever seem to travel in large groups and I'm sure had come to share their wonderful company with more unsuspecting people.
Saturday 5th May - Cordoba
This turned out to be a bit of a nothing day where we did a bit of internet surfing, bought some of dodgy daves DVDs for a quid each on the street and I again got to experience the hypnotic effect of McDonalds. How can it be that a restaurant dishing out sweaty burgers has such a powerful attraction up until the point you've ordered, eaten your big mac and then about 5 to 10 minutes after finishing you feel like crap, swear you'll never touch one ever again
and then about 2 or 3 hours later you've yet again completely forgotten how bad it just made you feel?
Advertisement
Tot: 0.062s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 28; dbt: 0.036s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb