Road Trip

We managed to drag ourselves away from Salta for a couple of days and decided to take a road trip, a circuit recommended by many: Salta - Cafayate - Cachi - Salta. So we hired a car for 2 days and set out on the 183-kilometres-long Ruta 68. The Salta to Cafayate portion of the circuit is full of absolutely specatular scenery. We drove through the Quebrada de Cafayate which was just amazing. The photo´s probably wont do it justice at all, but we think it´s up there with the best scenery we´ve seen in Argentina.

Within the Quebrada de Cafayate we saw multicolored rock hills, red rock canyons, lots and lots of cacti, a beautiful winding river and some lovely river valleys. Among the crazy rock formation on this route, we saw Los Castillos (castles), El Obelisco (obelisk), and La Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat) and my favourite, El Sapo (the toad).

One of the reasons for this particular road trip was to visit one of the famous vineyards around Cafayate, home to the ´torrentes´white wine grape. So we arrived in the lovely little town of Cafayate about 4.30pm, just in time for a tour around one of the biggest wineries in Cafayate, El Esteco. We had a great tour around, we were shown the fermentation area, the 800 hectare vineyard, how the bottles are filled with wine and labelled and (the reason we were there) a taste! This particular bodega was once owned by Michel Torino, and still produces wine for the brand, a brand coincidently we had been drinking LOTS of prior to this trip! Perfect! We felt obliged to buy a bottle of the white torrentes and it was the best white wine i´ve ever tasted. Amazing! Cafayate itself is a great town and it was perfect for an overnight stay in the area. It was great to be in one of the most important wine regions in Argentina, and we certainly made the most of it.

The next day we started off on the route from Cafayate to Cachi, on the infamous Ruta 40. This section of the circuit features simply beautiful open terrain, lots of jagged rock formations and less red rock than the day before, more white and grey volcanic formations. Again, spectacular! And we found the biggest cacti in the world! We had lunch in cute little town Cachi.

We started off on the last leg to Salta, the first hour or so was great..we drove through Los Cordones national park, famed for its giant cacti. The area was very flat and desert like. It was the next part of the trip I was most looking forward to...it is known as one of Argentina's most scenic mountain routes. It features more mountainous terrain, and the road winds through the beautiful Quebrada de Escoipe, a narrow gorge that threads through ridges and opens into giant panoramas. Sounds great eh? Well we didn´t see any of it. Unfortunatey just as we were about to hit the Quebrada de Escoipe we were enveloped in a massive cloud..I was driving at this point and literally couldn´t see more than 5 metres ahead of us. It was pretty scary and VERY disapointing!! We were trapped in this giant neverending cloud for about 2 hours and missed all the great scenery on this road! It then rained for about 2 hours. We headed back to Salta for some ice cream which made everything better, despite the cloud and rain it was an amazing trip with MORE great scenery.