North Argentina

After San Juan we took a night bus to Tucuman where we spent a few days sorting out some basics and chatting to a few travellers.

Instead of going traight to Salta we decided to take a slight detour through Tafi del Valle - a beatuiful little village set on a hillside above a huge valley and felt for the first time to really be in South America. The little artisan shops were run by native indigious people and they looked significantly less european. The temporature here is also really dramatic shifting from blazing sun in the afternoons to icy chills in the evening. Many people ride horses and wear decorative wooley hats and jumpers. We spent a day wandering the valley with wild horses and jumping over streams. Hitched a lift back to the viallge with a truck driver who took us up to the top of the valley to drop off some stone for road workers before dropping us back in the town center.

From Tafi we continued to Cafayate intending to see the ruins at Quilmes the next day. Cafayate is totally tourist orientated. Every shop in the center is intended for tourists and compared to the little crafts shops in Tafi the place is pretty charmless. The drive in was stunning however and we could see the Quebrada of striped red rocks. We went for a wander towards a hill and were approached by a skinny Quetchua woman who offered to be our guide. We spent the day wandering the hills and waterfalls, lakes and caverns with her and 2 Argentinians. A real test for my spanish chatting all day to the guy and listening to the guide about which plants were cures for everything from cancer to asthma.

Decided to give the Quilmes ruins a miss and head north for Salta then on to Bolivia via Jujoy as reccomended by a couple of people instead of heading for the expensive and touristy San Pedro in Chile (no point going west for ages only to return when we can go north directly to Bolivia).