This is always the best way to make impromptu plans, someone throws an idea out there and the other one says, 'yeah why not!'
So we did, we hired a little Chevrolet corsa or something and drove south from Salta, to Argentinian wine country. It was incredible; the landscape in the north of Argentina is amazing because there are so many mountains and deserts and rolling hills, so the view changes dramatically every ten mins or so. We drove to the top of one mountain which put us at 4000m above sea level!
As you can imagine, doing wine tasting in a vineyard on the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere in Argentina is an awesome experience. We were walked round the factory where they process all the grapes they grow, produce and bottle all the wine, then box it up for exportation. The area we were in, Cafayate, is famous for its Torrontes wine, which is white and fairly new to the game in comparison to grapes like Pinot grigio and Sauvignon blanc. It's also delicious, I recommend that you try some, and chances are it'll come from the region we were in too! It only grown in four places, three of which are in Argentina, and one in Chile.
I was so ill the three days we were there unfortunately. I caught some sort of coldy/fluey virus and felt absolutely awful (forced myself out of bed for all the wine tasting though, obviously). I didn't even drive the car we hired because the roads were all on cliff faces and I was sneezing so much that I was afraid I'd close my eyes are the wrong second and drive us off the side!
We had an incredible three days, came away with a lot of wine to keep us going, and were very pleased with our little adventure! We had a slightly unfortunate incident the day after we got back however, as we left our camera with all the hundreds of amazing photos on in Salta, and when we called the hostel from our first stop in Bolivia, they checked the room for us and said it wasn't in there :( so some lucky bugger has themselves a nice new camera, complete with all our snaps of northern Argentina, the bastard. Luckily they are the only pics we lost as I backed up all the others a few days before, but it hardly softened the blow. I got one pic on my iPod, which is where I am writing this post, so I'll post it below so you can see a very poor example of some of the stunning views that we saw. This photo does not do it justice!
Oh well, onwards and upwards, and on to Bolivia baby!
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