So, Wednesday August 5th, Paul and I took a tour from Salta to Cafayate (pronounced Cah-fah-sha-tay). Cafayate is famous for WINE... As a part of the tour, we drove through a canyon, that is labeled as a "National Preserve"... I'm not sure if they just don't have "National Parks", or if they just call it something different. It was SOOO beautiful! When we first entered the Preserve area, we stopped at a "Swiss" Farm that was apparently owned by two swiss sisters- it was a dairy farm that made cheeses and milk from both cows and goats. They had a cute little lodge-style restaurant, with coffee and such. The lodge had a fire going- it was pretty chilly all day, so that was nice.

Below: Paul when we got out of our tour Truck (it was a small Ford Ranger or something, with one other couple that was from Buenos Aires, and then a tour guide... which I will explain about HIM later! lol)







Above: I played around with some fun lens filters I brought along with me...

Below: Some of the BEAUTIFUL views we stopped and got out to take pictures of!



Above: This River sped near a small town that was dubbed 'Little Germany" It does appear that way doesn't it?!

Below: Alot of the River Beds were somewhat dry. I think they have monsoon-type seasons here. It was very VERY dry, and I still have red dust on my boots that I wore!








We stopped at an overlook here:



And then I turned around and took this picture:



We were surrounded my Mountains! It was dramatic!

At a location, just previous to this, a man had a Llama you could pet and take pictures with. We didn't, but I did take a picture of him and his Llama. This may be one my my favorite pictures I got!



You may have to click it to see it full size in the post on blogspot/xanga. Anyway, quite a weathered old man!



Before getting to the valley where Cafayate was located, the rocks/mountains changed a bit, and began to look more like Utah and California:



I used my Fisheye lens on the above picture- it was a fairly inexpensive lens and I'm really not very happy with it, but maybe I'll get a really good one later. It still does its job, I s'pose. Allowing you to see a more more wide-angle view of the 'scape!

Below: There were these very odd trees that we saw all over the place- with GREEN BARK! Apparently they do most of their photosynthesis through their bark, rather than leaves, which explains why there is a higher quantity of chlorofil in the bark, making it green.



Below: I've always liked seeing pictures of hot guys on cliffs. Something about danger and might, all in one shot. Yeah. Now I've got my very own:



We arrived at the Winery about 3 and 1/2 hours later (after stopping at the lodge, and 20 other places along the way to take pictures!)



The name of this winery, was Bodega Nanni (Bodega meaning "vineyard" or "winery"...)
Also, the word for wine, is "Vino" (Vee-noh)... (thinking about where WINE comes from, "Vine" makes sense!).

Now, this is the cool part- THIS WINERY WAS ORGANIC! We didn't even know that when we randomly picked the tour from a flyer in our hotel room (Yeah, I know! Can you believe they actually get business that way? Silly tourists!) So, the wine is fermented by a complex process involving egg-whites, instead of chemicals. At the end of our tour we got to taste the wine.



The girl above did our tour in both English and Spanish. That was nice. There were some German tourists at the winery as well, and they of course, knew English, so I felt better not being the only one needing English.

We tried four different types of wine- a Merlot, Cabernet-Savignon, a White Wine, and then a Dessert Wine.

I REALLY appreciated the tour, because I remember being 14 or so, and our family taking a tour of Stoneridge Winery in MO... We got to see the process of how it is made, where it is stored, in what types of barrels, how it is put into the bottles, etc. However, when it was time to taste the wine, we weren't allowed! I was bummed, of course, knowing why. SO, I was very happy to an opportunity to tour a winery (not only that but CERTIFIED ORGANIC!) as an adult and really be able to appreciate the differences. Of course, growing up, we had wine at the dinner table with my parents, which was part of their plan to raise us with a responsible understanding of drinking, beginning at age 13-14 (don't worry it wasn't much, not enough to affect our brain development, lol!) but, of course it worked- no rebellious teenagers trying to get their hands on "life" that was prohibited in our home...

ANYWAY, so I have always had wine, and I can tell you if I like it or I don't, but never why or what really the differences are, or what it tastes good with. NOW I DO! I'm pretty excited about this experience, and as a result, wouldn't mind having a wine and cheese party sometime. A wine tasting or something. That would be fun now. So, it was a good experience.

Below is a picture of all the different types of wine they made. There is a specific cross-breed of grape that is only produced in Argentina, and I believe that the Merlot they make is the wine that is of that specific kind of grape. They also have other types of grapes, but the one Argentina is getting well-known for in the wine industry is this specific cross.




Paul and I bought a case, and brought it home with us. (6 bottles) but before we left Salta, we purchased two more, to bring back. Apparently you can only buy it in Salta, Cafayate, and Miami. It is not exported to Buenos Aires, which was kind of surprising to me. I think it is exported to Europe though.

We managed to get two and three bottles in each of our checked luggage without having to really declare anything in customs. Yes, it was heavy luggage. Of the wine we purchased, most was gifts, and three bottles were for us. Maybe I shouldn't have said that. Now you're all going to be wanting to come over for "dinner"... ha!

It's GOOOOOOOD wine. I would expect it to be around $30 or so, US. Guess what we paid? $3-$4 a bottle! Hee hee! Like I mentioned in a previous post, you might as well buy wine instead of pop, because it's about the same price. In some cases, getting a glass of wine at dinner was cheaper than getting mineral water. *sigh*

After touring the winery, our tour guide left us in town, and gave us some pointers on restaurants, etc. We planned to meet up with him an hour later.
We had a nice lunch with the other couple from Buenos Aires, and then split while they went shopping, and Paul and I stopped to get WINE ice cream! YEAH! WINE ice cream!

It was REAL wine too- of course, not 'wine-flavored' or anything like that! When you think about the near impossibilities of making an ice-cream with alcohol (dairy and alcohol don't really mix) it was amazing. It was still amazingly creamy for having little to no dairy in it, and it was icy.



This little ice-cream place was owned by an artist, so it doubled as his gallery. It was quite fun. If someone came in from the street, the door would 'ding ding', and he'd set down his brushes and serve them the ice-cream they wanted.






His art encompassed a wide variety of styles. It was a fun treat! (In addition to our WINE ice-cream, of course!)

Sooo, then after all that, we met our tour guide back at a predetermined Plaza, and began our trip back. Really, the tour was fantastic until that point. It wasn't like it got worse, or terrible, but when my tour-guide met back up with us smelling like he'd smoked pound$$$ of pot, I lost a little faith!
(we noticed it's an acceptable trend, but still surprising when you walk around corners and just WHAM get slammed with it!) It's illegal though.

We stopped a couple more places on the way back to Salta- One in the canyon again- to see a formation, known as "Devil's Throat"... I'm not going to post pictures because the perspective is a little hard to understand, but there was another formation we stopped at (on the way there) that I forgot the name of, but has better pictures:



Above: Walking into the formation
Below: Paul staring up at its massiveness! This is one example of the fisheye lens being handy!



Below: A picture of me! Yay!



Oh! I found a picture of Devil's Throat I apparently thought was good enough to upload:



Like I said- the perspective is hard- it was like a cavern got cocked on it's side. Paul is standing vertical, and then it goes back... Almost like when the tectonic plates collided, pushing up these mountains, it pushed this cavern up and left it tilted on the side. It was Interesting!

As we drove back toward Salta, one of the last formations we saw was called "The Castle"




That's all the pictures I'll post for now, but here is a preview of my next post:





-Coming back from Cafayate (The reservoir)
-Our City tour of Salta
-Cathedrals
-Back in Buenos Aires
-Street Musicians
-Caesar and Hilda


Chao!

*POST UPDATE*
I wrote this yesterday, but when I tried to upload all my pictures, the internet was always timing out. Our Four Star Hotel in Salta, is really a 2 in my book- The internet isn't in the rooms, unless you have the cable cord thing, and the WiFi is so bad, every time I try to load a page it times out. Our room smells like Cigarette smoke from the neighbors, and Pee whenever it gets steamed up, because the bathroom fan doesn't work.
Additionally, we found out that the Train to Salta (which is one of the MAIN reasons we came here instead of Mendoza(!), only runs on Saturday. We had looked online and read that the train ran Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so we had planned on going today. Yesterday we "found out" that the train was broken down, and then today, "found out" that it really only runs on Saturday. Saturday, we are heading back to Buenos Aires on the bus again, although because of the whole 180 degree seat issue (see post below!) We're thinking about refunding them, Ha! SO, depending on whether or not we are able to do that, we may just fly back to Buenos Aires, giving us more time in both cities and not wasting 20 hours on the bus back! Regardless, we are both disappointed about the train. If we can change our tickets back, we may try to do the train on Saturday, but I'm just not sure that's going to work.

---

Well, a lot has happened in the last several days... Since I'm not keeping track what day of the week it is (Ahhh, blissful vacation!) I will guess. Maybe it was Friday or Saturday, Paul and I went to the Porto De Frutos (in a town called Tigre'). It's about an hour outside of Salta. We jumped on a city bus, and went to the train station, and then took a fun little train to the Port.










Poster I thought had a lot of neo charm while on the train. I wish I could get a copy of it!



Way back in the day, it was a working port where they imported and (mostly) exported fruit and things. I'm not really certain. I missed a lot of information when we took a boat tour on the river port, because it was all in Castellano (That's what Argentineans say they speak- it's not Spanish, really, it's a form of Castilian).

Pictures from the Boat Tour:

Niice. My pictures won't load. Okay, I'll post them later.

(later:)




There were MANY chico's on the boat- screaming with joy and delight when we went over big waves created by other boats... And just watching the scenery that went by.





This was a boat we passed, virturally the same as the one we were riding.



Argentinian Flag.



This Casa (house) was one of the oldest homes along the river. They've preserved it, incased in a glass shell for the museum that is now inside.



Cute A-frame I liked.



The first time Paul took the boat tour (The first weekend he was in Buenos Aires with his Uni group from Belgrano University), he told everyone this was his house.

...Yeah, I would not be responsible for cleaning that thing one bit if it was. Toooooo big!

We also passed a beautiful palace:






It looks like the mediterannean to me... or Venice or something... minus the palms, lol!



This was back at the Porto De Frutos when done with our tour. It is of the shopping area and market.


So, I really don't know the point or history of this place (Tigre') we went, but it had great shopping! UNFORTUNATELY, Paul and I wanted to leave Buenos Aires at 10:00 am, and we even got up early to do that, but then our host mom talked to Paul for TWO hours about how to get there. It was sweet of her, but rather ridiculous. I was a bit miffed at him that he couldn't get out of the conversation (I'm pretty good at getting out of conversations and helping things end and speed a long since communication is my MAJOR and what I do for a living, and I was just blown away that he couldn't get things WRAPPED UP)... so we left at noon, and by one minute caught a bus, and then by 5 minutes caught our train (so the timing worked out well, but we were a whole two hours off from how we had planned our day) which dramatically reduced the amount of time we had to shop, and added a LOT of pressure to our day. We barely made the last river boat tour of the day, and but the time we got back, the Market with all the shopping was closing down, and Paul didn't know when the train was leaving Tigre' for Buenos Aires, so we didn't stop to try to shop any extra, because he was SO worried we were going to miss the train (and that would have been REALLY bad actually) so we walked back to the station, and caught the last train back (and it was leaving in a half hour, so we definitely weren't close to missing it, but we didn't have time to shop any extra)...

So, we also needed to go to the Bus station/terminal to purchase our bus tickets to Salta, because we were going to be leaving the next day, (So I guess that would have been Saturday). Paul had tried to purchase our tickets online- unsucsessfully, and then on the phone (unsucessfully as well), so we just decided to go to the station and purchase them. However, I DIDN'T know this until we had already left at 12:00... So, we're getting off the train from Tigre' to Beunos Aires, and jumping on a bus and going to the ENITRE other side of town (on a bus it took probably about 40 minutes) to the station. While on the bus, this old blind man gets on, and is feeling his way around the bus, and gropes my leg (I'm sitting on the outside and Paul was on the inside so he could look out the window and watch the street signs to be sure we get off at the right place) So this man is muttering in Castillano and trying to find a place to sit. I'm OBVIOUSLY sitting there, but was caught in a language trap, not KNOWING what the hell to say, (like "Hello, this chair is occupied") and by the way, there were OTHER seats available!), and Paul was partially unaware of the situation, and I was just like "uh, uh, uh..." and freezing up, and HE LOWERS HIMSELF TO SIT ON MY LAP! I was like, Ahhhh!!!!! And I hurriedly, like moved my butt to slide over, but then realizing Paul is there, I just have to stand up, and all of a sudden this guy is in my personal space, and my butt is in Paul's face and It's SO AWKWARD and everyone on the bus was looking at the situation and smiling with amusement! It was so funny, but I had to stand up for the rest of the 25 minute duration of the trip facing backward looking at all the faces on the bus and reliving the ENTIRE experience about getting SAT on by a blind man, on a bus, in Argentina, when he CLEARLY knew I was there! He heard me, felt my leg and sat down anyway! WOW!

So when we get there, we first walked through the Subte (subway) station, then the Train station, then finally found the bus station. To give you an idea, this is at 9:00 at night, we haven't eaten dinner, and we're both grouchy, and just want to get home. 8 blocks later, we get to the Bus Station, and realize we need our passports to purchase the tickets, which we left home without (in my defense, I didn't KNOW we were going to be purchasing them, so I wasn't going to be bringing my passport to Tigre' anyway!) So we call Caesar and Hilda multiple times until we finally get them on the phone, and they find our passports and give us the numbers which the ticket clerk accepted.

So with our tickets in hand, we start the walk back to the bus station. We would have taken the Subte, because it would be MUCH faster, but it closes at 10:00 or so at night (which I think is utterly ridiculous, because when people don't eat dinner here until 9:00 or 10:00 at night, suppose they wanted to go out to eat, to a place that they get to on the Subte, and go to, then what do they do to get back? yes, obviously Taxis, but seriously, it just seems weird to me!)... So it being about to close, or already closed, we walk back to the bus stops... Paul is TRYING to figure out which one we get on, and so we hop on one we think will work, and while getting on, Paul is talking to the driving to make sure it's going to the location we want, and as fast as they stop and pick you up, and drive off again, the doors haven't even closed, so we've already gone 3 blocks when we realize from the driver that it's the wrong bus, so the driver pulls over, slams the door open (which my left foot gets caught in, and Paul is pushing me off the bus as fast as possible, but he's jamming my foot in the door even harder, and I have this split second flash of Paul knocking me over and getting out of the bus, and my face being slammed into the concrete and the driver taking me off, dragging out the door which is still JAMMED open now, because my foot has it stuck to the side. So not wanting that to happen, I yank my foot as hard as possible, thinking maybe my foot will come clean of my boot and I'll survive the push off the bus. I finally yank it out, and hop off the bus, crashing into Paul, who has JUST NOW realized half of me has been stuck on the bus while he's been pushing me from behind, and then pulling me from the front, to get off as quickly as possible. I'm starting to cry because this day has just sucked, when we're walking BACK to the place where we got on the wrong bus (and this overwhelming feeling of all of that was FOR nothing, and now it's 5 minutes later, and I just want to get back). So Paul is trying to put his arm around me, we're walking lopsided and at different paces back to the bus stop, I because my left foot just got smashed, and I can feel my boot getting tighter, and he because he's wanting to get back to the stop to figure out which is the RIGHT bus to get on. He steps on my right foot.

I'll save you the rest of the misery, but our day was AWFUL. It was what I would actually term as the worst day yet, and was full of bumps and potholes, and was really just "SHITTY" all around.

We finally go home and ate a little dinner at 10:30, but it felt like 1:00 am.

But we got our tickets, and the next day at 6:30p, headed to Salta. It was a 20 hour bus ride, which I enjoyed a lot! It was not as beautiful as I expected for the first 18 hours, but after we got to the foothills of the Andes Mountains, it got really pretty. I being small was totally comfortable in our bus, but Paul was REALLy disapointed. When he realized that the seats didn't go back a full 180 degrees like he had been told, it pretty much ruined the trip for him. He really wanted to be able to sleep completely flat!



This is a picture of Paul when he realized thats as far back as the seats went.



This was leaving the Station in Buenos Aires.

I think he didn't sleep any at all, but I got about 8 hours, so that was pretty decent. When you consider that we could have flown into Salta in a half hour, and here we are stuck on a 20 hour bus ride (buses have a limited speed they can travel at), It just seemed like a loooonnng trip. We're considering refunding our tickets and either traveling on another bus line that also supposedly had seats that crane a 180, for our trip back or flying. Really, for Argentinians the cost of flying and riding the nicest bus possible (which we pretty much did) are about the same price (maybe a difference of $50 US), but if you are an American purchasing place tickets, the cost is DOUBLE. It's so unfair, lol! Oh well, I really didn't mind the bus too much!



Some stop we made along the way...

So, we arrived in Salta about 3:00, and got to our hotel, which is really nice *EDIT: not so much, now we've been here a couple of days! lol*. In a few minutes, we're going to go out exploring, and probably ride on one of the ski lifts and get some good pictures. The climate here is a little bit warmer that Buenos Aires, and as a result, more green! It looks a lot like Northern California, but the mountains are WAY bigger! We're planning on riding a scenic train tomorrow, which is a 15 hour ride up into the mountains, and into Chile! Then back. I'm kinda bummed I won't get a Chilean stamp in my passport book.

Despite some of the roughities I've mentioned, we're really having a great time. It's nice to be in a hotel again, kind of our own space, after being with Ceaser and Hilda for a week. They are awesome, and I've had lots of opportunities to really listen to the language here and have been REALLY surprised with how much I can figure out, just by listening. THANK MY MOTHER FOR MAKING ME STUDY MY LATIN ROOT WORDS!
We had been sleeping in a single bed, the two of us. I can roll over now, yay! Their apartment is about the same size as Paul and I's Loft, so four people in that space is pretty small.