Erin & Regan's South American Adventure
Tafí del Valle
Hola,
From Mendoza we headed north again, this time to a small place called Tafí del Valle. It´s south of Salta, north of Tucuman, on a windy road into the hills.
We came here hoping to find some good walking but ended up a bit dissappointed, at one point Erin even said she wanted to go home. It all started when we asked the woman at the hostel about where we could go, she told us of several walks but all the good ones "required" a guide, so, in the end we decided to combine two short, guide-free walks into one longer day walk.
The walk started just up the hill from our hostel and the first stop was a nearby cross, on the cumbre (crest) of the hill.
Up here we decided a panorama would look cool.
As we sat down for some water and to figure out where we were supposed to go next I startled a very small lizard. That´s the toe of my boot you can see there!
The walk supposedly (remember we got directions in Spanish) didn´t crest all the hills along the ridgeline, but, went around the sides of them. However, we couldn´t see a path so we just decided to crest them all, for a better view. Aside from the first climb the whole walk looked to be over this boring farmland. Erin was not impressed.
We eventually came to a ravine (is that what you call this?) which ran down towards the river, and past a graveyard. Our directions mentioned a graveyard but said we were to continue on. As the way forward was more boring farmland we decided to head down the valley to the river.
The valley contained all these big piles of white stuff, no idea what it was.
It was here we finally got a shot of the giant grasshoppers, that´s Erin´s walking pole you can see in the background. They are really bad fliers and their wings are a bright blue.
At the bottom of the valley, just before the river we arrived at the graveyard. It was well decorated, another panorama was called for.
Back at the hostel for lunch and showers and to spend the afternoon reading and generally laying about. The hostel had a couple of dogs, one mongrel of some sort and one chiahuahua crossed with something, maybe a doberman.
The next morning as we were leaving for Cafeyate we got this shot of the clouds, they´re really low, lower than the hills. Cool.
