Erin & Regan's South American Adventure

Hola,

When we arrived in Cafeyate we were literally swamped by people pimpìng their hostel to us.  It appears we arrived at a time where there were more hostels than tourists, yay for us.  We eventually chose El Balcon (The Balcony) and yes, it had one, as well as a rooftop bar/party area and really good tourist information.

They also did tours and we decided to do the recommended tour of Quebrada de Las Conchas (literally "broken of the shells") which is an area of land which was once (millions of years ago) under the sea and is now interesting shapes, colours and contains fossils.

There were several stops along the way (we´ve forgotten the names of them but Erin wrote them down so we might update this later), the first included a brief description of the tour (like mine above) and a short walk to the highest point, which wasn´t very high.

A self-photo from the top, and the view back to the van/bus.

This little cactus looked kinda cute, I think it will make a cool wallpaper for my computer once we hit the UK.

The second, a longer walk which involved crossing a muddy river.  At which the guide tried to entice the girls into having mud packs on their faces, not many accepted.

The third, optional walking to the rocks you can see on the right hand side of the panorama.  Other than that there was a great big tower like rock and a man selling ash trays and mortar & pestle´s made from alabaster.  Erin bought one, of course, more rocks to carry around!

The fourth, this time we get a history lesson on the Inca.  The spanish once ransomed the life of the Inca (the king of the Inca people) for a huge amount of gold.  The Inca were transporting the gold over a nearby hill when they heard the Spanish had killed the Inca, so they hid the gold on the hill, somewhere, no-one knows exactly where.

The fifth, here we have "Loro´s" (Lorakeets?) which inhabit the rock face and nearby river and trees.

The sixth, the amphitheatre, a short walk into the hillside which opens into a natural space where sound echoes really well.  There was a mad, his son, their dog and their friend playing music as we arrived.  Our guide even got on the guitar and proved that he had a very good voice.

I built myself a pile of stones.  The locals build these and believe they house spirits, or simething like that.

The seventh, the Garganta del Diablo (Throat of the Devil).  Another path into the hillside which ends in a wall at approximately 45 degrees.  Of course we had to climb it.

The sunset as we left for home.