Salta, 4 day road trip in the South

After 3 days spent visiting the North of Salta, we went to spend 4 days in the South.

Day 1 – From Salta to Cachi

We leave from Salta early in the morning. We have about 96 miles to reach Cachi, where we will spend the night. After driving for 3 days in the North with a radio that doesn’t work, we decided to invest in an auxiliary cable, to be able to put some music from our phone. With internet in Salta, we even downloaded a couple playlists from Spotify. For this first day in the South, we will be listening to some French music!

The first portion of the drive is pretty smooth. We pass through a few villages and even see some Gauchos. They are on the streets, just as cars would be. This seems to be usual…

The drive becomes more interesting once we start ascending in the Calchaquiès valley. The landscapes become stunning and we find some of the orange-red color on the mountains. And of course a few cactuses.

We stop several times to take pictures. The views are once again spectacular.

But pretty different from what we have seen in the north.

 We cross paths with some lamas that seemed lost.

We climb in altitude to reach the pass of Piedra del Molino at 11,342 ft above sea level.

But before that we stop in the Encantado valley. There, we dropped the car, and walked a little less than a mile to a mirador. The short hike is really nice.

We even decide to have lunch there.

We are all alone and surrounded by an amazing scenery. The best!

The Piedra del Molino mirador is very close. The view from there is also magnificent.

Once we drive by the pass, we continue through the Los Cordones national park. The landscape becomes a lot drier.

We then drive on the rectal Tin Tin. This is a perfectly straight road created back in the day by the Inca civilization.

We had to stop to take a few pictures!

On one side of the road there is a colorful mountain.

On the other side cactuses as far as you can see.

Amazing. A few miradors along the road help us admire this beautiful landscape.

We didn’t really know what to expect from this day, and it was a great surprise!
We arrive in Cachi in the early afternoon, and decide to go park at the municipal camping. The hostels are pretty expensive and since the temperatures are pretty mild, we decided to camp. And we discover that the camping space is great. We have a big space for us and even hot water in the shower!

After that we decide to go in the city of Cachi. We discover a nice little center plaza with a bar that has a nice patio. We will spend the rest of the afternoon here to grab a cold beer and relax.

The village is empty, and since it’s siesta time, everything is very calm.

Maider takes the opportunity to taste a Dulce de leche savor ice cream and loves it!

After a nice hot shower at the camping, we go back into town for dinner. Matt tries an excellent piece of meat and we both have some Malbec from the region. We already love Argentina!

In the camping we meet a very nice Swiss fellow, who is traveling by bike from Alaska all the way to Ushuaia in the South of Argentina! He has been pedaling for 14 months now! No idea how he finds the courage to do something like that but it is really impressive.

Day 2 – From Cachi to Cafayate

We decided to sleep in late after a great night in the tent. We leave around 9:30am, towards Cafayate, along the ruta 40 (the equivalent of the route 66 in the US) that goes all the way from the North to the South of Argentina, on over 3,000 miles.

The entire 100 miles to reach Cafayate will be on dirt road (expect the last 9 miles).

So Matt is driving the whole way today.

Not far outside of Cachi we see a few Gauchos on the way. Some are dressed up in their traditional clothes and it is fun to see. But we are in the 21st century, so some are playing on their phone while on the horse…

The road, today again, is beautiful.

After a little less than an hour we get a flat tire… It wouldn’t have been fun if nothing happened!

Matt changes the tire in less than 20 minutes and off we go. But this time we have no other spare tire… Let’s hope nothing else happens.

A little later we see our Swiss friend on his bike, he left earlier than we did from the camping this morning. He tells us that he also had a flat this morning, we feel a little less alone 🙂 .

Thankfully the amazing landscapes make us easily forget this little hold-up. We can enjoy some beautiful arid landscapes followed by green and wet areas.

After a while, the landscape changes into canyons.

Absolutely fabulous.

The more we drive, the more it looks like the American far west. And it is getting hotter and hotter.

We stop a lot to take pictures, and to take breaks because driving on this dirt road is pretty tiresome.

These desert landscapes are really impressive.

As we continue our route towards Cafayate, we stop at the mirador El Ventisquero to have a view on the famous Quebradas de las Flechas.

And the view is absolutely stunning.

We take some time to enjoy the scenery.

There are 37 miles left to reach Cafayate, and Matt starts to get really tired of this dirt road. We pass by small villages in the middle of nowhere. We even see a few signs telling us to watch out for people. It made us laugh because over the 100 miles we saw almost nobody, and even less people dressed up and going to work…

The remainder of the route is still beautiful, but we stop less because we can’t wait to reach Cafayate and get out of the car.

As we get close to Cafayate we see vineyards everywhere. Beautiful!

Once at Cafayate we start to look for a hostel, and it’s a lot more complicated than we thought. At lot of hostels have no vacancy because Friday and Monday are bank holidays… and the ones with vacancies are really expensive. But after an hour looking around we finally find a great deal. A hostel, only a block from the central Plaza, and that offers a private room for even less than a couple of beds in dormitories in other hostels! The guy at the reception even shows us what to visit in the city, and which bodegas to go to the next day to taste some wine! Awesome.

We quickly drop off our bags and run to the nearest patio to drink an ice cold local beer.

After a nice hot shower to clean off all the dust gathered today, we go eat at La Casa de Las Empanadas, less than a block from our hostel. The name is pretty explicit, since this restaurant specializes in serving Empanadas. We went for the special, which is 12 Empanadas and a bottle of wine for less than 10 bucks!

The empanadas are very tasty and the wine is pretty good too. And to top it off we are treated to a few songs played by an Argentinian singer!

We spent a great evening and already like it here in Cafayate. The next day we leave the car parked and will taste some wines in the surrounding bodegas.

Day 3 – Bodegas visits and wine tasting

Today we leave the car alone. And it is a good thing because the weather is cold and gray.

Cafayate is the second most important wine region in Argentina, after Mendoza. We can find the usual Argentinian grapes : Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and Tannat. But the typical wine of the region is a white wine made from Torrontes.

In the morning we visit the Bodega Nanni. A family owned Bodega for over 150 years and the very first winery in Argentina to make organic wine.

We end the visit by tasting 6 of their wines! Excellent!

After that we go for lunch on the main Plaza. We order an excellent charcuterie and cheese platter, and of course a bottle of wine from a nearby Bodega.

After lunch, we do it the Argentinian way and take a little nap before going to another winery, the Bodega El Transito. There we taste 4 different wines, again all very good.

We wanted to visit one last bodega, but as we are Sunday, all the other ones are closed.

For our last evening in Cafayate, we go back to the Casa de las Empanadas, because it was so good the first time ! We try the empanadas we hadn’t tasted the day before and again they were all absolutely amazing…

Day 4 – From Cafayate back to Salta

For our last day of this road trip we drive 118 miles back to Salta along the Quebrada de la Conchas. Once again the route is amazing, but this time we are on a real road, no more dirt road! Indeed, we leave the Ruta 40, for the Ruta 68.

After a delicious breakfast (croissants and REAL coffee), we hit the road early. We drive past the vineyards, into incredible red and rocky landscapes.

We stop at a first mirador called Los Colorados. We are all alone in the middle of these red and ocher rocks.

Absolutely stunning !

But it is really cold outside and Maider can’t take off here gloves, even while driving.

The second stop is called Los Castillos. The rock formations shaped by the wind are supposed to look like castles…

We continue to stop everywhere to take pictures. After that we stop at the Obelisco and its beautiful surrounding mountains.

After that, Las Ventanas, offers a great view on the surrounding mountains and the river.

We have been driving for less than an hour and already see plenty of amazing landscapes.

We continue to drive but this time Matt takes the wheel because 1) Maider was too cold and 2) she wanted to take many pictures of the surroundings.

Other stop at the mirador Tres Cruces. Once again the view was gorgeous. It is hard to capture the immensity of the area through a photography.

We stay a while to admire the landscape.

Up until now we were all alone, but here we start to see a lot more tourists. And it will be even worse for our two final stops at El Anfiteatro and La Garganta del Diablo. These two sites are beautiful, and we wanted to stay a little longer but there were way too many tourists, traveling in huge buses.

After being almost all alone for 7 days, it is hard to visit a site with more than 100 people. We spent just enough time to take a picture at each site before continuing our drive to Salta.

After that we barely stopped on the way, except a couple of times to stretch our legs and of course take a few pictures.

We thought the rest of the way would be smooth. But it was without counting all these Gauchos gathered in a small town to celebrate the bank holiday.

It’s a little scared (that a horse jumps on our rental car) that we manage to squeeze by at least 30 or 40 Gauchos going towards the city’s main road.

We arrive in Salta in the afternoon and drop off our bags at our Airbnb before returning the car. Today is Monday, and it is a bank holiday in Argentina. Of course nobody is at the car rental agency, and nobody told us there would be a problem when we rented the car a week ago. After calling a few times and waiting about an hour, somebody finally shows up. After inspecting the car and having to pay for the flat tire, we meet up with Julien, our French friend met during our trip in the South Lipez and Salar de Uyuni. He is in Salta for a few days so we spent the rest of the afternoon together before going to enjoy some famous Argentinian meat in a local Parilla. We spent an amazing evening, eating some delicious grilled meat.

To show us how tender the meat was, our server cut it simply using a spoon! Of course we bought a nice bottle of red wine from a bodega we visited in Cafayate to accompany the dinner. Everything was absolutely delicious. We like it every day a little better here in Argentina!

After a last lazy day in Salta we are heading to our forth country, Chili. And more specifically to the desert of Atacama where we will spend a few days.