We’ve been in Argentina now for just over a week and, compared to our previous posts, we have very little to share, but here are some of the highlights!

Our Argentinean leg began in Salta, a small city in the north of the country, nestled between mountains. Having just arrived from Bolivia and our sickness bug there, we were extremely grateful to find the AirBnB we had booked was perfect for resting and recuperating, due in no small part to its low altitude. It was also a huge relief to find that the city itself was very European and we could visit the local supermarket to stock up on necessities. As all good travellers know, Argentina is especially famous for its steak and wine and those of you who know us will know these are two of our favourite things. Upon arrival, therefore, we promptly headed out for food and headed straight for – you guessed it – a McDonald’s! In our defence, we were both feeling pretty ropey and just wanted easy, quick, familiar food. Fortunately, our pity party didn’t last too long and we were soon out and about exploring Salta. One of the top two highlights for us came from the local cable car to a lookout point over the city. We bought one-way tickets to the top and made our way up in style. At the top, we were greeted by an outdoor gym (which we didn’t visit), a wine truck, a souvenir market, a cafe and beautiful gardens which had water features running through (all of which we did visit). We decided to walk back down, enjoying the chance to stretch our legs.

The second highlight was entering the blissfully cool supermarket and finding the majority of shelves were stacked with wine. Not only that, but the prices ranged from less than a pound to about £10 for a REALLY fancy bottle. We went for the lower end of the range, wanting to find out just how good wine could be at £1.20 for a bottle. We also splashed out on a second one at about £2.50, which seemed to be the average price. You’ll be delighted to hear that both wines were excellent, especially when paired with steak and spaghetti.

As it turns out, this set the tone for our next stop as well. We took a bus to Cafayate which was only 4 hours away. Here, we discovered there were around 12 vineyards within easy walking distance of our hostel, as well as some brilliantly cheap eateries. Exercising great restraint, we stopped for food first, where we had our first steak. This was rapidly followed by a visit to the first bodega (vineyard) we came across. Here, we took a quick tour and then followed it up with a wine tasting. Cafayate – and the rest of the Calchaqui Valley – is particularly well known for its Torrontes (white wine), Malbec, Tannat and Cabernets (red wine), though there were several other options of red available, most notably blends. We visited a second bodega, just to make sure we didn’t favour any wines without adequate experimenting.

Day two consisted of a similar pattern, but we started a bit earlier in order not to miss out any bodegas. We managed to sample the wares from six different vineyards, breaking up the day with a parrilla (meat grill) to soak up some of the alcohol.

After eating, it was straight back to work to visit a few more bodegas, however we ended up having to save a few for the following day… We felt this was an important part of our education as we learned how to explain the wine making process in Spanish, discovered a mutual dislike for sweet wines and found that Tom prefers an aged wine with the smokiness that comes from either the French or American oak barrel while Emma prefers a natural wine – very important things of which one ought to be aware!

Cafayate is also known for its wine ice cream, so obviously we had to give that a go. We had one scoop of Torrontes and one of Malbec. It was nice enough, but we both decided we preferred to keep our wine and ice cream separate. After four days of drinking wine, we decided we should probably air ourselves out a little so headed to Cordoba, Argentina’s second city which is where we found ourselves arriving this morning.