Northern Chile and Argentina

There is a great little observatory in San Pedro de Atacama which we visited. They have several great telescopes and do a great talk on the stars. The highlight however was the lecture by the eccentric, and hilarious, French astronomer who runs the place. It was absolutely freezing out there though.

San Pedro de Atacama is a great little tourist town but it was quite expensive - way more so than Bolivia. Also, most of the tourist attractions involve visiting places we visited on the salt flats tour. The buses are irregular so we landed up leaving Chile after only a day and a half.

After an all day bus ride we landed up in Salta in Northern Argentina. There isn't much to do in Salta but we enjoyed spending a few days relaxing there. It was fantastic to be under 1000m above sea level. This beast I'm eating is a lomito and you get them everywhere here in Argentina. Steak, egg, lettuce, tomato and lots of sauce - awesome stuff and reasonably priced.

Another of the popular foods around here is the empanada. Like a little delicious pie you get them all over and we really enjoy them. This is in the town square in Salta.

As you can tell we've been eating like kings in Argentina! From Salta we moved on to the small wine country town of Cafayate. Here we're enjoying what seems to be the traditional breakfast of strong coffee with croissants. In Argentina, coffee is also always served with a small glass of sparkling water to cleanse your palate in between sips of coffee.

The countryside around Cafayate is pretty spectacular and we did a tour of the valleys. This is the Devils Throat and if you look closely you can see Al in there.

There were several of these massive cavern like gulleys and in one a little trio was playing music which echoed around the cavern. It was a surprisingly good effect.

A view out over the valley from one of the view points.

More amazing rock formations near Cafayate. There was also a nice full moon rising. We had some amazing meals in Cafayate including by far the most delicious steak of our trip (and possibly our lives!) so far (and we've had many steaks).

Awesome layers in the rock formations. We spent a great hour exploring the area.

The differences in colour were great - lots of rich oranges, browns, and the blue sky.

Dried out cactus. We'd been seeing this strange wood used for all sorts of things since the salt flats and we figured it was dried out cactus. This was the final confirmation.

From Cafayate we had a long trip to Mendoza. The drive out of the valleys was really beautiful if a little hair raising. We're listening to Shantaram in audiobook format. It's entertaining but even longer than the bus drives.

The sign on the womens bathroom at one of the wine farms we visited near Mendoza (their wine isn't nearly as good as ours although they're very proud of it). I glanced at this and thought it was a man with a hat on so I waltzed right in. I thought that the women who walked in after me were mad. Jules took this photo to prove that I went into the wrong place... Derp.

During the tour of the wine farms we also went to some random places. An olive farm that produces awesome olive oil was the first surprise. Then we went to this organic farm that produces all sorts of stuff. Including enormous rabbits like this one.

Ah this still brings back nightmares... The meat in general is excellent in Argentina and we've been eating a LOT of it. On this memorable occasion we couldn't make out the names of the contents of their mixed grill but we ordered it anyway. Big mistake. Intestine, a slab of fat, blood sausages, etc. I put a lot of it away while Jules hit the salad. Luckily Mendoza has this weird culture where people will politely ask you for your leftovers when you're clearly done. If you allow it they help themselves, otherwise they apologetically move on. So some kids thoroughly enjoyed our leftovers.

As well as meat Argentina has a real ice cream culture and we've been loving�that! We've eaten more ice cream in the last 2 weeks than in the last 2 years at home! This particular place also happened to have about the fastest internet connection we've ever encountered. A perfect universe.

Mendoza is all about wide streets and lots of trees. It was a little spread out, but really pretty. I had some great runs around town before we headed on South towards Bariloche.