Cafayate 1600m

Cafayate

More wine and mountains, we loved Cafayate. On our first day we checked out the quaint pretty town and had a tipsy lunch which included a sample of the local white wine- torrontés.

We then took a walk out to a goat cheese farm where we bought some yummy herbed cheese. We finished the day at a bodega, taking a wine tour and sampling the local drop which was so good that we bought a bottle having it for dinner with the cheese, delicious!

The next day we took a tour of the Quebrada de Cafayate 50kms away. This mountainous sunburnt red dusty area holds a host of spectacular sandstone landforms some of which are named the Devil’s throat, Amphitheatre

toad

Obelisk and more. They were pretty amazing; you got a sense of how the landscape is susceptible to change with large landmasses jutting up from the earth, with multicoloured striation marks across their fronts.

Everywhere we looked produced spectacular views, we were impressed having never seen such raw earth before. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves here.

No rest for the wicked, we decided to walk the 5km to the base of the nearby mountain and hike the two hours up to the local waterfall the following day- and then return the same way. Apparently you can swim in the waterfall in summer, but due to the ice floating on top we were not tempted- despite the sweaty hike to get to it! It was a beautiful day, if a bit tiring and we certainly deserved our food that evening.

Which brings me to another highlight of Cafayate: La Casa de Empanadas or house of pies. You can imagine that Malachy was in his element, as was I. Out of the 12 flavours of empanadas on the menu, six were veggie. Mmm they were so good, we still dream about them, and they go particularly well with a glass or two of the torrontés, which naturally we combined. It was begrudgingly that we left Cafayate the following day.