Salta - La Linda

After arriving with the Andesmar bus company we went to our host Martin. There were still two other Surfers who actually wanted to stay a day longer but since we arrived one day earlier they had to go to a hostel...
The rest of the day consisted of buying food in three different shops (there is a whole shop that sells only eggs!!), cooking and in the evening driving around with a Gaby, Sandra's host sister from ten years ago and taking her dogs for a walk.
We had an appointment the next day with Jonny and Chelsea (Joneb) to walk up the Cerro San Bernardo. Unfortunately Jonny had, what he called a stomach bug. So we walked up with Martin and Clementine, one of the other Couchsurfers. Even the weather wasn't very good, we had a nice view over the city and Sandra finally found a dog which liked her treats.
Being back home Sandra started feeling bad as well and had stomach ache. I went to the pharmacy with Martin to get some pills which seemed to help a bit. After Sandra felt better I started feeling bad. But even worse... (Of course men suffer a lot more) In the evening Sandra's friends from ten years ago came to go out for some drinks. I stayed home and shortly after they left I had to puked some much as I never did before! To be more concret, everything I lost that day was liquid...

I didn't leave the bed the whole next day and we are convinced Andesmar is the one to blame! The cheese and ham sandwich had a surprisingly strong cheese on it!
I could eat and drink again the next day. Which was good because Sandra's former host familiy invited us for lunch. We had some nice Tamales and Humitas!

Afterwards we went in to the city to see some frozen mummys in the museum, the monestery - the oldest building in town - and two nice and colorful churches. In the evening we met again with Joneb to walk to the handcrafts market and for a beer.
We had a rental car for the next two days with the two of them to drive down to Cafayate. On our way down we stopped at about seven different stone formations with names like "The Devil's throat", "The Amphitheatre", "The Toad", "The Monk" or "The Castles".

We stopped at our Hostel, checked in and went further south to see some ruins of Quilmes people who managed to resist the spaniards the longest, for about 100 years, but in the end were defeated and most of them died when they were brought to Buenos Aires.

Being back in Cafayte we managed to visit a Bodega, the Domingo Hermanos, and had a wine tasting. They have a really good white wine called "Torrontes" which is typical for the region. And normally I don't like white wine...

We ended up buying two bottles Malbec which we then enjoyed in the hostel. The second day we decided two make a four to five hour track with a local guide up a river to some nice waterfalls. Together with two Argentiniens (portenos to be precise) who obviously haven't been much in nature. They just managed to not fall in to the water but had both wet feet in the end. It wasn't really a complicated track but you needed some balance.. It took us some time to reach the final waterfall where Jonny and I went for quick "swim" (=jumping in and getting out again as fast as possible! It was freezing cold!) and then walked back again. This is where we decided to pay our guide and just walk on our own because the two argentiniens where just too slow! They probably needed one hour more to get back to the car park.

We had good, big steak in Cafayate and went back to Salta, dropped off Joneb in their hotel and went up the Cerro again (by car this time) to see the city at night. The last day in Salta we drove to San Lorenzo with Gaby, Diego and their two dogs Olivia and Kiara after having lunch again at their home. In the evening we met again with some of Sandra's friends and had a chat with Martin and his mum back home.