Quebrada de Cafayate

Before leaving our nice Hostal "Posada la Casona" in Salta we ran some errands such as collecting Argentinian Pesos from a nearby Western Union location to fill our treasure coffers, refilling our water, chocolate and cookie reserves. We left town a bit late, around 11:30 and were on our way south on routa 40.

The road itself - as we soon learned - is a national icon stretching for over 5000 km from La Quiaca in the North to Ushuia in the South. We would follow route 40 for most of our trip.

After a late lunch break in the town of "El Caril" our ride was mostly flat until we reached our destination, the small town of La Viña, at around dusk ( distance today was 82 km). 

We put up camp at the "complejo municipal" that also houses the soccer field and swimming pool (closed in winter). For dinner we had baguette, cheese and Argentinian salami while watching the local boys soccer team practicing next to us.

All night our tent was guarded by our new loyal friend

The next day we left early (for our standards) but without a substancial breakfast because on our "ride menu" we had a rather long distance of almost 100km to Cafayate via the Quebrada (valley or canyon) of the same name. 

Well before noon, at about 22 km on our way, we reached the former train station "Alemania" (aka Germany) where we had our late breakfast in the cafe housed in the station building.

A german in Alemania 

The route through the Quebrada turned out to be one of the most beautiful areas of our trip,  however at the same time is a quite challenging, hilly mix of ups and downs (subidas y bajadas).

We stopped in the afternoon at the Garganta del Diablo and had some tortillas rellenas (cheese filled tortillas baked over a fire) offered by a mobile vendor at the site. Here we encountered quite a bit of tourists (including one German family we chatted with), mostly Argentinians and a bit more traffic afterwards, while the rest of the day there was almost zero traffic on the road.

Garganta del Diablo (Throat of the Devil)

We managed to reach Cafayate just before dark and selected a hostal to stay close to the entry of the main town area. An hour before,  when still on our bikes, we had met Jocelyn, a french Canadian on his motorbike when he was taking pictures along the road. In Cafayate it turned out that he stayed in the same hostal as us and we later would join him at a restaurant for dinner. On the main town plaza he introduced us to a group of Argentinian friends who where traveling around the country for extended times (many month) and we end up chatting with them for a while. It turned out that Jocelyn had been traveling around Africa and South America for the most part of the last 20 years after having sold his IT-company in Quebec.