A scrape with a jealous bull, amazing rock formations, cycling buddies, Zumba and an appreciation of Malbec wine in Cafayate would be the highlights of this section of my cycle through northern Argentina. 

I had now descended off the Puna as I continued my cycle through north western Argentina.  One of the more well known places in this area is Cafayate which is famous for it’s Malbec variety of red wine.  It would be rude not to pay the town a visit and so when I set off from Salta that was where I headed.

The town of Cafayate was just over 200km south of Salta and would take me two or three days to get there depending on the wind.  My route would see me follow two river valleys – Valle de Lerma and Valle de Calchaquíes – and with just one smallish mountain pass to negotiate I was looking forward to some flattish cycling. 

In Argentina you really don’t need a map as every time you reach a town of any size there seems to be a huge sign telling you what else there is down the road.

I was less than 50km south of Salta when I came across my first winery, or Bodega in Spanish, but this one seemed to just be growing vines rather than offer a degustation (tasting),  but I still jumped over the fence to get myself a free bunch of grapes

The main wine region was still 150 km away

And for the next two days there would be regular updates counting down the kilometers until I could pull over at Bodegas that I cycled past for a free glass of wine.

The valley that I was cycling through was beautiful and now that I was down in the lowland river valleys agriculture seemed to be the main industry with vegetables, tobacco and sugar cane seemingly the main crops that were being grown.

On either side of the valley were high mountains which seemed to be protecting me from the worst of the south westerly winds and it was great to be surrounded by greenery as I continued my cycle south.

In Bolivia, my lunch option was confined to whatever I could cook but here I Argentina Lomito (steak sandwich) had become my staple lunch option and so around 1 pm I pulled over at a roadside shop for a sandwich

As I was now cycling through an agricultural region there was plenty of fruit and veg on offer and my lunch stop also sold watermelons

When I asked the owner if he would do my half he said that he only sold them whole and as I didn’t fancy either carrying the extra weight or having to throw it away I decided to leave it.

Where access to food and water had been a daily concern in Bolivia here in this part of Argentina it was not as I could guarantee that I would pass a shop or eatery every 10km or so. Instead, my concern was blowing my budget as my afternoon coffee and apple strudel, with real cream, stop showed with a bill of 140 pesos which was nearly equivalent to my daily budget in Bolivia.

The place where I stopped for coffee also doubled as a hosteleria where a single room was 500 pesos.  Again, it was tempting just to stay in another nice place but with miles and miles of ‘empty’ countryside I decided to save the money and find somewhere to camp for the night.

I had been following a river all day and so once I had hit 100km I decided to pull over next to the river and set up camp for the night.

It was a great spot to spend the night as camping next to a river always adds a great sound track to the night

I used to carry a rope with me as a washing line but this got made ‘redundant’ one day when I decided to go through all my kit and put what I needed in a pile on the left and what I could do without on a pile on the right.  I never weighed what I got rid of that day but it was easily a couple of kilograms. Instead of a washing line I just now use the bike

The other bonus of being in the lowlands (if you can call the lowlands being at 2300m !!!) is that I was back below the tree line which meant I had a ready supply of firewood and set about getting a pile ready for later in the evening once the sun went down.

Sunset is around 8.30pm and at about 8pm the shepherds who kept herds in the valley brought their flocks down to the river for the night.  First to arrive were the sheep, followed by the goats, and last of all were the cows with their calves.  It seemed that the shepherds then headed home to return to collect their herds the following morning.

At about 8.15pm, just before sunset, I heard this sound which was a cross between a bear and a dog and saw this huge black bull come out of a side valley and cross the river.  I was thankful that I had seen it in a way otherwise all evening I would have been trying to work out what kind of animal I was sharing this section of the river with.

I thought that once the bull had found his herd again he would calm down and never really bothered thinking about it even though every 20 minutes or so I could hear it calling.

As the sun went down I lit the fire and sat and ate my dinner by firelight which is always a special feeling.

At 10pm I headed for bed and although I could hear the cows in the bush around me they had not come close. 

At about 11.30pm I was woken to the sound of the cows in the trees behind my tent and when I opened the tent a few of the cows and calves were stood in the clearing next to me which was okay but when I stuck my head around the other corner I came face to face with the not so happy bull from earlier.

I think he took exception to me being near to his harem of cows and was stomping around doing his bear come dog impression, which I must say was fairly impressive.  On this ride I have with me a Cateye Volt 800 torch, which although the size of a small cigar puts out  800 lumens of light on full beam, and when I turn it on it is like flicking the switch at a football stadium.

This was enough to get the cows to scatter and for the bull to temporarily retreat into the tree line.  This put about 15 metres between the bull and my tent and even though the calves had run off, and I was no longer a reason for the bull to see me as a threat to his harem, it seemed that the bull was still interested in teaching me a lesson.

He charged out of the tree line a couple of times but each time he turned before he reached the tent.  It is an understatement to say I was relieved at this given that all that stood between me and a 500 kg pissed off bull was a 1.7kg tent.

After the second charge I decided that the best option was for me to pack up the tent and get out of his territory. The problem now was how to take down the tent while the bull was just 15 metres away from me and that my tent was the only barrier between us.

One of the cows started calling and this seemed to be more important to him than I was and he turned away and walked off.  I could still see him in the tree line but at least he wasn’t charging at me and so in about 3 minutes I had the tent pulled down and my bags on the bike.

I now had to push my bike through the treeline and passed the herd of cows to get to the road that was on the other side as to get back to the road I needed to find the steep track that I had descended down from the main highway to access the river.  I didn’t want to have the bull chase me only to find that I couldn’t get up the bank !!!!!

I decided that instead of stealth I would make as much noise as possible as I made my way the 400m or so back through the tree line to the road.  I have no idea if this is what I should have done but although I could hear the bull, and wasn’t sure if he was 10m or 100m away as at night I had no sense of distance with noise,  I made it back to the track that I had earlier descended.

To say I was relieved puts it mildly and I now had the problem that to the right of the road I was now on was a steep mountain and to the left the river.  This meant that I would have to find a place to sleep back on the river a couple of kilometers down the valley.  As there were no fences anywhere along the river I could not guarantee that I would not come across a different herd of cattle further down the river.

As it was gone midnight though I needed to find somewhere else to sleep and had no other option than cycling for a couple of kilometres down the valley and take my chances.  I found a flattish area just off the actual river valley floor which seemed to be nice and quiet as I could hear no animals nearby.

As I was setting up my tent an animal that was like a fox but smaller with huge ears walked into the clearing  and instead of being scared of me just sat and watched me erect my tent.  Much less intimidating than a charging bull and by the time I had finished setting up for the night it was gone 1am and finally I could get some sleep. 

In the morning with daylight things always seem kind of rosier and as I was packing the tent up the next morning I mulled over what the bull might have done and decided that I had made the correct call by moving the tent as he was not happy with me. 

Life is one long learning experience and looking back on where I had camped the night before there were cow hoof prints all along the river’s edge that I had not noticed at the time but I can assure you that I would now be looking out for at the next couple of rivers that I slept on.

Even though the night before had ended somewhat dramatically the days cycling had been good and I was over half way to my prize of a glass of wine.  I had followed a river valley all day and knew that first up this morning was a small climb out of the valley I had slept into the one that the wine town of Cafayate lay.

The climb through the mountains was beautiful and the rock formations were fantastic

I don’t think it matters whether you are climbing or descending through a river valley as the spectacular scenery takes your mind off the cycling.

As I reached the summit of the pass there was a tortilla a la  parrilla seller and so I stopped to get a snack.

As I descended into the next valley I came across my first bogeda of the day and pulled over to get a glass of wine and to top up my water supplies.

There were two cyclists from Argentina already there and they were also heading for Cafayate having left Salta 2 days before. 

Apparently the ride from Salta to Cafayate for a few days of wine drinking was a very famous ride and that day I would meet 7 other cyclists along the way.

After enjoying a glass of wine and some UVA (fresh grapes off the vines) it was time to say adios to my new cycling buddies and head off down into the valley that lay ahead of me.

10km after the wine stop there was a sign post for a Garganta del Diablo, which translates as ‘Devil’s Throat’ 

It was formed by centuries of water erosion and you could clearly see the route that the water takes as it pours off the mountain side to carve out this amazing formation which was over 100m in height.

Further down the road there was a formation called the Obelisco:

and another called Los Castillos (The Castles)

The power of nature to erode rock into these amazing structures is immense.

In front of me now was the last real climb of the day up to El Mirador Tres Cruces but it was only a few kilometres long and so compared to what I had cycled up recently it was a mere bump in the road.  When I reached the top the view along the river valley that opened out ahead was worth the climb

My only company as I sat looking at the view were a pair of donkeys who stood and stared at me.

It was now time to descend down into the valley and I reached my top speed of the day – 68kmph.  Not too shabby for a guy on a bike, and I would have reached over 70 kmph if it hadn’t have been for a tight right hand bend that I had to brake for near the bottom

It was getting towards lunchtime and instead of stopping to cook I decided to press on until I came to a lunch place by the side of the road and I didn’t have to wait for too long before I passed a sign

When I pulled in to the eatery I ordered a couple of different tortillas and as there were already 3 cyclists sat down drinking I joined them while I waited for my food to arrive.  Two of them were from Argentina and one of them from Quebec in Canada. 

The two cyclists from Argentina were on a round trip from the city of Tucuman where they lived to Salta and then back to Tucaman via Cafayate.  The Canadian guy, Jean-David or JD for short, was like myself heading south towards Chile.

The Argentinian cyclists headed off and JD and I sat talking about our respective cycle rides.  It turned out that JD had 3 days before met the 3 amigos that I had left cycling down the train track in southern Bolivia. (The Border Run, Bolivia) He said that when I had left them they had continued down the railway track for a while but that it had been too slow going and so had flagged down a train to give them a lift to Tupiza. 

Flo, who I had shared a room with in Atocha, had now flown back to Germany but Hannes and Manu had left Salta two days ago and were heading for Cafayate and it would be great to catch up with them if they were still there when we got there.

After eating JD and I decided to cycle together the rest of the way to the wine country and it was great to have company on the road.

The rock formations were again the ‘stars’ of this part of the ride and provided an amazing backdrop:

We were about 10km from our destination when we passed a lady who could be best described as stood in a wine barrel by the side of the road

It was not quite a bodega but she was serving wine so we pulled over for a glass.

Another ‘weird’ thing that they do in Argentina is that they serve red wine from the fridge and even when you go to a wine shop or restaurant they tend to serve the bottles of red chilled. 

It was a great stop for a cold glass of wine and it seemed like it was closing up time as the lady gave me another glass of red for free and when we left told me to take a nearly full bottle of white with me.  (for the record Argentinian white wine is very sweet and not to my liking !!!!)

Just after leaving we caught up with another pair of Argentinian cyclists that we had passed earlier and so now we formed a fully loaded touring peloton as we headed downhill to Cafayate at over 30kmph

At 5pm we rolled into Cafayate and sat in an ice cream parlour on the edge of town were the two Argentinian cyclists that I had earlier met talking to JD at the restaurant.

We joined them and even though most things in Argentina are fairly expensive compared to Bolivia it turns out that ice cream is not one of them and that for 25 pesos you can get a huge 3 scoop cone.  Another great end to a days cycling which reminded me of cycling with Fraser and Trinh in Asia as they loved their ice cream stops.

It was now time to go and find somewhere to sleep and after checking out a couple of places it was obvious that Cafayate was a fairly expensive town and that JD and I were on completely different budgets.  We decided to head our separate ways to find a place to sleep and then meet up at 9 pm to get food.

The place that I found was just off the main plaza and was a boutique style place with 5 rooms, a beautiful courtyard and a small pool.  Even though I stayed there for 3 nights I only realized that I hadn’t taken a single picture of the place until I had left.  If you ever find yourself in Cafayate I would definitely have a look at Hotel Plaza as it is a great place to stay right in the centre of town.

As arranged at 9pm I met up with JD at a bar and then we went in search of food.  We found a local place a few blocks off the main plaza.  We ordered a litre of the house wine and whilst waiting for it to arrive one of the locals came over for a chat and said that the Locro, a bright yellow Argentinian bean stew, was excellent. 

I had eaten it whilst cycling across the puna but JD hadn’t tried it yet so we both ordered it.  The stew and the wine turned out to be winners so we ordered another litre of wine.

By the time we left the restaurant it was gone midnight and we both fancied another beer so we headed to the main plaza in search of alcohol.  Most of the bars on the plaza had a few people in but the busy one was called Desio and so we headed there.

We got talking to a guy from Equador who was half Argentinian and currently hitch hiking his way through the country (even though I spent the next two nights drinking with him I can’t remember what his name was).

He had his life tied up in a blanket and carried it around with him wherever he went and slept in the park at the centre of the main plaza.  He said that he had been in Cafayate for 4 nights and the police only bothered him on the first night to check that he had identification papers and then left him alone.

I know that there can be a fine line between somebody who is a native long term hitchhiker in their own country and somebody who is just a homeless guy and I think that our friend was more towards the latter but he was  great company.

My Spanish was about as good as his English but after a couple of litres of wine and a few beers we understood each other beautifully !!!!  At 3am we headed for a club that he knew and when we got there they wouldn’t let in our Argentinian friend because he was carrying his worldly belongings in a blanket,  and was dressed a little rough to be fair, nor me as I was wearing flip flops. 

This left JD to twist his tootsie on the dance floor while I headed home to my bed, which I was very happy to do given the hour of the night and the quantity that we had drunk.

I had arranged to meet JD the following morning at midday to go round the wineries and because of our late night the night before when I woke up I had missed breakfast which finished at my hotel at 10am.

I instead opted for a Lomito (steak sandwich) from a place that we had looked at the night before deciding on our Locro restaurant.

This place was a bit like Subway in the sense that they only served food in a roll and I had the choice of steak, beef schnitzel, chicken schnitzel and then egg,ham or cheese and various salads.

I had a steak sandwich with egg and cheese that made great hangover food and ordered a coffee thinking that as we were in wine country the coffee shouldn’t be too bad and again the coffee was real rather than instant.

At midday I went to meet JD who had camped at the campsite on the edge of town the night before. When he turned up he said that he had made the mistake though of not pitching his tent under a tree and at 9am he had woken up in an oven as the heat from the sun slowly cooked him.

Now that I was in the lowland valleys the temperature was over 35 degrees on most days and it was only the cooling wind that made the rides bearable.  I think that after living for the best part of six years in teh tropics of Asia I was just glad that it was not 90% humidity in South America !!!!

Despite being forced to get up so early JD had not yet had breakfast so headed for the same Lomito place that I had gotten mine from earlier while I headed for the tourist information office to get the low down on the bodega’s in the area.

The lady at the tourist office gave me a map and then marked on a number of the bodegas worth visiting and how much they charged for a tour and degustation (tasting). Theh price ranged from the cheapest at 10 pesos up to the most expensive at 150 pesos.

As I had been on a tour of a winery with Deirbhle in New Zealand I wasn’t that bothered about spending an hour on another tour nor it turned out was JD so once he had finished his breakfast we headed off in search of wine.

We decided to head north out of town as that seemed to have the most options and the first place that we tried was Bodega Vasija Secreta which was our bargain of the day at just 10 pesos.

It turned out that in Cafayate each winery did wine tours at set times and that you needed to wait until the set time before you could do anything.  We said that we weren’t bothered about the tour but would just do the tasting.  The girl that we were speaking to said fine and so for our 10 pesos we got to try two wines.

The red was a Malbec which is the main wine produced in Cafayate, and today is the most widely planted red grape variety in the country, and the white was Torrontes.  

The girl said that Argentine Malbec is characterized by its deep color and intense fruity flavors with a velvety texture.  Although I can’t claim to have any sort of pallet when it comes to red wine it was very very nice.  The white wine on the other hand was very sweet, think Chardonnay with an extra couple of teaspoons of sugar !!!! After drinking our couple of glasses the girl said that we could go for a look around the winery without having to wait for the tour. 

The bodega was set in the middle of a vineyard and although it was very much the same as the vineyards that I had visited in New Zealand

There was one real exception and that was the giant cacti that grew among the vines

It was then time to head for our second tasting and across the road was Bodega El Esteco and when we spoke to the security guard he said that a tasting and tour was 125 pesos but the next one was not until 2.30pm.  As that was over an hour away we decided to skip it and the security guard pointed us in the direction of Bodega Piattella which was about 3km away up a gravel road.

This vineyard definitely won the prize for the most picturesque place of the day as it was set up at the top of the valley with stunning views of the mountains.

Again Malbec seemed to be the grape of choice and for as far as we could see succulent purple grapes hanging from the vines ready to be picked

The actual bodega was in the middle of the vines and was part distillery, part shop and part restaurant.

When we inquired about the wine tasting there were two different prices – 100 pesos for 6 ‘normal’ wines or 150 pesos for 6 ‘aged’ wines.  The only problem was that the wine tasting came at the end of the next tour which wasn’t due to start for another 30 minutes.

Instead, we decided to head to the restaurant and buy a bottle of wine.

It was such a nice setting that we decided to have a late lunch and spent the next couple of hours drinking fine wine and enjoying great food.  This cycling lark is great on days like this !!!!!

As it was getting towards 4pm we decided to cycle back to Cafayate and checkout the bodega’s on the eastern side of town, and ended up at Bodega Domingo

For 70 pesos we got to taste two reds and two whites and were even given a plate of cheese.  Included in the price was a tour of the winery bit we skipped that and went straight for the degustation as time was ticking on.

Our next stop should have been Bodega Etchart

However, it was gone 6pm when we got there and it was shut.  So was the next one we tried so we decided to call it a day and headed back to town.

JD was leaving in the morning to continue his cycle south and needed to do a few jobs so we decided to meet up at 9.30pm to get some food and a have a final couple of beers.  

On our way for food we met our Argentinian hitchhiker/homeless person and said that we would meet him at 11pm in the bar on the plaza that we had been drinking at the night before.

Thankfully, the night never turned into another 4am shindig and I was home by 1am after polishing off another few litres of wine and a couple of beers. 

The next day JD headed south and I stayed in town for 1 more day so that I could a – detox and b – head to the municipal swimming pool for a spot of doing nothing for the day.  The pool cost 40 peso and was about 70m in length

This was the first time that I had been for a proper swim since leaving Asia and it  felt good to get in a few lengths. 

In the afternoon the two Argentinian cyclists that I had first met talking to JD two days before turned up at the pool and so I had company for the afternoon and people that I could practice my Spanish on which was great.

The afternoons free entertainment was a Zumba class by the edge of the pool that was open to all and was great fun although the rhythm of the locals put me to shame !!!

There was even an open beach volleyball completion for those who wanted a bit more of a workout

Going to the swimming pool in Argentina seemed to be more of a social occasion than a work out as it turned out that many Argentinians don’t swim very well and as I was the only person who seemed to be doing lengths a few people asked for a spot of coaching with their technique which was fun.

At about 5pm I headed back into town for a look around as so far all I had seen of it was the wineries and a few bars and restaurants.  As you might expect Cafayate was a beautiful little colonial town.

This leg of my cycle had provided me with a great few days of cycling through ‘lowland’ river valleys, except for the bit with the bull, before enjoying some great company, food and wine in the town of Cafayate. 

In the morning, I would be leaving and continuing south towards the next wine region of San Juan / Mendoza which lay about 900 km south.  The road that would take me there was Ruta 40, which is the Argentinian version of Route 66 in the USA, and runs from the Bolivian border in the north of the country over 5000 km to the southern city of Rio Gallegos.  

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Time for wine, Cafayate – Argentina
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One thought on “Time for wine, Cafayate – Argentina

  • February 21, 2017 at 3:53 pm
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    Hey Stuart, completely entertaining stuff. As planned, I got my TR in Chile 2 weeks ago all as part of getting naturalised and retiring there after my kids finish school (5 years or so). I am taking note of things to do and this wine country (so similar to the Stellenbosch winelands in South Africa) are high on my list. All good stuff!!

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