ARGENTINA, The North West, Thursday 6th September (see entry below for Buenos Aires)

Destination selected we set off for our first stop: Rosario. Rossario is the second largest city in Argentina and famous for being the birth place of Che Guevara. It is a smaller version of Buenos Aires but also has the nice relaxed feel of being a student town. We arrived in time for lunch and strolled along the banks of the Rio Parana, lined with lounging students, enjoying the notably warmer temperature. We idled around a few sights in the late afternoon sunshine, through pretty plazas and down streets heaving with young people in outside bars winding down at the end of the week. As instructed by our guidebooks we ate river fish for dinner and sampled a touch of the famous night life before retiring. We had a long way to go still.
The following day we were back on a bus to Cordoba. The landscape continued to be vast and flat, its hugeness rendering the odd tree dotted about as insignificant as a matchstick in the massive brown expanses of empty space. Every now and then a farm would appear but aside from that the emptiness was eerie.

In 2006 Cordoba was named Cultural Capital of the Americas. Quite a claim. We both promptly fell in love with the place and were disappointed to discover that (all geared up for a Saturday night out in another famously fun town) everything was closing at 12 that night due to the regional elections taking place there following day. Humph.
Oh well, back to English Time then. I had grown rather used to the ´drinks at 9, dinner not before 10´ way of life. We sauntered out to see what kind of life we could find before 12 and stumbled across a beautiful little restaurant to have a delicious dinner in before settling ourselves in a lively outside bar. Were soon adopted by a group containing 3 Argentineans, 1 Swede and an English guy, all of whom equally unwilling to adhere to the suggested curfew so we went and had a mini fiesta in one of their flats.
We spent a couple of days exploring the little streets, plazas and attempted to visit their abundant and very beautiful churches only always finding them shut. We went out with the Brit and the Swede, an unlikely but very amusing duo, to an incredible steak house where the fillets came the size of our heads and cut like butter. Wow. We had a lovely evening laughing at our double-act entertainment after which Posy (not feeling so good) had an early night and I went bowling. As you do.

After another day of cafe crawling we took a obscenely luxurious night bus to Tucuman. Our plan was to head up to Cafeyate in the heart of the wine region, surrounded by dramatic, rocky landscape, perhaps with a waterfall or two...
Stupidly it had not occurred to either of us to check the time of our connecting bus from Tucuman and were told, as we tumbled off the bus at 6.30am, that the bus to Cafeyate had just left and the next was not until 2.00pm, getting in at 8.30pm. Damn.
Still, not to be discouraged, we took the opportunity for more chatting and 7 hours passed surprisingly fast.
It was the bus ride, however, that completely salvaged our spirits. After the endless stretches of impossibly straight roads it was exhilarating to suddenly be on hair-pin-bend roads that twisted up into the mountains, higher and higher between steep, scrubby hillsides, dripping with with bizarre trees dangling foliage like chandeliers, over-hanging deep ravines in which wound narrow, low rivers. Then we emerged into wide yellow-brown valleys dotted with distant farms and settlements, enclosed by barren, reddish mountains. Now this is Argentina. We both felt that we had finally left Spain behind and entered something far older. The complexions of our fellow passengers darkened and we were surrounded by more and more indigenous faces, our own fairness growing increasingly incongruous.
At 8.30pm and by now deep in the middle of what seemed to be no where we came to Cafeyate, a welcome oasis from the endless blackness on either side of the narrow road. A friendly girl from our hostel greeted us at the little bus station and led us through neat, well-lit streets to our digs and checked us into a beautiful room complete with 2 beds, onsuite and a balcony. We bot decied that it might be an idea if we came to a standstill for a day or two, having travelled for 22 hours by this point.
After a much needed sleep we awoke to bright, hot sunshine, blue skies and the sould of bustle from the street below. The weather had become steadily warmer on our jouney north and by now I was delighted to be back in linin trousers, flip flops and vest tops once again. We wandered around the main plaza for a late breakfast and set out to explore.
Once again Spanish influence was everywhere in the pretty, ordered streets and tidy little plaza, overlooked by a freshly painted church and lined with little umbrelled cafes. Souvenier shops sell alpaca gloves, scarves and ponchos, unthinkable in this heat, and Argentinean tourists flock by the bus load on day trips from Salta, streaming into Bodegas and emmerging laden with wine boxes. Posy and I hunted out a Bodega just outside of town, the oldest, and managed to get some wine tasting in between the bus loads.
In the evening we made our way, with chilled wine and goats cheese, out of town, past simple, sturdy little bungalows and children skipping on the sidewalk, up a little hill to watch the setting sun cast its pinky light on the surrounding mountains and felt extremely smug to have found ourselves somewhere so beautiful.
In the next day or two (no rush) we will head up to Salta. But in the mean time we have some hard core lounging, a little more wine sipping and some exploring to do. What lucky girls we are...