Cafayate

Today we took a tour to the village of Cafayate, around 180km away. The main attraction is not the village itself (I think there are very few Argentinean settlements that are worth visiting for their charm), but the scenery on the drive down. We were not on great form for a lot of the day - it was a lot of driving and we were kept up very late last night by a noisy group in the hostel. Anyway, the trip did provide a number of good photo opportunities.

The area is currently on the "tentative" list from UNESCO and the scenery is essentially a series of valleys and gorges along the road from Salta to Cafayate. Some of the rock formations are very impressive - layers of different coloured rocks in all directions. A geology enthusiast's dream!

This evening we went down to the bus station to find out that the crossing to Chile is closed, and unlikely to be opening any time soon (and a girl in our hostel who just arrived took a bus yesterday all the way to the border before being sent back here). So, we're onto plan B which involves going straight to Bolivia. We've booked our bus for 7am tomorrow morning, and I expect we'll spend the whole day travelling (well, "travelling" may also include waiting for a long period of time at the Bolivian immigrations). I haven't been involved in the decision-making process much, but looks like we've chosen quite a nice place to stay on our first night, which I think will we very welcome after this "interesting" hostel we've been in.