Wine Country of Valles Calchaquies

30th Nov Cachi
A planned rest day in Cachi today. A leisurely rise, breakfast and coffee. After waiting out the rain from the passing thunderstorm we went for a wander up to the cemetery on the hill over looking the town. Said to be a good view point. We´d seen so much amazing scenery lately that although the view was lovely it just didm´t quite compare to the high Andes pass we´d just cycled through. What did trump it (certainly for Gareth, who said that it was like a dream come true) was out first sighting of a pair of Andean Condors. Huge huge birds, cicrling on thermals over the valley. Amazing!

1st Dec, Cachi to Molinos (30.8M), 2nd Dec, Molinos to Angastaco (28M), 3rd Dec, Angastaco to Cafayate (48.7M)
For the next 3 days we cycled down the Valles Calchaquies. A beautiful valley, which got better as the days progressed. All dirt track except for the final 25km into Cafayate. We passed through many small villages and camped in the municipal campgrounds at a couple of them.












Despite generally following the river valley downstream, the road wasn´t always in the downhill direction and there were certainly a few curses from me as we ascended bumpy dirt track roads which in my head shouldn´t be there as surely we were cycling downstream! The up-side of the uphills were the descents. I had one notible one, probably captured on video by the watching tourist at the bottom of it. I overtook Gareth, got some good speed up and then hit sand! Quite a lot of teeth gritting and swaying later I arrived in one piece next to the waiting tourist. It felt more like skiing than cycling and if I´d been on skis I´m sure I´d have been looking back at a lovely set of tracks, but not quite the line you want to take on a bike!
Cycling more sedately onwards, we continued through beautiful wind sculptured valleys. The soft sedementary sandstone and winds creating some really beautiful scenery.










At San Carlos, as the dirt track of the last 8 days became tarmac we stopped for an celebratory ice-cream amd then continued happily and smoothly onward to Cafayate. Naughtily we then stopped for our second icecream in 2 hours, these ones were special however as they were made from wine, the white wine grape ´torrontes´and the red wine grape, ´cabernet´ ...umm...yummy.