Well, dear reader. About a billion years ago I was telling you about the first half of our trip to Cafayate and I’m finally getting round to filling you in on the second half.
We’d been there for a week before the hoards joined us!
Okay, so I’m exaggerating here. There were actually only 4 more people who came to join, but it feels like a significantly higher number when you go from 6 people – 10. So the original crew was yours truly, Nolz, Javier, Monica, Cristian & Luci. Then joining us came: Billy, Vivi, Cami & Facu. Billy & Vivi are Luci’s ‘rents, Cami is her sister and Facu is Cami’s boyfriend.
Our second half of the holiday was equally as jam-packed as the first! I’m a little hazy on the order of when we did things since it was over a month ago now but I’ll do my best.
One of the first things we did all together was having luncheon at the Piatelli hotel and vineyard. Pretty fancy place there I might say! And felt right that at said snazzy place, we tried some of the vino. Cafayate is filled with vineyards as the climate is so good for the grapes so the wine was pretty decent I won’t lie. I still feel incredibly sophisticated and adulty drinking red wine!
After a delicious lunch and the obligatory photo session, we split off and us youth went off to the dunes in Cafayate. It was amazing! I’ve never been to dunes that aren’t by the sea and are surrounded by mountains. Again, really beautiful!
The next day we went to the museum in Cafayate. Yawn, right? Well, actually no! Alarmingly, I found it rather fun! (I say alarmingly because I have always found museums, cathedrals, castles etc a right bore, but it seems I’m becoming a little more lenient on them these days). After being smuggled in as an Argentinian (foreigners have to pay 50 pesos more), we made our way round and I actually remember some of the facts! Out of the 365 days of the year, 340 of them are sunny in Cafayate! Was rather glad to have gone to Cafayate since whilst we were away Salta was experiencing torrential rain basically every day, so managed to avoid a lot of the rain! Another fun fact I learnt was to do with the coloured glass of wine bottles. Red wine should really be in green glass bottles. Something to do with UV rays I think. Can’t quite remember the details of that one- you’d have to ask Nolz if you wanted to know with any degree of accuracy hahaha. But anyways, enjoyed wandering around the museum and reading the odd bit or bob!
The following day we had lunch out at the clubhouse and following that we went trekking out into the wild to see some waterfalls. Now, I did this trek 6 years ago when I was here on my gap year (shout out to Team Argentina) and I remember it being absolutely terrifying and incredibly dangerous the first time around. For some reason, it didn’t occur to me to be alarmed or even the slightest bit worried about this until I found myself, once again, scaling the rockface with absolutely nothing of security- no helmets, nothing to keep us attached to the rock, just a guide who would regularly give us a hand and whizz us off a rock or receive us at the other end. On this particular death-defying trip, I didn’t get so stuck as last time, but it was a struggle to get round and I had to step on him in order to make it! And after all that, the waterfall wasn’t even that spectacular! After three, we called it quits and decided to go back to the adults who, thankfully, had decided they’d stop after the second one. I vow to you now, dear reader, that I shall never do that one again! You must remind me of this fact because it was really rather terrifying. Thankfully we were all okay but it doesn’t bear thinking about if anyone had fallen…
Once we were safely out of danger, we popped into town and, to celebrate our survival, promptly ordered some burgers which were, spectacular. Possibly even more so than the third waterfall that we risked our lives to see!
On the Friday we had a pool day at a pool in town, kinda like a lido. This was really fun! And surprisingly not too full of people. We spent the day sunbathing and hanging around in the pool. Facu hired one of the pool doughnut inflatable things and, to the amusement of all in the pool, we spent rather a large amount of time trying to get four people to stand up on the inflatable doughnut at the same time. It was really fun but really hard to do!! And made my legs feel rather like jelly after a while.
That evening us youth went off out to play padel again- the sport I mentioned in my last blog post which is a bit like squash/tennis. Nolz and I lost every game if I recall rightly! But in each game we did manage to get a set or two which was an improvement! And surprisingly, despite losing and not being by nature a sporty lass, I enjoyed it and would like to get more into padel!
The next day was the day to leave. However! Since Cafayate goes past Cabra Corral, we went via this lake and went wakeboarding. And I could remember how to do it-hurrah! Each time we go I get a little step better haha and I could do it for a coupla mins!
And there we have it, there endeth our holidays in Cafayate!
Nadia's Adventures 