The Wine Republic

Salta: Vines in the Sky

I know this is going to sound stupid, but I am going to say it anyway. What really surprised me about flying into Salta in the north west of Argentina was that the Andes mountains were visible from both sides of the plane. As a consistently disorientated person who relies on the mountain range as a point of reference in navigating Mendoza, this was a real mind blower that you could stand on flat land and have the mountains all around you. It's a lovely place to fly into.

As you arrive at the airport you may well think that you are being singled out as a tourist as the taxi drivers approach you dressed as gauchos,but actually it's more a case of being the other way around- the gauchos are pretending to be taxi drivers. Perhaps surprising in the rather homogenously westernised 21st century, but locals actually choose to still wear their gaucho get ups. It actually feels like you are in a foreign country for once.

The Road to Cafayate
The wine heartland, Cafayate, is almost 200km south of Salta city, which mightseem like a pain after a flight, or worse, a 12-hour bus journey. But do not despair – the journey there is totally worth it. Leaving the rather green Salteña landscape you pass tabacco fields and agricultural crops before moving into the desert landscape of white sands, pastel hued mountain sides and great juts of burning red rock, interspersed with tall three fingered cactus. You could be forgiven for thinking that some of these spears of rock have only just erupted from the earth's crust as they look very youthful for their 65 million years. The whole journey takes about three hours by car but there are loads of stop offs which will inevitably make you want to spend a bit longer 'en route'.