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Thurs 21 Jan : Cafayate to Tafi del Valle
We set off south from Cafayate for the first stop at the Quilmes ruins which are than an hour from Cafayate at km 1001, and 5 km up a dirt road off Ruta 40. The Quilmes Ruins are considered to be one of the most important constructions of the pre-hispanic period of the Argentine Northwest, and are an outstanding example of the urbanization of the culture Santamariana. The ruins were discovered by ethnographer and naturalist Juan Bautista Ambrosetti at the end of 19th century and restored in 1978. The Quilmes ruins appear to be run by an Indigenous Quilmes community group, and the nice looking hotel at the site was closed: we gathered because of some sort of legal dispute over the ownership of the land.
The house bases have been reconstructed, and you get the best view of the ruins by avoiding the llamas and indians around the gate, and climbing up the fairly steep route through the "town". You can peer into the ruins of the stone houses built into the cliffs. After about half an hour you reach the end of the trail and can look down on the town, laid out before you.
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Apart from the ruins, the local cacti are particularly splendid. Some were in bloom.
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The Quilmes people were an indigenous tribe of the Diaguita group settled here. They fiercely resisted the Inca invasions of the 15th century, and continued to resist the Spaniards for 130 years, until being defeated in 1667. At its height, in the early 17th century, the Quilmes tribe numbered nearly 5,000. Spanish invaders relocated the last 2,000 survivors to a reservation ("reducción") 20 km south of Buenos Aires. This 1,500 km journey was made by foot, causing hundreds of Quilmes to die in the process. By 1810, the reservation was abandoned as a result of its having become a ghost town. The place is now the city of Quilmes. Today, there are very few descendents of the Quilmes left in the area.
From the Quilmes Ruins we carried on south to have a look at Museo Pachamama at Amaicha del Valle. It was about a 20 minute drive.
This quirky and unusual museum was built by a local artist Hector Cruz. It has two geology / anthropology rooms which are a little disappointing, and there is another room where tapestries, paintings and sculptures by Cruz are displayed which is more interesting. However it is the buildings and grounds that make this place special. There are huge statues made of different colour stone and representing divinities worshipping Pachamama, accompanied by local cardons and other cacti. The way the statues and buildings have been constructed is very well done with different colour pebbles/rocks making spectacular patterns.
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Even the loos, above right, carried on the style of the place.
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After this we continued over the mountains to Tafi. This involved crossing a spectacular pass and negotiating a 25km stretch of dirt where they had just dug up the road to "improve" it.
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Tafi del Valle is a small village in a valley surrounded by mountains and is 1,976 m above sea level. The name of the village comes from the diaguita word "Taktillakta", that means " Town with a splendid entrance" and the village is an excellent combination of mountains and rivers. The average temperature in Summer rates 26º C and in Winter rates 16ºC. It is situated in a deep depression and borders on Calchaquí mountains to the east ( Mala Mala and Tafí Mountains at 3,500 m above the sea level) , on Muñoz Hill ( 4,440 m ) to the west and to the south on Nuñorco Grande at 3,500 m above sea level.
In comparison to other towns we had passed through, Tafi seemed quite affluent, sort of "middle class". Again with a bit of difficulty we found the road out to the estancia we were booked into. It was 25km east of Tafi along a dirt road.
Our hotel was Hotel Estancia Carreras TripAdvisor and hotels own website. I suppose it was not quite what we had been expecting as an Estancia. It was not a owner run "Estancia", and appeared to get most of its turnover from attracting day trippers from Tafi to their tea shop, cheese making facility, watching the cows being milked, and seeing a few tame llamas. There was no "manager" as such in the hotel. We never did find out who was running the place.
They claimed marked walks, but when we asked for one, it was just suggested that we make for the local mountain. This we proceeded to do, though it did involve climbing barbed wire fences. As we got higher the view became excellent. That is it, below right, with the estancia in the left background below us.
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But it was only when we went to dinner that our problems really started. Chris had ordered Steak, and I had ordered Pork (we had been asked to order at 6pm, which was fair enough). But when they delivered the main courses, they were both steak. Pointing this out, resulted in them pointedly looking up the order to try and prove it our fault, and when unable to prove that, replaced my steak with pork some time later, without a murmur of an apology. By now Chris had found her steak inedible - tough and dry and really tasting like cardboard. the waiter just shrugged. When my pork arrived, I discovered it was raw in the middle - someone had obviously tried to fast forward it, with dire results. By now the waiter had disappeared into the kitchen and refused to come back out. So we just left, both main courses untouched.
A girl found us in the sitting room half an hour later and we explained the problem: she did apologise, but by then it was too late. There was no way that I was going to eat in their dining room again, but the problem was that the only alternative, driving 50km round trip on a dirt road in the dark, was not really on. We decided to leave.
This nice little fellow was walking round the grounds
The next day it was therefore Tafi back to Cafayate