cough--aye--jhot--aye

Cafeyate. What a sweet place to visit. Salta is a great town to visit for excursions to the mountains and as way to get to Cafeyate. Kyle and I took off for this little mountain town of 2000 on Sunday afternoon on a bus. It traveled through a gorgeous canyon and many little small towns. However, I felt like absolute junk from the crazy bus driver and heard reports of the canyon beauty. We FINALLY made it there after a few hours of torture and realized the pain was worth it. Our hostel (Rusty-K Hostel) was very comfortable with our private room outside off a courtyard that would be pleasant if it wasn´t so cold. (Everyone said the NW would be warmer. Why was there frost on the tables oustide in the morning?) That night we ate at a place called El Patio and sat next to the wood burning stove for warmth. Kyle tried milanesa and I had their homemade pasta. Yum. After dinner the live music started. One guy was AMAZING while the others were okay.

The next day we rented bikes to see two waterfalls close to town. We rode about 6 km uphill on a really rough rode to find the trailhead. People told us over and over to `follow the river` and ´we´ll find the waterfalls. Apparently, we followed the wrong trail and ended up in the wrong gulley. As we walked along feeling confused, but we knew where we were, a person named Sandoval came out of his house to chat with us. He might as well have been speaking Russian for all we could understand. It was a backwoods, shortned, slang Spanish. Long story short...he could tell we couldn´t understand his directions to find the falls so he led us there with his cute little dog. It´s tough to tell how old he was because he was quite sun drenched and had 4 teeth. Anyways, he asked us what time it was before we started up a hill. We told him 1:30 and he took off up the hill. We FLEW to the waterfalls...up the hill...down the hill...over rocks...around boulders...to the falls. He asked what time it was when we reached the falls and he was quite pleased. Once we soaked up the sights at the falls he led us back to our orignal, wrong, trail. It was an awesome experience to watch this man navigate his way around his home, the desert area of Cafeyate. We gave him 10 pesos for his time and sweet effort and he gave me plenty of kisses on the cheek.

We stopped at many pretty places around town that day on our bikes and had an early dinner. We could have stayed in this town for a week, no problem.

This town had plenty of local good food and quite the party the next day. It was the day of San Juan (I think) and all the school children were in the square showing off their San Juan knowledge in dance, picture, and speech. Too bad we still stink at Spanish.

We are unable to post pictures AGAIN because this computer is freaking me out. I don´t want to lose all of our pictures. Arg!