Cafayate

The journey from Buenos Aires to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile is an extremely long journey and involves changing buses 4 times, so I decided to stop off at Cafayate along the way, a small town in the north of Argentina. The journey to Cafayate isn´t exactly short, taking 22 hours and exchanging buses in Tucuman. The bus journey takes you over cactus-covered mountains at dizzying heights and along jaw-dropping cliffs. It was rather scary at points! When I finally arrived in dusty Cafayate it was clearly siesta time and it reminded me of an eeire abandoned town, similar to something you would expect to see in an old western film. I later found out that siesta time in Cafayate is from 1pm to 7pm, which I would consider less as a siesta and more of a good nights sleep.

Cafayate is famous for it´s numerous vineyards that surround the little town, so it´s no surprise that the town is full of wineries. The main plaza consists of a tree-covered square surrounded by cute restaurants and small market stalls selling art, jewelry and of course, wine. After the 7 hour siesta the plaza becomes occupied by children playing football and old ladies eating Sauvingon Blanc flavoured ice-cream. The dusty streets leading to the plaza are very quiet and rather lifeless and even after siesta time the plaza is uneventful, resembling a ghost town.