It´s not our fault. We´re not putting on weight, Argentina´s putting weight on us.

Glad we got that cleared up. Hi All, apologies as ever for the delay between blogs but since we last wrote and you (hopefully) read, we´ve been galivanting about Argentina by all means possible. There´s been a road trip, cycling and flying and a decent amount of walking, although perhaps not quite enough to counter-act the other key feature of our latest journey, food. We tried clapping and jumping off the calories at Boca Juniors match, but frankly couldn´t really keep up, so went home for pizza and beer instead. But seriously, it´s not our fault.

Anyway, last time I´d just been buried under / by a steak in Salta, in the very north west of the country. Could I finish it now? Hmm, I´m probably better prepared but I´m still not sure - I´ve still got a couple of weeks of intensive training though, so fear not.

So, we had a few days in Salta, which was lovely. We didn´t necessarily do much; it was too ruddy hot but it did serve as a good induction to the Argentine way of life. Breakfast is a brief but calorific affair of medialunas, or croissants if you will, and dulce de leche, or caramel. Health-tastic. You then stroll to lunch anytime between midday and 3, for at least three courses - you´re going to need something to hold you in place for your siesta. Then you may as well nap until later - dinner doesn´t start until ten at the earliest, but when it does, it starts in earnest - see previous blog. What do you eat for lunch or dinner? Well, beef obviously. And salt. Fries, mash, salad or anything else are all listed as ´garnish´. And that´s what it is, a side show in the cow parade.

Anything other than food? Well, Salta has a very European feel, lots of pavement cafes, some elegant architecture, plenty of leafy park to wander through etc. Park wandering isn´t always the tasteful activity it sounds mind. We were unsure whether it was strong Catholic values, living with parents until a ripe age or maybe just something in the water, but the parks are covered in younger couples well, necking. And not just some light hand holding either. Don´t get me wrong, it wasn´t full on graphic (the newspaper stands have that covered with their less than subtle product placement) but you couldn´t help the thought of ´get a room´ crossing you mind once or thrice.

Salta ticked off, we needed to head south. Our options were a 20 hour bus journey down a motorway, or the scenic route through wine country. So with that we rented a car, tanked our new friend ´Pablo´ and struck out into the countryside.

First stop was Cafayate, which is wine country proper and the only place in the world they grow the Torrentes grape. I won´t go on about it, but try some, it´s fruity and amazing. Better yet, hunt out a bottle of any wine by Pietro Marini, be it malbec or torrentes, it´s phenomenal. Not that I was in anyway swayed, sitting high in the Andean foothills, surveying hectare after hectare of vineyard below me whilst a gentle breeze took the edge of the heat you understand. But the scenery is good - the way into Cafayate is through the Quebrada de Cafayate which is very dry valley of red earth punctuated with some crazy rock formations either side of the road. Would have probably been worth getting a geography textbook out, but the hostel pool (a necessity, not a luxury) seemed more inviting.

Vineyards big (the guys who do Michael Torino if you see it about) and small (one guy had retired from that big vineyard to set up his own, not because he felt he could do it better, more for his & mates´ ease of consumption. They press everything by hand and always run out before next year´s harvest.) beckoned,dotted all round town. Which worked up an appetite to while away the evening in the main plaza, just watching the world go by really.

Nice as that was, Pablo was keen to get back on the road, so we headed out through all the vineyards on the other side of town (lucky we didn´t spot those before). The scenery continued to impress, tracking the Andes as they and we wound our way south towards the Quilmes ruins, talked up heavily in the guidebook. I´ll be honest, it´s no Machu Picchu. More a bunch of not particularly well explained low dry stone walls on a hill. Yes the setting was pretty, but it was much the same view as we´d had supping a cool white in the shade a day or two before. Except nothing about the ruins was cool, it must have been a healthy 40ish and shade was not in abundant supply. Everyone was keen to stress the Spanish hadn´t been able to overrun this place very easily. If they´d had any sense they wouldn´t have bothered. We pretty quickly changed our mind and high tailed it back to the motor.

Pablo quickly changed his mind about all this driving lark when the road suddenly ran out and we had to do a spot of cross country up and halfway back down a mountain, but with some light coaxing we were soon in Tafi de Valle - sadly not, as I was imagining one of the pockets of Welsh speakers left in Argentina, but nevertheless a very pleasant village by a lake up in the mountains. And that was key because we stopped sweating for the first time in a few days - we even wore trousers to dinner, no less. Tafi didn´t overwhelm with activities, but no matter, eating and reading on the terrace enjoying the view and sun didn´t seem too much of a hardship. Finishing a full Argentine parrilla on the other hand was tougher. We´d learnt by this stage to order for at least one person less than was sitting at the table, but our individual BBQ was, and there´s no getting away from it, a massive pile of animal. I say animal rather than meat, where given our patchy Spanish we hadn´t realised just how much of the cow we were ordering. Steak, sausage, kidney, black pudding - all fine. Intestines and some other mystery body parts, not so much. Still, when in Rome.

Back on the road the next day, Pablo riding slightly lower on his suspension again, we headed for La Rioja. The drive was spectacular in places, vast planes of desert stretching out as far as you could see. As did the road, but the heat haze still made passing the odd car you saw every hour or so trickier than you´d imagine. Arriving in town, our key activities were to stock Pablo´s CD player with some questionably sourced music and eat. And ride plastic rokcing horses outside of ice cream parlours. I´ll let Claire decide who sees the photos.

If you´re wondering what an abundance of ice cream parlours (or indeed the pizza I mentioned earlier) are doing in Argentina by the way, it´s very simple - the population´s largely descendend from Italian immigrants... suddenly all falls into place, no? We´re not complaining.

Anyway, next day was the final big drive. We skipped the Valley of the Moon national park where it didn´t quite look up the salt flats and pointed Pablo Mendoza-wards. And drove. And then drove some more. And finally drove a little bit more, very slowly. You see we´d got slightly over-ambitious with Pablo´s range on one tank of fuel. And the Argentinian countryside isn´t over-populated with well, much really, but especially not petrol stations. So as the needle swung downwards, our in-car temperture mirrored its journey upwards; air con was the first to go. Then the speed went... 80km/h in 5th, coasting down even the slightest of downhills was my guess at our most efficient cruising speed (was trying to think back to our Guatemalan lessons... although on reflection that was 180km/h and then coast uphill). Then, just as we were starting to think what luggage wasn´t entirely necessary, we saw a petrol station. Well, it looked like a petrol station, but of course it only sold natural gas. Now I´m all for saving the planet, but my green credentials were starting to ebb. Still, and it´s clearly a question they get a lot (I expect in equally bad Spanish), there was a petrol station 8km down the road - easy we could frankly walk that after the stress of ther previous 57km running on the smell of it. Disaster averted, it was onto Mendoza.

Land of endless wineries in a postcard setting right? Nearly. There are a lot of wineries and the countryside is very pretty, but you do end up cycling down some slightly hair-raising main roads to get between them... it made the South Circular on a Monday morning seem a bit tame. For my money, you´re better off in Cafayate - it feels a lot less like you´re being processed through the tourist machine and it´s more picturesque; Mendoza´s prettiest vineyards are actually a lot closer to San Juan, a fair old way up the road. Having said all of which, the food and the vino are ruddy good - it´s like choosing between a T-bone and a rib-eye, you´re not going to get a bad result either way.

The city too is very pleasant, being filled with broad tree-lined avenues. And lots of restaurants, some of which even have more than one beer on tap. I know it heathen to drink the hop in a grape stronghold, but it all added to the feeling of being back in a ´proper´ city; a rather novel experience having been in the sticks and smaller towns for so long. From the small things (toilet seats which seem extinct in Bolivia for example) to the more general ambience of the place, Mendoza felt like a treat, like we were visiting the big city for the first time. Of course some things didn´t change; 37C and humid meant the hostel pool was again essential. And the locals still insisted on lining our bellies with half a cow. Not that we were whinging you understand, but I must stress again, it´s not our fault.

And with that, we finished up the first leg of our Argentinan adventure, next stop, Buenos Aires... but I´ll save your eyes and start a new blog for that.