Never work with animals. Llamas in particular! My camera lens broke when I was pointing it at elephants in India; I got it fixed in Kuala Lumpur, but now it has developed the same fault again whilst I was pointing it at llamas. And just for an added bonus I was approached by a very aggressive llama farmer demanding money for photographs that I couldn't even take. But I must say that the llama farmer (who could have been calmer) was an exception. The vast majority of the people we have met have been incredibly friendly.

Salta, which is loosely our base for the week, is a very pleasant city with a grid system of roads and a main central plaza surrounded by cafes and colourful trees - all features that seem typical of Argentine towns. Here we visited the museum where they controversially have on display the preserved bodies of three children, who were sacrificed to the Inca gods on the summit of a 6300m peak around 500 years ago.

But back, for a moment to the llamas. It was on a remote and dusty road between the Salinas Grandes salt flats and the desolate ex-mining town of San Antonio de los Cobres where we saw several groups of them. It was also about this time, after three days of driving and with our first views of the High Andes to the west, that I realised this was the first time I had driven a car in over a year. What a place to be doing so - on some of the most scenic roads in South America!

San Antonio sits on the high altitude train line known as the Train to the Clouds; but the car gave us the freedom to enjoy hundreds of miles of empty roads built on ancient Incan highways through spectacular multi-coloured, cactus-ridden canyons. We drove off road across the salt flats, crossed a 4170m pass that took us within a few hours of the Bolivian and Chilean borders, and stayed in some charismatic towns in which we had some very interesting accommodation.

As well as llamas (apologies for mentioning them again), we also saw vicunas (kind of a cross between a deer and.... hmmm, a llama) and many interesting birds, including condors. I have also crossed a personal milestone. We already crossed the Tropic of Capricorn somewhere between Rio and Puerto Iguazú, but here we managed to drive back over it briefly. Having crossed the Tropic of Cancer in Rajasthan way back in January, I have barely left the tropics since. But now my journey goes south, back into a seasonal climate, and we are both looking forward to spring in Argentina.

Posted from Cafayate, October 19th, 2011.