Estancia Las Tacanas Tafi del Valle

Tafi is a small village on a plateau 2,300m above sea level. The pace to life is even slower than the rest of Argentina if that is possible. The scenery is stunning, there are mountain peaks everywhere you look and a huge lake beneath us. We headed for the local Cerro (mountain) on the first day to look over the village. You can start to feel the altitude up ...

... avant que l'on ai fini mais la mère était contente car comme cela elle a pu voir comment on faisait. J'ai bien aimé cet échange interculturel et je crois que cela démontre aussi l'unité de notre famille dans la façon dont on s'est organisé. On a bu l'apéro. Eux boivent le champagne exclusivement au dessert mais là on l'a bu toute suite ! C'était très sympa. Il sont vraiment gentils. Nous sommes rentrés vers 23H30 our ne pas trop s'incruster car ils bossent demain.

The scenery after Tafi was completely different. We had climbed up one side of a mountain range the day before and the contrast on the other side was astounding. Tafi was a quiet little village nestled in the clouds as we made our way out early the next morning. Before long the temperature had dropped to -2 deg C and we were surrounded by a winter wonderland. The foliage here was mostly low tufts of grass but the amazing thing was that everything was completely ...

I managed to get to Tucumán with little fuss. After arriving in Cordoba I found a connecting bus to Tucumán that left within an hour of my arrival. That was just enough time to let my friend Tristan (whom I met in Buenos Aires... haven´t written that blogs yet either...) know when I was arriving and I was off again. Off though green pom-pom shrubs (where I saw a wild deer) then vast fields of green maize and to be honest, it was actually quite nice to not have ...

... 2pm bus directly to San Miguel del Tucuman, rather than taking a bus to one of the hill towns mid-way and then getting another bus on to Tucuman.

We were sad to leave and ESPECIALLY sad to wave goodbye to the vineyards!



The journey to Tucuman was stunning, we wound our way through some lush green valleys, over rivers and past some ...

... empanadas, our current favourite food. Only, these empanadas were no empanadas, they had an amazing ability to make Rick sick, and not me. So while poor Rick enjoyed the confines of the bedroom the next day, I went out to see the ruins at Quilmes. There were an indigenous people called Diaguita who inhabited the valley long before even the Incas arrived, and they had a settlement at Quilmes.

... views of the lake and mountains beyond. Around sunset, fog rolled in, and the views disappeared. We retreated into our cozy camper for supper and we are alone with nature; the sounds of the big city gone, and nothing but wind in the pines to accompany our evening.

Dara - When we tell other travelers that we stayed four days in Tafi they say "what did you do for all that time!!" Okay, so Tafi is rather small - but, if I do say so myself, we´ve become experts on finding things to do in the most unlikely places. Day 1. There´s really good cheese here. We know because we ate a lot of it. Day 2. Went on a day long trek ...

This whole blog has always been from a first person perspective...mine of course. Though the name of this travelogue is ¨Adventure´s with Taso!¨. I figured it was only fare to include something from Taso from the first hand. So here is Taso´s explanation of the bus ride to get to Tucuman: It was a long and painful journey here. We left Arequipa on Friday, Jan. 25. We took a bus down to Tacna, which is the recommended route. Once arriving in Tacna, we ...

drove through the windiest roads yet through amazingly varied landscape (flat plains to lush mountainous jungle to dry desert valley) to get to this cute little town..... (if you are gonna come here sal be warned!!! had to recover from travel sickness for half a day). place we were staying had a couple of resident dogs...... rubio and moreno..... took them for a walk to the top of a hill for amazing views the first day. another walk to nearby town el ...