Disculpe

No wi-fi in guest-house, so will fill in posts later (am currently standing on street corner at 2am watching carnival drunkeness and piggy-backing wi-fi from cafe). Heading to border tomorrow and hopefully into Bolivia. Will endeavour to find signal somewhere, if only to find outcome if Arsenal v Man Utd. Come on you Gooners!

Afternoon rain

Tilcara carnival

By pure chance we arrived in Tilcara on Carnival weekend. Being only a small town, carnival here is quite simple: a small parade of horseback gauchos and children in traditional costumes, then three days of drinking and dancing. The boys got to join in the fun and ran around with the local children spraying everyone with foam - and Annie in particular. Sadly I didn't get any pics of her on the phone, but imagine a merangue wearing sunglasses and you get the idea.

Cactus country

Tilcara is a small town near the border with Bolivia (I say near, but it's still another 4 hours away - Argentina IS huge). It's ringed by cactus covered mountains and full of single story adobe houses built with bricks of mud and straw, and roofs of cactus wood covered in clay. This is real cowboy country folks. Yee ha!
We all instantly fell in love with the town and it's laid back vibe, staying a few days longer than planned to take in the carnival and some mountain walks, including the geologically famous 'mountain of seven colours' in nearby Purmamarca. 
Overlooking Tilcara is the hilltop site of an important pre-Spanish settlement, each building carefully reconstructed and open to explore, and a botanical garden consisting only of cacti, which was much more interesting than it sounds. And I got to try my first llama steak (not dissimilar to pork). 
Surprisingly our guidebook didn't say much about Tilcara, other than it was a pretty place to stopover - but it's been one of our favourite stops yet. Maybe the fact it wasn't over-run with other Gringo's added to the sense of 'discovery'.

Phew!

Just heard the news about the tourists stranded at Macchu Picchu after the floods in that area, and think we got off lightly!

La Difunta Correa

La Difunta Correa is a semi-mythical folk heroine who has been adopted by travellers as a patron saint, even though the Catholic Church hasn't recognised her. The story goes that she was following her husband who was fighting the Spanish for Argentinian independence, and died of thirst crossing the desert. Several days later her body was found by passing gauchos, her baby son still alive and suckling from her corpse's breast. Roadside shrines are built and honoured by truckers and other travellers, who leave bottles of water as offerings to quench her eternal thirst in return for a safe journey. Maybe we should've left some too...

Before and After

We hired a car to drive 3 hours into nearby Cafayete wine country, passing through a Martian landscape of melted wax like rock formations and through a steep redstone canyon valley. As we approached Cafayete town we could see rain clouds up high in the mountains beyond, and regretted not packing any coats. But the rain held off all afternoon, while we sampled wine sorbet ice-cream and toured the oldest bodega in the town.
As we set off back to Salta, several bottles of Torrentes richer (on board, not consumed) the heaven's opened. Rising higher in the canyon, the rain turned to a lashing thunderstorm, and waterfalls started appearing in the rocks around us. Our initial excitement turned to frustration when progress was halted by a torrential red river across the road, and huge mudslides which had collapsed around several cars ahead. We sat it out for a couple of hours, before turning back to Cafayete as a precaution - our bags were 160km away and we had no warm clothes.
By 10pm the road was pronounced clear by the Policia, so we decided to risk it, rather than stay over. After a slow and sometimes scary journey through still flooded roads, slipping over piles of compacted (but not exactly cleared) mud and avoiding fallen rocks, we finally made it back to Salta at 2am - car filthy, all tired - but glad of the adventure.