Coming to an end...

So today we bought our tickets to return to Buenos Aires. The trip is slowly winding down. It is hard to believe that we are about to end this long vacation to return to a new version of our former lives. Well, we still have a few weeks left before we leave from Buenos Aires to go back to the states, but still, it just won't be the same for along time!

Right now we are in Salta. We met up with an English couple that we had met in El Bolson, and met up with again in Bariloche. The 6 of us rented a 4 door Gol, and have done three day trips out of Salta. The first day we hit the wineries and the beautiful national park in Cafayate. The sites were amazing. I was most impressed by the Devil's Throat and the Frog formations. Really impressive! We then hit two wineries, Etchart, and Domingo Hermanos. Etchart was great, we got to see the whole process from picking the grapes to bottling the wine. Domingo Hermanos was okay, but we found out that they had a goat farm as well, and provided a cheese tour. We headed to the other side of town, and ate some yummy cheese, and learned a lot about cheese making, and goat raising. From there we had the notorious wine ice cream (well, more like a wine sorbet). It was delicious, and the owner was a very sweet woman.

The next day we went off to another small town with all white houses. We saw huge fields of peppers, tomatoes, and chili peppers being naturally sun dried. We drove up these huge mountains, only to arrive to a cloud at 3348 meters. We continued on to see a huge landscape of enormous cactuses amongst beautiful red mountains. We had lunch in the town, and saw an archelogogy museum, which contained a lot of Native Indian works. The trip home was truly an adventure. We took the same cloud route, although now, the clouds had thickened and dropped to nearly the bottom of the valley. Tasha drove at about 30 kph, until we reached a point in which she could see more than a meter in front of her.

The final day we drove north of Jujuy to another small town, with the seven colored mountain. Every day, the mountains looked completely different, and provided new scenery. The variations were near miraculous for such a small area. This trip provided the most colorful. We ate lunch, and headed out to see the mountains. The colors, and mud formations were breathtaking. The small artesenal market was kind of a let down, because once again, there were native clad people, selling things they had not made. Every vendor had the same as his neighbor, and although the view of the market with all the colors was nice, it was a let down.

Today, we washed clothes, had lunch, and walked to the center plaza. Salta is a beautiful city. Very comprable to Puerto Madryn in its cleanliness and unique architechture. Last night we ate at the hostel, and enjoyed a glass of wine with the owner. She is quite a woman. One of those people who are very humble, but have amazingly accurate views on life. The conversation has provided me with some insight to how we will reform our lives when we get back to the US. She definitely provided a good end to the trip, and a message that I needed to hear.

So that's it.... maybe with time, I will update this with some more pics, and more detailed tales of our adventure... but for now... that's all she wrote!