Cachi – Trouspinet travels

Wow, what a journey that was! Argentina jumps effortlessly into the list of my top 5 destinations of all time, and for scenery, it would be No. 1. However, this trip required lots of planning, and I also learnt a lot as I was travelling. In this post I list my personal highlights and give some tips for planning (valid as of November 2022).

TROUSPINET’S HIGHLIGHTS

To help you plan your trip, here is my ranking of the places I visited on this trip:

Quebrada de Humahuaca (northwest Argentina)
Perito Moreno Glacier, Patagonia
Foz Iguazu
Mount Fitzroy, Patagonia
Torres del Paine, Chilean Patagonia
The drive from Mendoza to Aconcagua
The drive from Salta to Cachi
Puerto Varas and the Chilean Lake District
Buenos Aires
Mendoza’s vineyards
Bariloche and the Argentine Lake District
Salta

I put Bariloche and Salta bottom because there are places in Europe a bit like them, whilst the other places are unique in the world. But I really enjoyed even my lower-ranked locations on this trip – I simply didn’t have a single bad travelling day.

TROUSPINET’S TOP TIPS

Be Selective – Distances are huge, as is the choice of places to visit.

Unless you have the time (and endurance) for 12-36 hour bus rides, you will need to fly if you want to see many of the country’s highlights. I went for nearly one month, usually flew between destinations, but still did not have time to see everything I wanted to. After much thought, I regretfully excluded Ushuaia and some of the national parks from my list. You will also have to make some hard choices.

Check which Internal Flights operate

The main flight operators in Argentina are Aerolineas Argentinas, JetSmart and FlyBondi. Argentine airlines have a bad reputation for reliability and punctuality, but I had no major delays in any of my seven internal flights.

Check when flights go direct from one regional destination to another (eg Salta to Mendoza), without having to go back to Buenos Aires and out again. These flights will save you a lot of time and money, but they don’t operate every day. The popular and very convenient Bariloche-El Calafate flight only operates in the peak tourist season – late November to February. If you do have to fly back to Buenos Aires, remember it has two airports – the very convenient Aeroparque Newberry (AEP) located in the city, and Ezeiza (EZE), which is a long way out of town. Book ahead for anything In, To or From Patagonia over November – February. The region is hugely and justifiably popular in the southern summer. I went in November – not the peak season – and even then, I heard that the buses from El Calafate to Bariloche were fully booked for several days.

Accommodation – Check the Exchange Rate when you book

I used Booking.com to book hotels. You get quoted a price in US$. Once you have made a booking, contact the hotel to ask if they apply the official exchange rate if you choose to pay in pesos. Most of my hotels agreed to this; only one asked for the blue rate (so I cancelled and booked somewhere else). If you pay like this, you save 50%! More expensive hotels add 20% VAT to their bills, which can you avoid by paying with a foreign credit (but then you get the official exchange rate, so it is still better to pay with cash).

AirBnB is not recommended, because you pay in advance in your own currency. It may have been bad luck, but the one place I booked with them was of very poor quality and seemed more aimed at local tourists.

Don’t Rely too much on Guidebooks

Things change quickly in Argentina. Our guidebook claimed to have been reprinted in January 2022, but was hopelessly out of date.

Packing

Check average weather conditions and pack accordingly. Patagonia and Tierra Del Fuego are cold even in the southern summer and need very warm clothing and waterproofs. Aerolineas Argentinas (but not the other airlines) has a limit of 15kg for checked baggage, so you may also need to pack light and fully use the allowances of 8kg for carry-on baggage and 3kg for a personal item. The 15kg rule is not strictly enforced – we were usually a couple of kilos over, but the check-in staff ignored this.

Learn some (Argentine) Spanish

In touristy areas like Patagonia and parts of Buenos Aires, you can get by with English. But in most other places, few people other than hotel staff spoke a second language. If you already speak some Castilian Spanish, be aware that there are big differences in the pronunciation of “y” and “ll”, and that the second person singular “tu” is replaced by “vos” – with different verb endings. I didn’t find any good books on Argentine Spanish, but I found this website (for intermediate speakers) to be very good- https://argentalk.com

That’s all for now. I could write a lot more, but I am worried I will bore my readers. If anyone has a question, please leave a reply at the bottom of this page. Happy Travelling!

My next day was spent exploring South of Salta, driving to a village called Cachi, lost in the Andean foothills. The road followed a now familiar pattern. First lush, flat green fields with horses and other four-legged road hazards………

…then a pretty, winding river valley…..

….next a steep climb up dry mountains along a rough track with many hairpin bends.

Praying to safely negotiate the many hairpin bends seems like a good idea

Near the top of the track, I stopped to buy sausage and cheese from some local people. I had now entered the Parque Nacional de los Cardones – (translated literally as the “Cactus National Park”.), and I stopped to enjoy a short walk amidst the wild, empty hills and to eat my lunch.

The road continued and reached flat, wild plateau where the reason for the park’s name became evident – the plain was dotted with huge cacti.

In the flat landscape I could see for miles, and the open stretched away into the distance. However the park authorities imposed impossibly low speed limits on this empty road – on average 60km/h but dropping to 30km/h at the (very rare) junctions and even 20km/h on one stretch. There were also signs warning of the danger of hitting wild animals and more signs warning that removing road signs was a criminal offence (it was easy to imagine why – if a sign were to somehow disappear it would considerably reduce the driving times for the few local drivers).

You cannot be serious!! (and this is km/h, not miles/h)

At first, I found progress frustratingly slow. But after a while I got to enjoy the slow progress, as the vastness and emptiness of my surroundings soaked into my brain.

My route left the park and joined the Route National 40 – a famous road that runs the entire length of Argentina. I had joined it 4,500km from where it starts in Tierra del Fuego.

I finally arrived in Cachi five hours after I had left Salta – for a trip that Google said should have taken me three. Perhaps Google agreed with the occasional local drivers who had sped past me in the desert, ignoring the ridiculous speed limits. Cachi is by far the biggest place in the area, but turned out to be more of a village than a town. It was comprised of low rise buildings made from mud brick (“adobe”) and painted white against the sun set around a pretty central plaza. Like most of the places I had visited in Argentina so far, the Andean foothills loomed impressively in the distance.

There was not much to do. I soaked in the slow, small-town atmosphere in the central square before going to visit a local wine producer on the outskirts of town. They had a beautiful garden for wine tastings, with views over the mountains.

An exceptional setting and some sublime wine

I enjoyed a refreshing glass of their Torrentes (white) before trying some of their signature Malbec wine. The first wine was good, the second was sublime – a huge, velvety red. I abandoned my plan to visit a restaurant, bought a bottle of the red, and enjoyed it with the rest of my sausage and cheese. Wakefulness turned to sleep in a pleasant alcoholic haze.

Next Post: Mendoza

Previous Post: Salta

Tag: Cachi

Trouspinet’s Top Tips and Highlights for Argentina

Onwards to Cachi and the Parque Nacional de los Cardones