Cafayate - Tucaman - Cordoba

Spent a few days in Salta recovering from lots of drinking and steak eating. The steaks here are ridiculous. Can get a 350g steak for a couple of quid, and a bottle of good wine for about 4 quid. You can also buy a 5 litre jug of crap wine for 2 pounds.....which is nice. From Salta we got a bus to Cafayate.

Cafayte was quite a cool wee place. Big wine producing area. Not a lot to do other than visit the wineries. We're still travlling with Eva and Joe, and went with them on a free wine tour. Started at 10.30am which was dangerous. First tour was a bit crap. Second was quite good, because they gave us a lot more free samples. Drank a few glasses of wine then bought a bottle for later. I got a bit of a taste for it at this stage and ended up drinking right through. Even had one of the local delicacies - wine flavoured ice cream. Was more of a sorbet. Had one white and one red scoop. Both tasted pretty nasty, so reverted back to the litre bottles of beer which was just fine. Had goat stew for lunch here which was quite nice, although it smelled like live goats do which was a bit offputing. Jenny fed most of her goat to the dogs which then followed her about the town for the rest of the day, even into the shops and the bars. This is nothing new on our travels however. Jenny is like the pied piper for dogs. Only she doesn't lead them into the river she wants to have them stay in our room. There is always a pack of smelly, flee-bitten, limping dogs chasing us wherever we go.

We spent a couple of nights in Cafayete and then headed further south to Tucaman.

Not a lot to say about Tucaman. Not a lot to see or do. Jenny wasn't well so I went wandering about in the drizzle. Not much fun. Only stayed a night here to break up the journey to Cordoba.

Cordoba is a nice city. 2nd biggest in Argentina. Spent the last few days there. It's the second biggest city in Argentina, and a there is a big University population, so the nightlife is very good. We stayed in a pretty run down hotel. Nice enough, with TV that kind of worked, can't really complain at 3 pounds a night. The toilet was very strange though. The room itself was about the same size as the main room. It was tiled from ceiling to floor, and felt a bit like being in a gas chamber. Also to flush the toilet we had to reach into a dark cavity in the wall that was the systern and pull a lever. All a bit reminiscent of Bolivia. We again met up with Evan and Joe here. Eva went to school near here so we went out with a few of her school friends for a night out. Got introduced to a new drink that the Argentinians love, Fernet Branca. It's very alcoholic. Was a really good night although didn't get to bed til 7.30am and someone helped theirselves to my jacket in the club.

Next day we struggled out of bed at 2pm and went to see a football match - Belgrano de Cordoba v Banfield.

Wanted to try see Boca Juniors but didn't get to Argentina in time. Got to Cordoba for the last game of the premier division season though. Unfortunately Belgrano - nicknamed los piratas/the pirates - are a bit crap and we went to watch them get relegated, but it was quite a good game. They make Scottish footballers look like their playing in glue, so much quicker. None of them are frightened of the ball. They like to run with the ball and pass it to each other, as opposed to booting it into the stands, which was nice to see.

Belgrano have two grounds a small 28,000 seater one and a bigger one for the bigger games 48,000. We saw them at the bigger one - Parque Chateau Carreras. Atmoshpere was pretty good although it's an olympic stadium with running track so we were miles away from the pitch. Think it might have been better at the smaller ground. I also wanted to go in the "popular" section but bought posh tickets by mistake. The popular section looked mental. Every 15 minutes or so a gap would appear in the crowd and a bomb would go off and fireworks and flares were lit after the goals. There was a big riot police prescence. Was good though. There must have been about 30,000 odd belgrano fans. Only about 10 Banfield fans. A lot of the Belgrano fans around us were not very impressed with what they were watching, even though they won 3-0, and rather than cheering on the team were hurling abuse at their own players - "hijo de puta" being the favourite insult. Even the little boy behind us was shouting this regularly. Very familiar. Just like being at Tynecastle. Was good day out although the ground is way out on the outskirts of town and we had to walk for miles in the freezing cold back to town.

Spent yesterday hanging about waiting for a night bus to Mendoza where we are now. Seems like quite a nice place so far, although getting more and more expensive the further south we go. Even colder here which is not funny. Mendoza is the biggest wine growing area in the country, so going to get involved in a few more sampling sessions.