I slept late this morning but I say I misunderstood the breakfast time. Anyway we left at 0800 hrs to arrive at Cafayate at 1150 hrs having passed a lot of cactus growing in the mountings.
 |
| Views on the way |
On the way to Cafayate we stopped of at the Quilones (Quilmes) Ruins. The site was the largest pre-Columbian settlement in the country occupying abo 30 hectares and dates back to about 850AD. It is believed that 5,000 people lived there at one time and after the people were driven off in 1667 when the population was defeated by the Spanish it was not found until 1888. The area is now slowly being reclaimed and preserved by the dependents of the Quilmes people.
 |
The ruins from overhead (photo from the web)
|
 |
| Views of the ruins |
 |
| Worn flag stones |
 |
| Dried cactus |
 |
| Me |
We have hardly had our feet on the ground today (in a sort of way) for as soon as we arrived at the Cafayate Municipal Camp Site we had hardly time to put up the tents when the others, all of them, went out to an organised lunch at a winery.
 |
| The winery for lunch |
Not wanting a big meal in the middle of the day I went with Tanya, the driver, to another winery where she said that the wine tasting was free, but it was not, and tasted two wines, had a very small lunch, did not buy any wines, then went back to pick up the others only to go to another winery for another tasting (which I did not do).
 |
| Winery building |
 |
| Oak barrels |
 |
| Corking machine |
 |
| Ruston (English) diesel engine supplied from Italy |
Some were then dropped off in the town, to go to another wine tasting, whilst the rest of us went back to the camp site. A bit of washing my clothes, then myself, then to the camp shop where the young girl let me sit in the shop to charge the laptop and get onto wifi, very very helpful. It was very very noisy during the night and few of us had much sleep.
 |
| Municipal camp site |
No comments:
Post a Comment