After spending a couple of nights in Cafayate and trying to find any wine that didn’t require a knife and fork to drink, we are now in Salta.
Salta is a beautiful city that feels more like Europe than anywhere else. It has a beautiful plaza surrounded with restaurants in old buildings with high ceilings and huge verandahs, a little like Bologna but without the good food.
The ride to Salta was stunning…the scenery so gigantic it’s impossible to capture it in a photo…the rocks are as red as anything you see in Australia and the mountains go on forever.
To get an idea of the scale, you can see Dean here.
We finally decided to get our bikes cleaned as we approached Salta. They have never been washed and they were filthy.
Now Roger can see again and I can see my mighty boosh sticker
Our quest to find good food is somehow still continuing however I think I have now surrendered (although I do have my eye on a place tonight…and then I will definitely surrender).
Upon arriving in Cafayate, I had a couple of places marked for lunch…amazing reviews, in a winery setting… surely?
We were presented a menu upon arrival by a smiling waiter (let’s call him Rupert). The prices looked reasonable and it had items other than a ham and cheese sandwich and Milanese (schnitzel) so we took a seat. Dean asked if the winery was open so we could taste some wine and Rupert explained the opening hours.
“so it’s closed?”
“yes” beamed Rupert
We asked if they had white wine but was told they only had a sweet wine. No thanks. We asked if they had red wine and Rupert explained that they had a Malbec.
Surprise surprise. “So, nothing else?”.
“No” smiled Rupert.
Perfect. I ordered a lemonade which is against my religion and Dean insisted on ordering the red because “I’m not going to a winery and not having a wine”. Red wine for lunch means Dean sleeps all afternoon.
We decided on a couple of items from the menu.
“We’d like the trout salad please”
“Oh yes, for pasta we have ravioli with a tomato sauce”
“So you don’t have the trout?”
“No” beamed Rupert.
‘Ok…we’ll have the Burrata salad then’
“Oh we don’t have that” said Rupert
“Ok…so you don’t have the trout or the Burrata?”
‘Exactamente!’ beamed Rupert (imagine Manual from Fawlty Towers trying to blunder his way through understanding what’s going except we were speaking his language). No sorry, no acknowledgement that the menu we were shown had few of the items available, just a big smile.
We ended up getting the only salad that was actually available which took about an hour to arrive, but that’s not unusual here. I was getting edgy but he did pour Dean half a bottle of wine into his glass so it wasn’t all bad, except for the fact that we still needed to ride to our accommodation and the riding limit here is 0.
The salad was ok but all in all it was another failed dining experience.
Last night was another ‘experience’. As it was our 14 year anniversary (and Dean still owed me a dinner for my birthday), we thought we would find somewhere nice to go for dinner (we clearly don’t learn). We found a few places that had good reviews and decided to check them out during the day as prices, opening times, menu items and addresses are rarely accurate here. None of them passed the test so we decided to discard our idea of finding anything nice and thought a pizza might be the safest bet.
We went to a bar for happy hour (all the bars have the same happy hour with the same drinks on offer). After waiting 20 minutes to get served, and then another 30 minutes to get a drink, we paid and left a less than ideal tip in search for somewhere to eat.
All venues here and in Chile have their menus as a QR code which is pretty annoying when you don’t have a local SIM, as we always need to ask for their wifi details just to see what they serve.
We walked into a brewery and asked to see the menu/asked for their wifi details.
“Its not working” I said
“yes it is”
“no it’s not”
‘”ook, it’s working on my phone” said the waiter
“ok…it’s not working on mine”
“oh, sorry!x again, big smile
Not a ‘would you like to see the menu on my phone?’ or ‘here is a printed menu’ just, “how strange”
So we walked out of there. To cut a long boring story short, we ended up back in the place where we left a shitty tip due to the bad service. We ordered a pizza ($30), which had grated cheddar and ‘prosciutto’ cut so thick you couldn’t bite through it. We were also sat next to a road that turned out being the main route for all the buses in Salta. They were pretty much constant and buses here are loud and old (think Johnson’s school bus). It wasn’t great. Feeling deflated, we walked home feeling sick and full from the heavy food at around 11 pm.
Yesterday we withdraw money from Western Union. We transferred $1000 AUD and the rude girl at the counter gave us the equivalent back in $2 notes. She didn’t bother telling us that she didn’t have any big notes and seemed annoyed that she had to deal with people who didn’t speak Spanish fluently, despite working for a business the arranges money for foreigners. Luckily I brought a backpack…not sure what we would have done if I hadn’t?!
We then proceeded to change money with the dodgy money changer on the plaza (who had reasonable note denominations) with a tattoo under his eye…but this was more for old time sake than anything else. Good to see that the blue dollar rate is alive and well, just not as profitable as it once was!
Me with a bag full of money.
Today we found a bank that changed the money into more reasonable denominations so we now have space to carry the money.
Another task today was to buy some decent coffee.
We had searched all the mini marts but couldn’t find anything decent. Today I found where the biggest Carrefour was and we found a coffee we were familiar with and the only one that was vacuum sealed.
It had no price on the shelf so we scanned it, expecting it to be more expensive than we were prepared to spend. The scanner didn’t recognise the product.
Exactamente.
We went to the checkout and the same thing happened.
“Its not showing up, sorry”
“so…can you ask someone for the price?”
”sorry”
“erm….we would really like to buy it…”
He seemed very reluctant to make any effort to find out a price for it but eventually made a call to someone and then explained that he couldn’t sell it because it was out of date.
It was the only vacuum packed coffee on the shelf so no doubt the freshest by far and the use by was December.
“we don’t care” said Dean
“are you sure? I’ll just scan this (shitty cheap) coffee if you’re happy to pay that price?”
He clearly thought that the local small packet of coffee was more expensive than the one we wanted.
“absolutely!”
So we got a good fresh coffee which probably should have cost about $20 for $3. Good result!
So, one last hope for good food tonight. It’s a bar that serves wine and apparently has good tapas …let’s see.
Tomorrow we are back on the road and heading to San Pedro de Atacama before zig zagging our way slowly back to Santiago x
*update* I don’t want to talk about dinner tonight, I have officially surrendered, but we did come home with some bread and cheese that we stole from a variety of restaurants and walked out of yet another one. Looking forward to going to a small country town where there are no decisions to make.