headed southwest

From the later ninteenth century right up until the 1990s, Argentina had a wonderful railway network: first transporting agricultural produce, and then many passengers, as well: one could hop on it and get to Chile, or Bolivia ... But then it was nationalized, and fell apart, and now there are a handful of local trains, and commuter trains near Buenos Aires, and that's it.  Doubtless I'd have been traveling quite differently forty years ago.  This is the station at Alemanía, which according to our guide (more on him at the end) served a station on a line inaugurated by the English, and then worked on by people who emigrated from Germany after WW2, and was closed in the 1990s.  However, a bit of digging around shows quite a few problems with that history - not least that the station shut in 1971.  And the name seems to be much older, possibly much much older ...  Anyway, it's beautifully situated, near the beginning of a long, tall, spectacular gorge, the Quebrada de las Conchas.

I was to regret not having had one of these tortillas, later ...

Disconcertingly, a lot of the landscape today looked like New Mexico, which made me homesick.

First major stop was at La Garganta del Diablo - the Devil's Throat - formed by water tumbling into this bit of rock over millennia.  It gave one ample opportunity to observe standard Argentinian tourist practices, most of which involve taking selfies - sometimes with the national flag.

Or maybe they'll just take a photo of a tortilla in front of the rock formation.

Maybe they'll have brought a sticker with them to slap on ... a waste bin.

On to El Anfiteatro:

which apparently has wonderful acoustics: a couple of local buskers were demonstrating this.

Lots more rocks, and stops, and viewpoints ...

and then at the far end we emerged into wine country,

with a very instructive brief tour of the wine making process, the French oak barrels, etc, by the manager (and the obligatory tiny sips of wine: a very passable Malbec, and two instantly forgettable wines).

More autumnal vineyards,

and Cafayate, very sleepy at this time of the year, and clearly dominated by wine, though alas the ice cream shop that specializes in wine flavored ice cream was closed.

There was, however, a lot of excellent wall art.  These lines are by Eduardo Galleano, the radical Uruguayan, who presumably didn't have AI in mind, but I might just print this out and put it on my office door.

And then back again, with the landscape still looking like NM, or maybe Utah.

These book-an-excursion days through a local company (or via Viator, which acts as a kind of middleman), are very hit or miss when it comes to the guides themselves.  The last two days the guides - both women - were fabulous.  Today, Ignacio - the only male guide I've had on this trip - was very indifferent: he couldn't be bothered all that much with his busload, except to take people's photographs against scenic backgrounds.  He took us in Cafayate to some dismal tourist joints - a large store full of very dusty goods, and I should have known better than to go to the lunch place where we "had a reservation," although tamale was tasty.  It was a glum mini-van load of Argentinians, plus one supercilious American photo-poseur (maybe Dominican Republic in origin - he spoke fluent Spanish, but most definitely not with an Argentinian accent), and a Brazilian, and me.  The guide makes all the difference, and this one didn't come up to the mark - I think we all caught his lugubriousness. Also the driver mysteriously had a tape of Seventies hits: "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?", "Hotel California," "Imagine" - which was highly disconcerting - not least because I was once in a mini-van in Northern Thailand for twelve hours that had one tape - Creedance Clearwater - and for three minutes I thought fate might be repeating itself.