The Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat) is a narrow gorge with 49-meter-high red rock walls on either side that you can walk through. It gives you a sense of the wonder of nature.
Less than a kilometer away from there was a place called the Amphitheater. You can’t capture the breadth and height of the rocks in a single photograph because of its scale. Formed by water and wind many hundreds of years ago, its present appearance is daunting.
The town of Cafayate in Salta Province is a grape-growing center in the northernmost part of Argentina. Torrontés, a white grape variety native to Argentina, has been grown since the 19th century. There are many “bodegas” in Cafajate. “Bodega” is the Spanish word for a building where wine is made and matured. Visitors to bodegas can hear about the types of grapes, the varieties handled by the bodega, and their winemaking process. At the end, you can taste their wines and of course buy them.
All the bodegas took care to make sure that visitors could take plenty of time, which was nice.
I had heard that Cafayate had Malbec and Torrontés flavored ice cream, so I went right ahead and tried it. As the ice cream melts, the taste of wine spreads in your mouth. It’s definitely an adult flavor!
From Cafayate, we drove to El Peñón, a town with a population of 450 in the province of Catamarca. I did not realize it while we were driving, but before we knew it, we had climbed to an altitude of 3,400 meters. I felt a headache, so I took some medicine to avoid severe altitude sickness.
We went in our guide's off-road vehicle about an hour west of El Peñón to ‘Campo de Piedras Pómez’, a 25-square-kilometer field of pumice rock formed by a volcanic eruption. Seeing pumice rock stretching as far as the eye could see was like being in another world.
Nearby were enormous white sand dunes (“Dunas Brancas”). These dunes are said to have been built up by white sand carried by the wind from Campo de Piedras Pómez and by black sand carried from the nearby Carachi Pampa Volcano. Unlike other dunes, your feet don’t sink into the sand when you tread on it, which makes it easier to walk on.
Carachi Pampa Volcano is black and is shaped like a Mexican sombrero (a wide-brimmed hat). There are no volcanoes in Brazil, so driving on the black lava plateau of the Karachi Pampa Volcano was thrilling. The black lava evoked images of a volcanic eruption, unleashing an indescribable feeling inside.
These magnificently beautiful natural landscapes are still not well known, and there were few sightseers. Next time, I will tell you about our journey to the Andes Mountains and Fiambalá in Catamarca Province. I hope you enjoy the final installment.
