Our vineyard day out

  Cafayate, Salta Province, Argentina Friday, May 20, 2016

This was one our favourite days out and it isn't difficult to see why!!! We hired a bike each from the tour operator in the town square and set off on the 4 km to the vine yard of Piatelli. Piattelli we had heard was probably the best vineyard in the area for the views and the lunch on offer. The first km was ok. Tarmac road and fairly level. Then it just got tough. First the road became dirt with lots of ridges and bumps and rocks and holes in it. And the peddling got harder too. Luckily for us the views as we went were just beautiful. Everywhere you looked was a photo waiting to be taken. The day was beautiful and sunny with deep blue skies and the air was crystal clear. The vine leaves were all changing colour and the colors stood out against a wonderful mountain backdrop. Stunning! We saw a flock of parrots on our way and stopped to watch them for a bit. Eventually we made it as far as the vineyard but by now we were huffing and puffing. We parked our push bikes next to all the Mercedes in the car park and tried to look presentable as we went in. We felt like we had arrived at a 5 star luxury resort and spa. The landscaping was beautiful and the building looked like a new designer hotel. It felt like it too when we went inside. We decided we would start with lunch and take the wine tasting tour afterwards. We walked into the restaurant and straight through to the outside seating area. The views were incredible and from here you could appreciate why we had struggled to get here. It was all up hill! We must have been a couple of hundred meters up. Well after that we certainly deserved a glass of wine with our lunch. Forget that, let's make it a bottle! The wine was a 2015 Torrontes blanca from their vineyard. It came out very well chilled and was delicious. It was perfect. The meal that followed was fabulous too. Now this may seem quite ordinary to most but we had lived on a budget of around £10 per day each - that's for 3 meals a day! At that price we don't get to eat like this. We had a goat's cheese and beetroot salad to start with (we shared this) then Bryan had pork with creamed pumpkin. Jody had homemade pasta in cream sauce. We skipped dessert. This meal was massively expensive compared to western pockets and cost us around £35 for the meal with wine. Like we said - not a lot really but this blew almost 2 days of our budget! But it was oh so worth it! From the dining room, we glowed as we walked to the reception desk and waited for the tour to start. To be honest we don't remember much of what we were told - one bottle of wine practically finished us off! We managed to survive the wine tasting too. 8 wines to try on top of the bottle we had already had was just about the last straw. Thank goodness it was going to be downhill all the way home. It is fair to say we wobbled home for a good part of the way. We managed to get the bikes back in one piece and made it to our room where we promptly crashed out and slept for a good few hours. What complete and utter lightweights we are! But we enjoyed it very much. Shall we do it again tomorrow? oh ok then!!