And so the time has come for us to say farewell to Argentina... We´re boarding an early bus in the morning making a slight detour into the north of Chile before we cross the border into Bolivia and will defintely be sad to leave the country we´ve spent a month getting to know.

The last couple of days in Salta have been nice and relaxing after the panic of trying to leave Mendoza. The city itself is very picturesque with some beautiful churches and squares and today as the sun finally came out we climbed the hill that overlooks the city for a great aerial view of the city and the surrounding area.

The highlight of our stay was definitely yesterday´s day trip to the Humahuaca gorge. This is a huge gorge to the north of Salta which is well known for the beautiful colours in the rock faces. Our trip began with an uncomfortably early start when we were picked up at 7 by Jose our driver and Celeste our guide. Our first stop was in the mystical cloud forest where we were promised wild boar and something that sounds like a giant chicken (but probably didn´t translate very well from Spanish). Sadly it seems that the wildlife was hiding from the rain but the sight of all the trees emerging from the mist from the sides of the mountains was pretty impressive all the same.

Then it was on to the village of Purmamarca which is a desert village beside a mountain known as the mountian of seven colours. Even though we could only make out five different colours it was still a beautiful sight and amazing to think that such a desert landscape could only be a short drive away from the cloud forest. After driving past several other pretty desert villages dotted along the gorge we arrived in Humahuaca, the main town in the area just in time for a lunch of llama meat. Although it´s a very touristy area, the town is still very pretty and had hundreds of traditional Andean craft stalls to tempt us, not to mention the photo opportunities offered by catuses the size of people!

Our most interesting stop on the return journey was at a tiny parish church, one of the oldest in the country that is famous for its Inca paintings. The Spanish colonisers asked the local Inca tribes to paint picutres of angels to decorate their new church and, as the Incas had no concept of what the Spanish meant by angels, they simply painted the angels in the likeness of the Spanish. So this church is decorated with pictures of angels with wings, wearing wigs, hats and sixteenth century European clothing and carrying guns...

And that brings us to the end of our travels in Argentina. We could easily have spent our full three months here as it´s such a huge country with so many different areas and things to explore but it´s time to move on. We´ve had our final steak and red wine dinner this evening (although it has to be noted that Jamie was beaten by the half cow that appeared on his plate) so all that remains is to pack up and set the alarm for a horrible time in the morning to catch our bus to San Pedro de Atacama in the morning...