For our second day in the city of Salta, we had not planned anything in particular, expecting to relax, take another attempt at driving through Salta, drink more wine, and prepare for our return to BA the following morning.

The breakfast buffet at Finca Valentina was acceptable, but ranked lower with us based on what we have experience elsewhere. Again, the coffee snob in me gave their attempt at coffee a barely passing score.

The previous day, I had issued a request to one of the bodegas in Salta that we had heard about, but received a response shortly afterward that their schedule was already full for the day. This was not surprising for a Friday and I would have been surprised to get on the schedule on such short notice.

Our backup plan was to go shopping at an antique shop that was recommended by our tour agency, followed by lunch somewhere in town.

The so-called antique shop was in a more affluent part of Salta without all the insane traffic of downtown. However, the shop turned out to be a boutique furniture store that was so small, we saw everything offered in under ten minutes.

The next order of business was to find a Western Union from which to retrieve my infusion of pesos, an effort in which we were successful. This after five previous failed attempts at other locations, for various reasons (power outage, didn't have photocopy of passport, location didn't actually exist, etc.).

Lesson learned – When trying to use Western Union to retrieve money in a foreign country, keep the following in mind:

• Holidays and weekends are the worst times to try, because the demand for money goes up and they may not have funds

• Many locations shut down in the afternoon, usually between 1-5 PM

• There are no dedicated Western Union offices. Locations are kiosks on the side or in the back of convenience stores, grocery stores, or other miscellaneous businesses. In Argentina, the “Pago Facil” chain is popular for hosting Western Union kiosks.

• Don't rely on Google maps to find a location. We were burned many times by unreliable information.

• Many places will require that you provide them with a photocopy of your passport. Do this ahead of time before making the attempt to retrieve funds because most places do not have the means to make copies.

Finding an open restaurant at 1:00 was a challenge for the following reasons:

• Referring back to the issue of many places shutting down in the afternoon, we had to find a place on Google maps that wasn’t showing up as CERRADO or soon to be so

• Places with available parking were not open

• Places without any parking were open, but inaccessible

We found a rare exception, a sandwich shop in a tiny strip mall with parking for toy cars. Our full-sized camioneta took up two parking spaces, but nobody said anything about it. We ordered sandwiches, which were better than what we expected. We bought a bottle a locally produced Rosé of Malbec before returning to Finca Valentina.

In addition to the ginger kitty that I befriended, there were also two ancient, resident dogs who enjoyed visiting us on our front patio.

Outside of our casita window, there were lavender bushes that filled the room with their fragrance when we left the window open.

Many of the places that we visited had actual animal skins as floor coverings. Lorna was conflicted in emotional state whenever walking over such coverings, thinking “this was once somebody's skin”. However, there was no such conflict when eating an excellent steak.

Next up - Day 13: Salta to Buenos Aires

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