Cafayate, at about 4500 ft elevation, is a relatively warm and dry small town. It is surrounded by vineyards and bodegas that attract tourists. We stopped here because the drive from Salta to our next 3-night stay outside Catamarca was too long to do in one day. The drive through the canyon north of Cafayate is very scenic, and relatively lightly traveled. We didn’t have too much hope of finding (online) a place suitable for insect-watching, and we settled on a nice place that was upstairs from the owner’s space. It was very nice and had an outside patio where we set up our insect-watching items (lights, cage, and folding chair we brought with us. The chair is needed for sitting while composing insect shots along the side of the cage.
It turned out that, as a moth flies, our patio was only perhaps 200 ft from a natural vegetation hillside – within easy sight with a moth’s eyes. So we were pleasantly surprised by the large number of diverse insects that came to our UV lights.
The following day involved a hill-climb to about 10,000 ft before descending through the touristy town of Tafi del Valle. Then there was a long descent on a very windy road with heavy traffic (with fast cars and slow trucks) through moist forests to the agricultural plains before a several hour highway drive to our next night’s stay. The most scenic part of this road, through the moist forest, had very few places to stop safely or wide shoulders -a characteristic of many Argentina )and Latin American) roads.
Olympus photos
Cafayate insect observations put in iNaturalist can be seen here
iPhone images
THE NATURALIST'S TRAVEL PAGE 