I took a guided tour of an area outside of Salta – taking me on the route of the Tren de las Nubes (Train to the Clouds). Since I didn't take the train, I won’t describe it here, but if you want to know more about the miraculous building of this line, which took 22 years and a mastermind of engineering, you can see the Wikipedia entry here.
This route goes through stunning Quebrada del Torro (Bull Gorge) over one of the tallest peaks in Argentina and drops the traveler off in an isolated town called San Antonia de las Cobres. The steep mountains were made up of unstable rock so each rainy season roads are regularly buried, villages cut off from each other, and people traveling or working on the road are killed. The journey took us higher and higher, through rugged, rocky country and into mountains layered with striking colors – much like Purmamarca except on an significantly more grandiose scale – so that these colors and layers and heights went on for miles and miles and miles and miles, each mountain different than the last, each new view unique and beautiful, all the while colors and shades shifting and changing – greens, ambers, violets, mauves.
As we climbed higher, the guide advised us to put cocoa leaves in our cheeks to help stave off altitude sickness. Cocoa leaves are a mild stimulant with the idea being that they would dilate our blood vessels so blood could flow and our systems could get as much oxygen as possible. Unfortunately, the cocoa leaves didn’t seem to do much for me. As we hit climbed higher, I could feel my body become fatigued and dull around the edges. When we reached the peak of our trip, we all disembarked. Simply climbing out of the van and standing caused my heart to pound and my head to feel light and fuzzy. I swayed a couple of times, coming close to passing out.
After this peak, we emerged onto the puna, a massive open high desert plain and approached San Antonia de los Cobres, the second highest city in Argentina. Isolated and with the former primary industry of mining all dried up, S.A. de los Cobres now relies only on tourism to sustain it. And with only a trickle of tourists arriving each day due to its isolated location, it’s not hard to imagine that people here are poor and life is more about subsistence rather than luxury. What I find interesting about this is that people don’t move from this town to try and find better conditions elsewhere. From what I’m gathering from Argentineans that I meet is that 99% of Argentineans are born, live, and die in one town. People don’t move to find or create new identities or seek their adventures or fortunes in other places. What that means in these small isolated villages is that peoples’ heritage and racial purity stays intact. In S.A. de las Cobres, people were most definitely indigenous with no noticeable European influences. The people were beautiful in their unique way – dark sunstained skin, black hair and dark, wide set eyes, high wide cheekbones, full lips, and compact bodies. The children I saw had faces smudged with dirt, runny noses, and beautiful smiles. You can imagine that in such isolation, health and dental care are limited, and that showed. I don’t know if this quality of life seems good or bad to these people, maybe it’s neither. Maybe it’s just how life is and good or bad aren’t really part of the perspective.
While we were there, the Tren de las Nubes stopped in town, greeted by a makeshift market that the town sellers had set up. The train burped out a hundred soft white flabby tourists, the lifeblood of this town. Merchants sold the hungry, curious mob tortillas and grilled sausages, carved rocks and woven handicrafts, and posed for pictures with baby llamas for money. There was something here that made me feel uncomfortable. Like these people were circus freaks. I don’t know. Maybe the feeling was that Western privilege guilt? Something about it just wasn’t sitting right for me. I hung back and observed the show wondering about the impact of this type of tourism was and how it might affect these people’s identity.
After the melee, our group headed back toward Salta, catching the early evening sunlight on the layers and colors of the mountains, making everything seem more dramatic and breathtaking. On the way back, our guide pointed out a mammoth mountain, very steep. In it was carved a zig zag pattern. Apparently, these zig zags, which can be found here and there throughout the Gorge, and narrow paths that lead up and over the mountain, enabling people from one village to take burros with supplies to trade to another village. It amazed me. It looked like you had to be a mountain goat in order to scale these zig zags to the top. At another point, I pointed out a small hole drilled into the mountain. These holes are where villages collect water. Water sifts through the mountain and they build a series of connected pipes to guide the water to a spot where they can collect it. Amazing.
I arrived back at my lovely hostel at 7pm – a 12-hour day, had a glass of wine and some leftovers and crashed, preparing myself to do another 12-hour day tomorrow on another tour.
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