I pity the fool

If one more person asks me:

• If I’m traveling alone and then looks shocked and concerned when I answer, “Yes.” Then they say, “Really??” with their eyes wide. I and I say, “Yes, really.”
• If I have any children and when I reply, “No,” then asks in a concerned and troubled voice, “Don’t you like children??”
• How old I am (when the person asking is about 19, which are most people) and when I tell them my age, they try to conceal their shock and surprise with a deadpan, silent nod…

...someone’s gonna get hurt.

Cafayete 2: Mountains, Snakes, Wine, and the Help of Strangers

I’m in the Tucuman bus station right now. I have a layover here for about four hours until I hop the night bus to Cordoba. It’s Friday night and the place is hopping. There’s a live musician plugged into an amp and he’s singing and playing a tango version of Frank Sinatra’s, “I Did It My Way” while his guitar gently weeps. These are the little, surreal moments that travel is made of.

I left Cafayete this afternoon, and I was sad to go even though the place may, in all likelihood, have a curse on it.

Here’s why. I had the single worst travel day on the trip so far while here. It was one of those days where anything you try to do, no matter how inconsequential or minor, let alone the big things (and there were several), just wouldn’t… go. No matter how much coercion, praying, force of will or how many deep breaths or secret promises for paying it forward. And the big things were big. Like being on my last 50 pesos (about US$12.50), but still owing my hostel for two days of room and a tour and still having two full days in town ahead of me before I caught my pre-purchased bus ticket to Tucuman – and my card wouldn’t work in either of the two cash machines in town. And no way to contact my bank because there was no Skype at the internet cafes and the hostel wifi was busted. So stuff like that. It was Catch-22 after Catch-22. Each time I tried to solve a problem, the solution to that problem was actually just another problem that needed to be solved. And it all had to be done in Spanish, which I don’t speak.

It was the single most frustrating day I’ve had on this trip so far and I have to admit, I got to that point – you know, where you start to feel that little kid frustration, so powerless and overwhelmed. Well, I had a moment in the hostel kitchen when I broke down and shed a couple of hot tears while my voice, quavering, told my hostel-mate Laura from Buenos Aires, what was going on. She was great and told me that she’d help me sort out all the issues tomorrow.

As it turned out, Bertrand, another person from my hostel helped me solve my biggest challenge. He spent 20 minutes on the phone with the agency in Jujuy who booked my air travel to Mendoza and sorted the issue out for me by actually going to Jujuy and the agency to take care of it for me. Something I love about travel is that people can really step up and help one another. It’s great to be reminded that we can’t survive alone, that we depend on each other to make it through life’s difficulties, and that we do step up and help one another.

As far as cash? The wifi in the hostel got fixed, I Skyped my bank, and all issues are now resolved. I didn’t have to devise an elaborate plan to hop a bus with my last 50 pesos to some other town in the middle of the night, get money from another town’s ATM, and hop back to Cafayete to pay people before they noticed I was gone. Whew. That would have been an inconvenient drag.

Besides the whole curse thing, Cafayete is wonderful. As one of the top two wine producing regions in Argentina, it carries a beautiful mood about it. The town square is picturesque and charming. The people mellow. The countryside is stunning with tall desert mountains in beautiful deep clay and green colors. The fields of grapevines curling around their posts and strings, clusters of ripe fruit hanging in the hot sun.

In Cafayete, I love that a very hearty pour of any restaurant’s or café’s house Malbec is $1.10 USD… and it’s good. I love that my hostel felt so comfortable, clean, and homey, with actual attention to décor, a great center patio where we all could gather and have a glass of wine or a cup of mate tea and talk about our days, and a well maintained kitchen for cooking.

I loved the areas around Cafayete for their incredible, heart expanding beauty and proud history and heritage. I loved the people I met at my hostel, all of whom were entertaining, funny, sweet, helpful, wry, interesting, or a combination of all those traits.

I loved the House of Empanadas, who served me the best empanadas I’ve had either in Brazil or Argentina.

Details, you ask? Happy to.

One day, I took a tour in the afternoon to visit the major landmarks of the Quebrada de Cafayete, the region I passed through on the bus trip from Salta to Cafayete but was pretty much too sick to actually appreciate. So let me preface this next part with a disclaimer. If you’re tired of hearing about how unbelievably beautiful the mountains are in Northern Argentina, stop reading now. OK, you’re still reading. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It seems like, since I arrived in Argentina, the scope and scale of these mountains, their intensity in every way, have grown. The colors, the scale, the sheer force of them. First there was the Seven Colors Mountains in Humahuaca/Purmamarca. Then there was the next level, the Quebrada del Torro, with its height and its gauchos and its lonely beauty. And now Quebrada de Cafayete, with its tremendous scale, its rock formations so unique and unusual that they didn’t seem at all real, but maybe something out of an epic hero’s story or something on the far side of Mars. Rubies, rusts, oranges, pinks, clays, ochres… and also blues, violets, greens, and yellows. With their immensity so intense that the eyes just can’t see them, but flatten them out like a paint by numbers to just try and absorb them.

I saw these with Neil, who had just arrived at my hostel that day. Neil is a 31-year old freelance carpenter from Dublin, but living in Melbourne. A month ago, he was on a three day party streak in Melbourne and, while intoxicated during said three day streak:

· Decided that he had to travel to South America and figure out if he wanted to move there

· Logged onto a website, priced tickets and bought his one way plane ticket to Buenos Aires

· Packed and caught a taxi to the airport

· Rung up his Mum from the airport and told her he was leaving in an hour for South America and wasn’t sure when he was coming back

· Boarded the plane and immediately asked the flight attendant for a beer because he had “flight anxiety.” Sadly, he was turned down, the attendant saying that she couldn’t serve him until they took off. They took off, and he was served.

So Neil and I happened to be the only two people on this tour. There’s nothing like getting to know a crazy Dubliner over some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the world.

We stopped at several key formations and vista points to appreciate the rock formations the likes of which rival or surpass Monument Valley, Utah and the scale of which makes Monument Valley look like building blocks from a child’s toy box. We saw the sweeping playas and peaks, the mountains stretching back millions of years and looking ahead for millions more. The naturally-formed amphitheater, which was once a huge cave in the rock then was opened up by eons of rain and wind erosion. In this amphitheater, Cafayete has an annual music festival to take advantage of the incredible acoustics this naturally-formed amphitheater provides. I wish I could explain the scale of this formation. My pictures, for the most part, don’t capture it. Except for one. In this picture, you see the layers of compressed minerals and rock in beautiful arching and swaying patterns. And then, at the lower right center of the picture, you see a tiny speck. That’s Neil. That’s the scale we’re talking about.

We also visited the Devil’s Throat, another incredible formation equally massive and equally as impressive and awe-inspiring as the amphitheater. Here, I kicked in my rock climbing skills and scaled some short and easy faces to crawl inside the Devil’s Throat. The colors, the patterns, the scale. I felt dumbstruck.

These places throw me into simultaneous states of awe and confusion. As I marvel at them and am rendered speechless by their ancientness and immensity, I also think of how we humans have this odd tendency to think the world revolves around us. When in reality, the world is more ancient and more powerful than we could ever comprehend. It will live on millions of years past any memory of our species and will continue to be part of the grand scheme as it came into being at the beginning of time. And even how ideas like time, when used with these places, are simply weak constructs that humans have created to try and classify and understand and place and compare ourselves next to them.

That’s what these places, this excruciating beauty and immensity, are doing with me. I’m properly put in my place and get a tiny glimpse into the immensity and wide open infiniteness of space and time and mass and energy and spirit and physics and math and art, which are flimsy expressions of something nameless, unspeakable, limitless. Something unclassifiable and indescribable. Something infinitely beyond anything we can ever grasp. And that’s right and perfect.

But I digress.

While in Cafayete, I also visited the ruins of Quilmes. I took this tour, about an hour outside Cafayete, with Guillaume from Nice, who had also arrived the same day as Neil. His dry French sense of humor and vow each day that he was going to quit smoking today (“no really, today for sure, I just want to finish this pack…”) prompted me poke him in the ribs with a wry smile. Dating about 1000 AD, Quilmes was a complex indigenous urban settlement that occupied about 30 hectares and was home to about 5000 inhabitants. These people survived contact with the Inca, which occurred from about 1480 on, but sadly, they couldn’t withstand the onslaught of the Spaniards who in 1667 deported the last 2000 inhabitants to Buenos Aires. The site itself is impressive. Though no building still stands, a good percentage of the foundations of the site have been excavated. The foundations start at the base of a large hill and crawl up the hill in steps. I hiked up the treacherous hill to see the community layed out before me, making geometric patterns in the hillside.

When I arrived on the site, I was given a brochure in “Spanglish” explaining the story behind Quilmes. But fundamentally, what the brochure really was was an angry tirade against the invaders who broke apart the Quilmes community, which was rich with culture, heritage, history, and indigenous identity. It spoke of never allowing this type of invasion to happen again and called out to readers to vehemently support the preservation of indigenous people and Pachamama (translation: Mother Earth). It also called for things like restitution and reclamation of the tribal lands. In short, Quilmes is a symbol of all the genocide and destruction that non-native people have brought to Argentina and how change must occur to preserve these indigenous cultures.

I’m often struck by how the history of colonialism the world over is so bloody and horrible. And how it’s still occurring today under the auspices of “spreading democracy and promoting a free-market economy.” Sigh.

I also mountain biked while in Cafayete. I wanted to head up to the path that would take me to the falls at the Rio Colorado. I came across a rattlesnake on my way. Yes, another snake. I didn’t see it, but I definitely heard it. I was walking my bike past a cluster of low rocks and I heard a rattle. As I got closer, it sped up, and as I passed by and went on my way, it slowed and stopped. And the funny thing was, I didn’t even realize what it was until later. Oops. I should know better being from Oregon and California. This is snake story #3, just for the record.

Also, on my mountain bike ride, I had the chance to ride past several beautiful fields of grapevines and wineries (and did some tastings, of course). It was quite picturesque, with the green vines and dusty earth set against the tall blue-green mountains.

When all is said and done, despite the travel challenges I faced, I come away from Cafayete loving its beauty and uniqueness.

I guess, then, that Cafayete isn’t cursed at all. It’s blessed.

I’m in the Tucuman bus station right now. I have a layover here for about four hours until I hop the night bus to Cordoba. It’s Friday night and the place is hopping. There’s a live musician plugged into an amp and he’s singing and playing a tango version of Frank Sinatra’s, “I Did It My Way” while his guitar gently weeps. These are the little, surreal moments that travel is made of.

I left Cafayete this afternoon, and I was sad to go even though the place may, in all likelihood, have a curse on it.

Here’s why. I had the single worst travel day on the trip so far while here. It was one of those days where anything you try to do, no matter how inconsequential or minor, let alone the big things (and there were several), just wouldn’t… go. No matter how much coercion, praying, force of will or how many deep breaths or secret promises for paying it forward. And the big things were big. Like being on my last 50 pesos (about US$12.50), but still owing my hostel for two days of room and a tour and still having two full days in town ahead of me before I caught my pre-purchased bus ticket to Tucuman – and my card wouldn’t work in either of the two cash machines in town. And no way to contact my bank because there was no Skype at the internet cafes and the hostel wifi was busted. So stuff like that. It was Catch-22 after Catch-22. Each time I tried to solve a problem, the solution to that problem was actually just another problem that needed to be solved. And it all had to be done in Spanish, which I don’t speak.

It was the single most frustrating day I’ve had on this trip so far and I have to admit, I got to that point – you know, where you start to feel that little kid frustration, so powerless and overwhelmed. Well, I had a moment in the hostel kitchen when I broke down and shed a couple of hot tears while my voice, quavering, told my hostel-mate Laura from Buenos Aires, what was going on. She was great and told me that she’d help me sort out all the issues tomorrow.

As it turned out, Bertrand, another person from my hostel helped me solve my biggest challenge. He spent 20 minutes on the phone with the agency in Jujuy who booked my air travel to Mendoza and sorted the issue out for me by actually going to Jujuy and the agency to take care of it for me. Something I love about travel is that people can really step up and help one another. It’s great to be reminded that we can’t survive alone, that we depend on each other to make it through life’s difficulties, and that we do step up and help one another.

As far as cash? The wifi in the hostel got fixed, I Skyped my bank, and all issues are now resolved. I didn’t have to devise an elaborate plan to hop a bus with my last 50 pesos to some other town in the middle of the night, get money from another town’s ATM, and hop back to Cafayete to pay people before they noticed I was gone. Whew. That would have been an inconvenient drag.

Besides the whole curse thing, Cafayete is wonderful. As one of the top two wine producing regions in Argentina, it carries a beautiful mood about it. The town square is picturesque and charming. The people mellow. The countryside is stunning with tall desert mountains in beautiful deep clay and green colors. The fields of grapevines curling around their posts and strings, clusters of ripe fruit hanging in the hot sun.

In Cafayete, I love that a very hearty pour of any restaurant’s or café’s house Malbec is $1.10 USD… and it’s good. I love that my hostel felt so comfortable, clean, and homey, with actual attention to décor, a great center patio where we all could gather and have a glass of wine or a cup of mate tea and talk about our days, and a well maintained kitchen for cooking.

I loved the areas around Cafayete for their incredible, heart expanding beauty and proud history and heritage. I loved the people I met at my hostel, all of whom were entertaining, funny, sweet, helpful, wry, interesting, or a combination of all those traits.

I loved the House of Empanadas, who served me the best empanadas I’ve had either in Brazil or Argentina.

Details, you ask? Happy to.

One day, I took a tour in the afternoon to visit the major landmarks of the Quebrada de Cafayete, the region I passed through on the bus trip from Salta to Cafayete but was pretty much too sick to actually appreciate. So let me preface this next part with a disclaimer. If you’re tired of hearing about how unbelievably beautiful the mountains are in Northern Argentina, stop reading now. OK, you’re still reading. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It seems like, since I arrived in Argentina, the scope and scale of these mountains, their intensity in every way, have grown. The colors, the scale, the sheer force of them. First there was the Seven Colors Mountains in Humahuaca/Purmamarca. Then there was the next level, the Quebrada del Torro, with its height and its gauchos and its lonely beauty. And now Quebrada de Cafayete, with its tremendous scale, its rock formations so unique and unusual that they didn’t seem at all real, but maybe something out of an epic hero’s story or something on the far side of Mars. Rubies, rusts, oranges, pinks, clays, ochres… and also blues, violets, greens, and yellows. With their immensity so intense that the eyes just can’t see them, but flatten them out like a paint by numbers to just try and absorb them.

I saw these with Neil, who had just arrived at my hostel that day. Neil is a 31-year old freelance carpenter from Dublin, but living in Melbourne. A month ago, he was on a three day party streak in Melbourne and, while intoxicated during said three day streak:

· Decided that he had to travel to South America and figure out if he wanted to move there

· Logged onto a website, priced tickets and bought his one way plane ticket to Buenos Aires

· Packed and caught a taxi to the airport

· Rung up his Mum from the airport and told her he was leaving in an hour for South America and wasn’t sure when he was coming back

· Boarded the plane and immediately asked the flight attendant for a beer because he had “flight anxiety.” Sadly, he was turned down, the attendant saying that she couldn’t serve him until they took off. They took off, and he was served.

So Neil and I happened to be the only two people on this tour. There’s nothing like getting to know a crazy Dubliner over some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the world.

We stopped at several key formations and vista points to appreciate the rock formations the likes of which rival or surpass Monument Valley, Utah and the scale of which makes Monument Valley look like building blocks from a child’s toy box. We saw the sweeping playas and peaks, the mountains stretching back millions of years and looking ahead for millions more. The naturally-formed amphitheater, which was once a huge cave in the rock then was opened up by eons of rain and wind erosion. In this amphitheater, Cafayete has an annual music festival to take advantage of the incredible acoustics this naturally-formed amphitheater provides. I wish I could explain the scale of this formation. My pictures, for the most part, don’t capture it. Except for one. In this picture, you see the layers of compressed minerals and rock in beautiful arching and swaying patterns. And then, at the lower right center of the picture, you see a tiny speck. That’s Neil. That’s the scale we’re talking about.

We also visited the Devil’s Throat, another incredible formation equally massive and equally as impressive and awe-inspiring as the amphitheater. Here, I kicked in my rock climbing skills and scaled some short and easy faces to crawl inside the Devil’s Throat. The colors, the patterns, the scale. I felt dumbstruck.

These places throw me into simultaneous states of awe and confusion. As I marvel at them and am rendered speechless by their ancientness and immensity, I also think of how we humans have this odd tendency to think the world revolves around us. When in reality, the world is more ancient and more powerful than we could ever comprehend. It will live on millions of years past any memory of our species and will continue to be part of the grand scheme as it came into being at the beginning of time. And even how ideas like time, when used with these places, are simply weak constructs that humans have created to try and classify and understand and place and compare ourselves next to them.

That’s what these places, this excruciating beauty and immensity, are doing with me. I’m properly put in my place and get a tiny glimpse into the immensity and wide open infiniteness of space and time and mass and energy and spirit and physics and math and art, which are flimsy expressions of something nameless, unspeakable, limitless. Something unclassifiable and indescribable. Something infinitely beyond anything we can ever grasp. And that’s right and perfect.

But I digress.

While in Cafayete, I also visited the ruins of Quilmes. I took this tour, about an hour outside Cafayete, with Guillaume from Nice, who had also arrived the same day as Neil. His dry French sense of humor and vow each day that he was going to quit smoking today (“no really, today for sure, I just want to finish this pack…”) prompted me poke him in the ribs with a wry smile. Dating about 1000 AD, Quilmes was a complex indigenous urban settlement that occupied about 30 hectares and was home to about 5000 inhabitants. These people survived contact with the Inca, which occurred from about 1480 on, but sadly, they couldn’t withstand the onslaught of the Spaniards who in 1667 deported the last 2000 inhabitants to Buenos Aires. The site itself is impressive. Though no building still stands, a good percentage of the foundations of the site have been excavated. The foundations start at the base of a large hill and crawl up the hill in steps. I hiked up the treacherous hill to see the community layed out before me, making geometric patterns in the hillside.

When I arrived on the site, I was given a brochure in “Spanglish” explaining the story behind Quilmes. But fundamentally, what the brochure really was was an angry tirade against the invaders who broke apart the Quilmes community, which was rich with culture, heritage, history, and indigenous identity. It spoke of never allowing this type of invasion to happen again and called out to readers to vehemently support the preservation of indigenous people and Pachamama (translation: Mother Earth). It also called for things like restitution and reclamation of the tribal lands. In short, Quilmes is a symbol of all the genocide and destruction that non-native people have brought to Argentina and how change must occur to preserve these indigenous cultures.

I’m often struck by how the history of colonialism the world over is so bloody and horrible. And how it’s still occurring today under the auspices of “spreading democracy and promoting a free-market economy.” Sigh.

I also mountain biked while in Cafayete. I wanted to head up to the path that would take me to the falls at the Rio Colorado. I came across a rattlesnake on my way. Yes, another snake. I didn’t see it, but I definitely heard it. I was walking my bike past a cluster of low rocks and I heard a rattle. As I got closer, it sped up, and as I passed by and went on my way, it slowed and stopped. And the funny thing was, I didn’t even realize what it was until later. Oops. I should know better being from Oregon and California. This is snake story #3, just for the record.

Also, on my mountain bike ride, I had the chance to ride past several beautiful fields of grapevines and wineries (and did some tastings, of course). It was quite picturesque, with the green vines and dusty earth set against the tall blue-green mountains.

When all is said and done, despite the travel challenges I faced, I come away from Cafayete loving its beauty and uniqueness.

I guess, then, that Cafayete isn’t cursed at all. It’s blessed.

Arrival in Cafayete and Wine

I’ve left the Salta area and am making my way down the country. As of this morning, I’ve pretty much changed the rest of my itinerary in Argentina. The thing about the Lonely Planet guide books are that they say something nice about everyplace. In other words, not every place is as nice as they say. I had a conversation with some travelers and Argentineans last night and this morning and they gave me some pretty pointed reviews about a couple of the places I was planning on spending three to four days at. Now, they’ll only be pit stops on my way elsewhere. This is all good stuff. It means that I’m going to lengthen my stay here in Cafayete (which is completely lovely) and lengthen my stay in Mendoza, which, the more I hear about, the more excited I become to go there. To think that it wasn’t on my itinerary at all when I initially planned this trip! I’m glad that I went ahead and dropped the relatively small amount of money to fly down there. It helps that the exchange rate right now four pesos to one USD.

My trip from Salta to Cafayete was mixed. It was my third straight day of being on a listing, tilting vehicle as it careened around multitudes of tight corners. My stomach started to lurch and my head was pounding so it was a little difficult to enjoy the absolutely unbelievable territory of the Quebrada de Cafayete, a massive gorge of towering and stunning proportions and incredible rock formations and colors. My cranky self was saying, “Yeah, more stunning mountains, uh-huh.” And the non-cranky part of me was saying, “Wow, incredible, absolutely and totally incredible!”

The way I’ve decided to resolve this is to take a trip back into the gorge in the afternoon to a few of the key landmarks and watch the sunset set the mountain’s colors on fire. I think it will likely be utterly spectacular.

My first day in Cafayete, I settled into my new hostel, a quiet, clean and roomy place just off the main square.

Then off to taste a few wines.

I visited the two most recommended wineries in the area, Bodega Nanni and Bodega El Transito. Argentina is specifically known for malbec, but I also tasted a cab, a tanat, and a torrontes. The interesting thing about this wine region is that it’s desert so that has a very intense effect on the grapes. The reds are all hot, meaning they have a high concentration of sugars that make the wine very alcoholic tasting. Most of the wines are in the 14% range. And most of the wines that they drink here, no matter a white or red, it’s meant to drink young, to drink now. Aging apparently won’t do any favor for these varietals.

The interesting this is that this also makes these wines perfect for what they eat a lot of here, and that’s red meat – beef, llama, goat, and other strong and gamey flesh. So it’s this perfect partnership. However, I’m so far not finding a lot of subtlety or dimension to the wines, which is what I’m really used to, and like in my favorite California, French, Australian and New Zealand wines. So I’m adjusting my expectations and thinking instead of how to appreciate this wine exactly for what it is and what it does. This has helped me begin to appreciate the straightforward characteristics of the wines made here.

Salta, Day Three: On the Road to Cachi

Today’s trip took me into the Valle Calchaquies, through the Parque Nacional Los Cardones, to the town of Cachi. We set out early again and within the hour we were in the Cloud Forest. The mountains were covered in tall, tall trees with large green, lush canopies. These trees (the name of which I didn’t write down – sad face) have massive root systems that are actually fed from the top down. The clouds gather around the treetops, and the treetops actually gather the moisture from the clouds then carry it down to the roots of the tree vs. the roots gathering the sustenance and feeding the treetops. The cool, moist morning air, the deep green trees, the clouds shrouding the mountains in spots, then clearing or moving on – it was still and mystical, like the dawn of time.

It was good to be in a moist climate after many days in the desert. I sat for a few minutes within the woods and just breathed the damp air, letting it slate what felt like a lingering dryness in my body. It was good.

As we moved on, our guide pointed out large tufts of what looked like cotton in the treetops. In reality, these were spiders’ nests. (((shivvver)))

We entered Parque Nacional Los Cardones and sailed through the mountains, coming upon the Cachi mountain peaks, their nine heads capped in white snow. We stopped again at a long stretch of straight road, originally built so that there is less than a centimeter of deviation from a straight line. And here on either side of the one highway were fields of enormous saguaro cacti beyond what my eye could see. They stood, like sentries guarding the desert, or spirits with sunkissed blond halos around their heads, unmoving waiting for something or someone to whisper some secret that would finally, ultimately free them. They’ve been waiting a long time. The average age of cacti in this field was 350. These sentinels grow very slowly – at a rate of 5mm/year until they reach 50, then more quickly after their childhood as at that time, they reach a kind of critical mass, a size that enables them to absorb more nutrients, faster.

We reached Payogasta and stopped to have a lunch at a place that could’ve easily been in Sonoma – an adobe building with rustic beams protruding from the roof, a lovely patio with rough wood tables and chairs, gourmet twists on traditional Argentinean dishes, and wine. I had a Malbec (which is what this region is famous for) with some great tobacco, earth funk, and tart blackberry tastes/smells. While it wasn’t the best match with my dish, which would’ve been better with a white, I imagined a hearty winter meat dish and this wine, a perfect pair.

Next was the town of Cachi, a quaint and postcard-picturesque colonial burg, where I sat in the town square, drinking in the dappled sunlight and reading my book, watching people stroll by, or giggling as children and puppies played games of tag. Lovely.

After Cachi, we headed back to Salta via another beautiful early evening light drive.

I had a relaxed evening, for the most part, catching up on news and reading my book.

Tomorrow, I would leave Salta for Cafayete – the heart of the Northwest Andres region wine country.

Salta, Day 2: Salta is Gorges

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.

Salta, Day One: The Living and The Dead

I spent my first day in Salta relaxing. I slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, and wandered slowly down to the main square of the city. Salta is very charming in so many ways. The mood of the place is relaxed and people seem to be taking their time. The central square is shady and grassy with an impressive statue of a hero on horseback (don’t know who?) and muses surrounding him anchoring it. Around the square are charming cafes with outdoor seating, lovely little candy and dress shops, upscale hotels, museums and the occasional newsstand. Just past the immediate center square is a busy shopping area with clothing and housewares stores, fabric shops, bakeries, and ice cream shops. When I arrived, the school lunch break had just started and the shopping area was crowded with teens in their various school uniforms – looking awkward, giggling, rough-housing, and just being hilarious, hormone-infested creatures. It was fun to watch and made me grateful that I never have to relive my teenage years again.

After a while, I found a good place to sit and have lunch and see the world here go by.

[Aside]

Just a little something worth mentioning… even though people and websites say that the water in Northern Argentina is safe to drink from the tap, don’t believe them. I can personally attest to the fact that this is not so.

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Anyway, after lunch, I wandered over to the Museo de Arqueologia de Alta Mantana (MAAM), the archeological museum in Salta, which is quite famous. The reason why that is is becuase this museum owns a very significant find. An Inca find called the Children of Llullaillaco. This find was dug from the highest peak in Argentina, the Llullaillaco Volcano, coming in at 6739 meters. Artifacts on the summit compose the highest evidence of humans worldwide before the late nineteenth century. Here, archeologist dug in the snow and thin air to uncover artifacts from what they believe to be a sacrificial burial ground. Pottery, sacred items, dolls representing gods, and so on were part of this find. But the most important part of the find were the children. Three children were uncovered here and these mummies are believed to be the best preserved mummies in existence today. (Following portions borrowed from Wikipedia) “The Maiden” was found wearing a beautiful headdress, which meant she was probably a Sun Virgin, meaning she was chosen as a toddler to live with other girls and women who would become royal wives, priestesses, and sacrifices. She also wore a brown dress, and was buried with several statues. Her hair was braided elaborately She and the other children are believed to have been drugged with chicha, a maize beer, along with coca leaves, before being abandoned on the mountain. The maiden was 15 at the time of her death. She sits with her legs crossed and her head resting on her chest. She still has traces of cocoa leaves on her lips. “The Lightening Girl” was six years old. She also sat crossed legged, her hands resting on her lap and her head facing upwards and toward the southwest. She is called Lightening Girl because during her forever sleep in the mountain, she was hit by lightening and part ofher body as blackened from the electrical burn. The little boy was nearly seven years old. His knees were tucked under his chin and he has a ceremonial slingshot wrapped around his head. Some of the boy's clothes contained vomit mixed with blood, suggesting that he may have suffered from a pulmonary edema. It is believed that he died from suffocation. He was the only one of the mummies to be tied up, and a piece of cloth had been pulled around him tightly enough to crack his ribs and dislocate his pelvis.

All children are thought to be members of the elite due to their body manipulations, clothing and decoration. Because of the various conditions – height, cold and so on – these figures are all perfectly preserved. Only Lightening Girl was on display and I could see her up very close. Her hair was still styled. Her teeth were white and even. Her little child mouth was slightly open as if she was sleeping peacefully. Her eyebrows had a soft expression. She looked like she could come alive at any moment, simply waking up from a long doze. As I stared, I started to get an eerie uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. She looked so whole, so perfect, that I really could imagine that she would simply open her eyes and look right at me, like in some kind of movie where the dead children, unjustly killed, came to life to haunt and take revenge on those who exploited them.

(((shivvver)))

I finished my tour of the museum and rejoined the living outside in the warm sun.

The rest of my afternoon, I wandered about, taking a look at the large catedral (cathedral) painted pink with white trim, (!) as well as the Iglesia de San Francisco (St. Francis Church) painted magenta and yellow. They don’t have issues with color here.

Purmamarca, Jujuy, Argentina: Another Amazing Day

Yesterday, I tried to get a tour through Quebrada de Humehuaca, a region known for its natural beauty and a ways outside of Jujuy, but sadly, there were none that had an English-speaking guide and for the big money they wanted, I just had to take a pass. So my plan today was to just hang out and chill in Jujuy.

But when I woke up, I thought, “I can’t NOT go to Humahuaca because there’s no tour in English… that’s loco.” So I had breakfast – yes, and all-bread breakfast, all this bread is killing me, I’ll never be able to eat healthy on this trip – and headed to the bus terminal to catch an autobus to Purmamarca, about 1 ½ hours outside Jujuy.

I arrived at a small village, just a few dirt roads with adobe houses, a few restaurants and shops, and a small but lovely central square around which there was a local crafts market. Now I know that I’m in Northern Argentina, but I keep thinking I’m in Bolivia. Everyone looks Bolivian, the high desert feels Bolivian, and the handicrafts seem Bolivian.

The sweet solitariness of this place immediately spoke to me. I was far away from anything and surrounded by silent desert beauty. Purmamarca is known specifically for a natural formation that is utterly stunning, Cerro de los Siete Colores. I took my time strolling around the town and finally came to a road that looked like it led to the nearest hill. I saw a path and climbed to the top where I found other people sitting and quietly chatting, drinking maté tea and looking at the entire panorama laid out before us. The morning sunshine had this quality that I love, this certain brightness, newness. It was a perfect time to be drinking in this whole landscape. I sat for over an hour there, shifting my position like the hands of a clock every 20 minutes or so so that I could really absorb each detail of the formations surrounding me: the colors, the shades, the shapes. There was so much to see and I wanted to sink in to it as deeply into it as I could.

The sky a vibrant, intense blue and perfectly clear. In the deeper mountains: emerald, jade, adobe, moss, willow, deep grey, and grey-green. Offset by the deeper mountains, mountains in the foreground: adobe, purple brown, snow-pink, deep pink, burgundy, mauve, clay, rust, ochre, orange, peach, yellow-green. And closer in, the trees and their blooms of bright yellow and coral.

As I looked, I saw a small trail leading into the mountains. No one seemed to be taking it, and as a person who seems to be drawn to the road less traveled, I came down from my perch, sought it out and started walking.

I climbed and passed through a gateway of sorts, a “V” between two hills that was a passageway from town into mountains. The gravity of these formations became clear and present. I stood at the crux just drinking in the unbelievable view. Impressive mountains, hulking but also with graceful curves, presented themselves to me, or more accurately, I presented myself to them. No one was around. I set off. Without at map, in flip flops, and with only one bottle of water, I was cautious at first. But eventually as I walked, I saw two other people taking the trail ahead of me so I knew I could follow them and feel safe.

Broken rocks and intermittent desert scrub covered most of the ground save for the hiking path. Previous hikers had made rock mounds, altars or rough sculptures. I did a Goldsworthy meditation, carefully seeking out just the right rocks to build a round, column altar. I played with working quickly, and with working slowly, each of those processes yielding different experiences of building. After about an hour, it felt finished so I moved on. This hike had turned into a meditation, so I walked slowly through the large hill structures, taking my time to notice detail and see how things shifted as my own perspective changed. I heard the rocks crunching under my feet, felt the sun beating down on my shoulders and face and the wind cooling my skin.

I rounded another corner and a huge hill in shades of orange appeared. Not only were the colors amazing, but the erosion of the rock made fantastical stalagmite-like formations – as if the stalagmites all clustered together for protection against the elements.

On the last part of this hike, I was directly up against one of the large hills. It was made of millions of tiny shards of sharp rock, like pieces of broken glass, fused together by course desert earth.

I passed through another crux, like the one I entered to embark on this hike, and emerged again close to town. But before I descended, I stood still at this crux. Two hills rose on either side of me to create narrow passageway that acted as a wind tunnel. I stood there, feeling the fierce wind pushing me. It was so strong I could lean into it without falling. The sound was thunderous.

I made my way back into town, then to a hole-in-the-wall shop to get a drink and a late, late lunch, and to the little central square to read my book. At 4:20, I caught my bus back to Jujuy. It was a good day.

Tomorrow, I leave for Salta.