The next morning did not start off promising. "I feel terrible," Jessie informed me as she returned from the bathroom.
She did look pale and wan, but we had little time to figure out what to do. The van arrived just as the hostel manager came back to check on us. "
Necessitos un medico?"
"No, no, no," Jessie replied in Spanish. "I just don't feel good." I could hear Chris out front, trying to explain in his halting, American-accented Spanish that one of our number was sick and we needed a few minutes.
"They're going to pick some other people up and come back," he reported.
Jessie disappeared into the bathroom again as I waited nervously. I had no idea how to judge how sick she might be and whether it was a good idea to leave her alone at the hostel.
Minutes later she returned, though, seeming much perkier. "Okay, I'm coming," she announced. I expressed my surprise but was relieved that we wouldn't have to leave anyone behind.
The van arrived soon after, and we climbed aboard, recognizing a few of the Argentines from the previous day. We climbed into the back row and were greeted by Jim, a middle-aged, balding American. It turned out he was living in Buenos Aires for a few months and had taken a vacation in Salta.
The van made more stops, picking up two young Frenchmen and two young girls whom I first assumed were Brazilian. I was relieved that we would finally be accompanied by people close to our own age.
As we had the previous two days, the van wound through the jungle and into a desert canyon. This was the famous Humahuaca gorge, a preserved timeline of indigenous Andean culture. Town names along the route were named for various tribes of the formerly massive Humahuaca nation. As I learned later from Lonely Planet, ruins here were mostly of small settlements, not the extraordinary architecture found farther north in places like Peru. The pre-colonial tribes of northern Argentina were largely nomadic peoples.
Along the road lay a railroad line, clearly in disrepair. Eugenia, our guide again, pointed out the state of the railways and mentioned that they had been privatized in the 1990s by former President Carlos Menem. It was apparently bad luck to mention his name, as he is blamed for policies that led to the economic crisis of 2001 and 2002. Shockingly, though, Menem came back from exile in Chile and recently won a seat in a provincial legislature. He is considered a possible prospect for a 2007 presidential challenge to incumbent Nelson Kirchner. Such a move seems incomprehensible -- unless you've followed the career of former DC mayor Marion Barry.
Back in the van, Jim chatted up both the Israeli girls and the three of us. He was one of those people who could, and did, talk to anyone in any situation. That behavior usually made me suspicious -- or jealous -- but it was impossible to dislike Jim. He was exuberant and gregarious, with the vitality of someone half his age. Even as he videotaped most of the trip to make a home movie for his wife and daughter in Illinois, he talked about his frequent all-night visits to Buenos Aires' famous clubs.
Our other companions in the back of the van turned out to be two 22-year-old Israeli girls, Reut and Liora. They spoke fairly good English, but their accents made it a bit tough to understand them. Like many Israelis, they had finished their service with the IDF (Israeli Army) and were traveling for several months before moving on to attend a university.
I talked briefly with Liora as we walked out to get a closer look at the Colla Skirt, a red butte topped with yellow that looked remarkably like a skirt commonly worn by Quechua women. The girls were from outside Tel Aviv, it turned out. Liora herself was Russian by birth, but her family emigrated to Israel when she was five years old.
Early in the afternoon, we finally reached the end of the canyon at the town of Humahuaca. 9000 people, mostly of aboriginal descent, live there trying to farm in the desert and cater to the hordes of tourists coming through the gorge. They are generally poor and need jobs, so Eugenia explained to us that a young man would guide us through his town as a way of making a little money.
Stepping off the bus in the main square, we were immediately surrounded by a number of townspeople trying to sell us things. One old woman in traditional dress with a baby strapped to her back offered to let us take her picture for one peso. We eschewed that opportunity, but Chris bought a small bag of coca leaves from her to help us relieve our altitude headaches. It turned out that virtually everyone in the town, even little boys who ran around us, was selling coca leaves.
Coca leaves are technically illegal in Argentina (though not in neighboring Bolivia), but in the Andes the police ignore all but the largest sellers of the leaf. I took a small amount from Chris' bag, stuffed it in my cheek, and soon felt my headache start to subside.
Our fellow foreign travelers came up to us with interest. "What is that?" Reut asked.
Chris and I alternated in telling them about coca leaves, relating the entire story we had heard from Eugenia. "You will see big pink elephants," I added for effect, drawing a laugh from the Israeli girls. My mouth started to go numb, and I explained that coca leaves contained an analgesic, similar to novicaine.
As we entered a restaurant for lunch, I could not resist trying out my rusty French on a member of our group. "
Vous etes francaises?" I asked the one, who looked to be about 30 and had a stubbly red beard.
"Yes, and where are you from?" he replied in fluent, if accented English.
"
Je suis american," I replied, trying to push on in French. "
Vous etes d'ou?"
I didn't get much further than that before we sat down to lunch. There was goat on the menu -- this time in stew form -- but I could not resist trying a new animal, in this case llama.
The Israeli girls struggled to decide what to eat, jabbered across me in rapid Hebrew. "Do they have something that is just cow?" Liora asked Jessie.
She tried to order a regular beef steak, but it came out as llama anyway. I didn't seem much of a difference between the two. Llama was tasty, but nowhere near the delight of the previous day's goat.
Dessert provided the day's real entertainment. I recognized what the waiter had on his tray from the previous day's lunch, but this time the odd concotion was offered without nuts on top, so I eagerly grabbed a small plate.
On it was a rectangular white slab and a pile of dark orange jelly. The white slab, it turned out, was goat cheese -- a sweet cheese, without the sharpness of the more familiar feta. The jelly was called
cayote, made from a regional fruit. Piled together, it actually made for a delectable, if unusual, treat.
To my left, Liora was not having the same joy of culinary discovery. She poked at the dessert, then sampled a small piece of the goat cheese. "It tastes like the llama smells!" she cried.
We burst into laughter. "It smells like the zoo!" she continued. Jim, to his credit, offered her the ice cream he had ordered, but she seemed to have lost her appetite.
Leaving the restaurant, we wandered further around town as our group dispersed a bit. I continued my quest to practice French with my new friend, who was stereotypically named Pierre. He complimented my ability, but I felt tounge-tied as I strained to remember vocabulary and tenses and to avoid the newfound reflex of speaking Spanish. It turned into a hilarious amalgamation of the three languages, where I tried to speak in French, turned in desparation to English, then constantly interjected with a wholly unnecessary "Si!"
On the return, we stopped to take pictures of a dramatic montain referred to as the Painter's Palatte. Here a remarkably symmetrical set of ridges were striped in yellows and reds, stretching across the far side of the canyon.
Young girls greeted us as we left the bus, handing us odd necklaces with scraps of paper. The English-speaking portion of the bus stood around in confusion, thinking we were somehow buying something. "No, no," Eugenia explained. "They give you this gift with their address so you can send them things you don't need." Poverty, it seems, ran the length of the gorge.
Jessie mused that she would likely send them the things she would otherwise throw out from her move out of Buenos Aires.
Back in Salta, it was my mission to get a hold of Aerolineas Argentinas, the national airline. I had decided earlier to take a solo bus journey to see the mighty Iguazu falls in the northeast, but needed a flight back to Buenos Aires. Aerolineas allowed me to make a reservation online, but not to pay for it -- and the reservation expired in 24 hours, when I would be on the bus.
I tried twice to connect with them, each time being put on hold for an inordinate amount of time. Finally, after waiting more than half an hour with no signal that anyone would be helping me, I hung up in irritation and walked with Jessie back to the center of town, where we met up with the rest of our English-speaking bus crew.
It was clear after a short time that the Israeli girls, especially Reut, were looking for something in particular, as opposed to the rest of us, who would have been content with a plate of empanadas and some beers. So it was that we found ourselves marching all over town, looking for some place that was, in Reut's words, "like a pub."
She brazenly walked up to locals and asked them in Spanish if they knew where such a place would be. I could only imagine what she was saying to describe her goal. We set off walking for several blocks, with Jim joking the whole way that we were on a wild goose chase.
He explained to us another curious Argentine custom. Rather than honestly saying "I don't know," in response to a request for information, most Argentines will make up an answer. It's not malicious, they just think it rude to give no information. So a lost gringo asking for directions may find plenty of help, but not necessarily his hotel.
After walking several blocks more, we finally found a dark and promising-looking bar. This was enough for the girls, and we entered. Inside, things were remarkably strange. Though it was already 10pm, the bar was empty -- Argentines are worse than Europeans and don't go out as early as this.
What was even more striking was that while the bar was dimly lit and candles flickered on each table, giant TV projectors were playing Queen videos on the wall. It made for a rather confounding experience overall.
We settled down to eat as the video switched to a DVD of Madonna's confessions tour, which is quite a visual spectacle. I perused the menu -- no tamales, mostly pizza and sandwiches. After my previous experience in Buenos Aires with pizza, I had no desire to take that route and instead explored other options. It seemed like all the sandwiches involved beef. Beef, beef everywhere -- it was impossible to escape in this country.
I ordered a
lomito completo, which was more of a heart attack that I could have imagined. Pieces of steak smothered in cheese were topped by tomatoes, a piece of ham, and a fried egg and wedged between two thin pieces of bread. It was good, but I could only imagine my heart revolting soon.
We washed the food down with copious quantities of beer as the music continued to change. I openly performed, to the delight of the table, as Guns 'n Roses played. Jessie explained my legendary karaoke prowess, and Jim got up to request that the DJ play Journey. He apparently said yes, but we instead had to settle for Eric Clapton.
Later, however, an AC/DC video came on, and we recalled that it really is a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll.
It's a long way to the top for a woman in Argentina as well, apparently. "Women here are really mistreated," Jim explained. "They asked me who should get a certain position and I gave them the name of this woman, but they specifically chose someone else. Why ask my opinion? They just say, Jim, you don't understand. I said yeah, I don't!"
Lonely Planet confirmed Jim's assessment, though the book pointed out that Argentina's legislature is 40% female, far higher than the 15% or so in the United States or many other Western countries.
We hadn't gotten
barracho as originally planned, but we were all tired from the day. Only Jim suggested finding a club to dance, but the rest of us, less than half his age, shook our heads sadly.
Walking back to the hostel at 1am, we noticed that the Argentines were only starting to sit down to dinner.
