Goodbyes in Tilcara

When I wake up at 5am, the pena is still going strong. Fabian instructs me, bafflingly, to shut the door after him. I, shrug, get my pack ready and follow. He tells me, no, that the women are traveling with me, and he is headed towards the Bolivian border. So we say our goodbyes and in truth it does feel good to go back to bed.

Laura is ill with a headache and stomach pangs that morning when we go to breakfast. I suspect the altitude is getting to her. We part after breakfast to meet that afternoon for the bus to Tilcara. I take one last walk past the market and hike down the road towards San Isidor. Children play along the path as villagers walk their burros. I bottom out in the canyon and turn back in time to make my bus.

I find Laura laid out on the church steps. I sit on the plaza wall and write. We board the bus and a very white American man taps on the window summoning us outside. The ladies have a SUV ride into Humahuaca, the stopover point to Tilcara, but I was rejected. But the ladies deserve a comfortable ride. Beatriz gives me a hug and leaves in the SUV with plans to meet me in Humahuaca.

When I find them again, Beatriz gives me a hug hello, happy that I made it. As I search the town for an ATM I arrive back to the bus and Laura and Beatriz have managed to carry my overstuffed pack to the bus.We buy our three peso tickets to Tilcara and board the bus within a half hour. As I search the town for an ATM I arrive back to the bus and Laura and Beatriz have managed to carry my overstuffed pack to the bus. We pull into Tilcara and I’m taken aback. The town and countryside is beautiful. Its another adobe filled village with funky cafes and artisan shops. Its surrounded by red buttes and beige mountains. The place we stay is like a villa. There are murals on the walls and the toilet tank is of a bygone era, fitted high on the wall with a chord to activate the flush. The lamp shades are the multiholed skeletons of saguaro cactus.

I walk around town briefly and return in time for dinner. I meet up with Laura and Beatriz for our last meal together. The café is playing modern jazz and has a nice, mellow ambience. A dog with a gimpy front leg hobbles through the digs, and she looks familiar. Beatriz makes sense of it for me. The people who own our hostel run this place as well. We order a quinoa stew, corn stew, and a plate of steak and pureed squash. We share plates, as usual. I eat the most sumptuous steak on the planet, I imagine, and I’m no beefeater. Beatriz talks to me about my timidity and the warmth of Argentine culture and the coolness of mine.

I eat most of Laura’s lomo and squash. She is still feeling ill. I say goodbye as they leave for Jujuy and Buenos Aires in the morning. I listen to a hip jazz trio, part native, part beatnik. I return to my hostel sated.

Lesson One

I awake that night to a ruckus at the door. There are fumbling keys and frantic talking and the hostess comes in and says something in Spanish and Fabian moves his things into my room, further words are exchanged and he moves them back.

In the morning an older woman walks by my door and tells me. "You are not Argentinian."

"No. Estados Unidos." She gives me a sour look and goes back downstairs.

Fabian has already established a rapport with the lady and her friend. I walk down the steps and we all go out for breakfast. Bread, café, two kinds of marmalade, manteca, goat cheese all for half an American dollar. Beatriz tells me, to no great surprise, that she hates Americans. When she sees an American she sees Bush, imperialism, killing, using the world at our disposal with little regard. She asks me if I know about Pinochet and the coup in Chile. Then she asks me if I know about the Argentinian Dirty Wars of the 80s: "The US intervened," she explains to me, and made it worse. I like Beatriz immediately and it doesn’t take long for her to warm up to me as well.

We are looking for a truck to San Isidor. Being who I am, I want to walk, but I keep this to myself. I want to keep the group together. We wait by the plaza as Spanish hippies lay out their jewelery for sale on the plaza, and await the next busload of tourists. The influx is such a trickle that I wonder how they eat, even in Iruya. Beatriz chats with them as they share the mate.

Fabian comes back to say that the next truck will not leave until tomorrow. Beatriz then disappears up the street and comes back with a ride. We breathe in the aire libre as things unfold at a decidely Iruya-like pace. We huddle onto the four chairs set up on the back of the pickup and pull on a woolen blanket. We head up a valley in between red and green shaded mountains past farms, natives on horseback, and Quechans towing pack mules to and from their farms. We splash through the river a dozen times and gradually climb the valley.

Once the stone on the road becomes too loose, we get off and walk the last several hundred meters to San Isidor. Its another small village with a blue steepled church and a mirardor. A cemetery lay high above town on the summit. A pair of goats play in a field and Laura, Beatriz’s companion, hugs one while I take the photo. Our group walks past a Jardin de Ninos and into the village proper to the comedor with llama woven crafts and food. I find a Andean style llama knit hat and pull it on to everyone’s amusement.

Inside a cultural center we meet with a pony tailed Quechan shaman of sorts. He describes the culture and demonstrates some ceremonial instruments that correspond with the seasons. An enormous feathered condor skin, big enough to wrap around a grown man, hangs on the wall. We follow the switchbacks to the mirador and gated cemetery where the dead enjoy a vista over the town where they lived. The stones and crosses are draped in plastic hoops circled with pastel colored plastic flowers. We go back down to the truck with the shaman and pile in.

Its time for coffee again in Iruya, along with pan and queso. The hippies take their spot at a table in an adjacent dining room. We go into town to walk around the open market filled with clothing and work supplies, soccer balls, kettles of food on charcoal, and a papas fritas stand with mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup for condiments. At dinner we order Cordero estafado, a lamb stew, papa and quinoa tortillas and a traditional stew and pass each dish around. We open a bottle of wine. Beatriz gives me a Castelano lesson, "The pouring of the wine." : Deseo un vaso de vino, por favor. Por supuesto! Gracias! De Nada! "Lesson one." Fabian shows me how to twist the bottle after pouring to prevent spilling a drop.

As dark takes hold all of us walk to the mirador to see the town at night. Why does that sign have ice cream written in english, I ask. Fabian tells me that it is a brand name like McDonalds. "This is what I mean!" Beatriz says. So I say, "Cuando construyen un McDonalds en Iruya es el fin del mundo," which earns knowing laughs from my friends.

On top of town in an unlikely posh hotel, so we climb the steps of this apparition. The pristinely appointed lobby, exclusive dining and even the radiators stand in stark contrast to the rest of the town. Finely woven Quechan textiles are displayed under glass and for their price one could have food and accommodation in Iruya for a month. We pose for pictures in the lobby and then return to the dirt, garbage and dung covered cobble. A storm rattles the tin roof of our café. Beatriz whispers to me. She thinks the Quebec man at the next table is a Nazi. She showed him a necklace she received from a Jewish friend and he looked repulsed. I have a bad feeling about him as well and he sets me on edge when he asks me what I’m thinking.

Back at the hospedaje, the women plot out the rest of my route through Argentina. We take turns looking at each other’s photos and get to bed just as the all night pena outside our window stokes up.

Arriving in Iruya

I eat my breakfast at La Posada this morning. Fabian sits down with me to pan, marmalade and dulce de leche and asks if he could travel to Iruya with me. He tells me about another town, Purmamarca, and the beautiful salt flats, Gran Salinas, and I’m sold. I add it to my itinerary. A rope is handed down from the top of the bus to Iruya and the bags are pulled to the roof and secured. We get into the bus filled mostly by Quechan elders. The bus climbs a narrow cliffside road that no bus should rightfully be attempting, and the tourists in the bus gasp.

We top the 14k Condor Pass and start weaving around the hairpin switchbacks without a clear sense of where the edge is. We cross the line where a bus ride becomes an adventure. Fabian asks for a translation to the English expression when shit runs down your leg out of fear. "Shit your pants."

Iruya is smaller and sleepier than Humahuaca. It is nestled in a canyon and tilted at a steep angle sloping down to another canyon with a wide river bed with narrow channels. The majority of the bed is filled with rock and silt awaiting to be picked up by the next flood. Touts accost us right off the bus and lead us to their hospedajes going for a $2 a night. The first one we walk into is hospedaje Lili. There are simple accommodations here, plain beds and a tin roof and an outside bathroom with no toilet seat. It overlooks the church belfry and the red and green mountains and this is where we stay.

Fabian finds the tourist office. I go to sit down, but instead of disturbing the dead, stuffed cat from the seats, I stand. The agent sells us a small, one page map for 10 centavos and circles the attractions of the town: the mirardor atop of town, Villa Campo, the neighboring peublo and prime spot to take photos of Iruya, and an even more isolated village 10 km upriver and a thousand feet higher, San Isidor.

We hike to the mirador and then walk down again, and cross the river into Villa Campo and up the steep cobble past the adobe houses. Burros and dogs have the run of the streets. We make it to the top of town and are stopped there by private property signs and the sight of Quechan men leading burros down the mountainside switchbacks. The burros carry a few pieces of dilapidated wood on their back for some undetermined purpose. We hear a loudspeaker from Iruya calling for men to do work.

We return to Iruya and rest before dinner. I see a group of schoolboys doing a bobbing and weaving traditional dance in the middle of the street while their instructor whistles the music. At dinner, the waiter writes down the menu on a napkin and hands it to us. I eat two grilled flank steaks and potatoes and Fabian orders a Quinoa (a traditional grain) Tortilla. With our drinks we pay 13 pesos, all told, $2 each. I shake my head to Fabian, "imposible!"