Finding La Garganta

I eat breakfast and drop off the laundry, and send the mail and the postman is surprised when I tell him "Estados Unidos." Melissa emerges after 11 hours of sleep. She goes to eat breakfast and to buy provisions for the day and we’re off to search for Garganta once again. And it’s a beautiful, crystal day and I make the correct turn this time after passing the water treatment plant with resident sheep grazing on the grounds. We walk up a trail across a barren hillside strewn with rocks, manure and saguaro cactus, but not much else.

Melissa is not yet acclimated and rests and drinks water frequently. We reach an arrow pointing to the Garganta. We follow a trail steeply descending to a small dam and hydroelectric plant. The water channels into a small cement canal, and after descending a ladder, I follow it into what looks like a tiny railroad tunnel. A small pool of water lay just above the canal and Melissa takes the opportunity to strip into a bikini and wade into the pool and I applaud her for it.

There are no other signs or evidence of a trail so we assume the Garganta is the deep black rock ravine following the dam. Somewhat disappointed we search for some small cataratas upstream to have a picnic next to. Melissa hesitates as she skips the rocks crossing the stream, apparently never gaining a facility for these things growing up in Montreal.

We eat some incredibly succulent roast beef sandwiches. Melissa scouts for a place to nap and I investigate further upstream for bigger and better cataratas, and it doesn’t take long. A spectacular one cascading off a cliff in long beaded threads pounds onto the canyon floor into a very small lagoon. Long grass bows off the rock face on the opposite side where the prevailing wind blows the mist from the falls. On the near side the rock is barren.

I drag Melissa up from her nap and pull her up the rocks. "You’ll curse me along the way," I apologize, "but thank me when we get there." And she does. I reassure Melissa on the way back that I do know the way. A panorama of mountains and canyons lay ahead of us and its all downhill after emerging from the ravine.

In town, Melissa takes me for my first submarino at the café. We sit on tiny chairs on the lone outside table and the poor befuddled waitress snaps our pictures. We drop squares of chocolate into a tall glass of hot milk and the whole concoction is stirred with a long spoon. Specks of soft chocolate float within never quite melting completely. The sun descends over the mountain casting a subtle orange glow over the domes of the chapel which peaks over a shingled roof adjacent to the café.

We rest up for dinner at the hostel. One of my hostel mates shows me how to operate the calefaccion and I feel profoundly indebted to her. I take a wonderfully scalding shower for the first time since Iguazu and I reach a nirvana of sorts.

The hostel mate joins us for dinner that night. She is Melissa’s traveling mate. They chat in Spanish and I am mostly uncomprehending. The gimpy pooch does an elaborate pirouette before curling up in the corner of the restaurant and we all order the lomo and papitas, which are laced with oregano. For me and my $5, the dining experience is dreamy. Melissa, as usual, is very drowsy while the hostel mate and I pick at a side order of papitas. After wrapping herself in a yellow shawl, Melissa leaves. Christina and I briefly argue who will pay more of the bill, each of us insists on it, and then we return to the hostel. I find out that Christina lived for a time in Queens, NY, not far from where I once lived, but Buenos Aires is her home in more ways than one.

Aimless Wandering

I eat breakfast at a small café, El Mate, buy two liters of water and cross the river in search of a way up the beige and green rock so reminiscent of Arizona. After a fruitless search for an established path, I follow a silty wash that descends out of the maw of the mountain. The omnipresent barking of dogs fades away as the wash ascends and narrows. I spot an Argentine flag on one of the summits. Where there is a flag there is a trail, I reason, but my search fails.



I follow a tributary that could lead me to the top. The terrain is loose rock and loose rock cemented tenuously in place by packed mud. As the way steepens I get the idea that the earth and stone will break easily beneath my feet, so I go back, practically sliding on my ass, to the main wash to find a different way.



I find it. After a couple, brief, easy scrambles up shelves of packed mud and stone, there is a relatively gradual ascent to the top and a panoramic view of Tilcara, and on the other side, a large arroyo and red mountains nestled in the larger range. I know where I want to go next.


I follow some abandoned railroad tracks parallel to the Rio Grande to a trestle, full of gaps and unsafe to cross. It traverses a large, silty arroyo which I will take to the red hills. I pass a farm with the odd looking appendage of a Direct TV satellite dish and I brace for the farm dog to give chase, but not this time. I pass the largest, densest grove of saguaro I have ever seen, that grows more sparse as the red hill ascends.





The arroyo I trace soon narrows to a slot and I feel just a bit more claustrophobic as a few clouds gather overhead and some stray drops start falling. I climb as far as I can, but the way becomes loose, steep and way too precarious and I make my way down having risked all I was willing that day. I spot a stone monument atop a small hill which turns out to be the crest of Pukara. I don’t find a shortcut across the river, so I trod on, the wind, by this time, blowing with some force.

In the Tilcara market, I find a beautifully carved box of distressed wood with a llama a mountain scene carved on the lid. I get a map of the town with it, and a free postcard. I plan my next route on the map and save the postcard. I set out for Pukara, not quite knowing what to expect. I soon understand that I’m on my way to the monument I spotted earlier in the day. I pass gated llama at the entrance and one gives me such a puckered look that I fear it will spit at me, so I exit to the ruins.



They are eerily similar, an analog, to the pueblos in Arizona. This could be Tuzigoot in central Arizona. The houses all look about the same except that the church had an altar for unspecified sacrifices. For some reason, I feel hungry and tried to stave off sugar starvation with a $3.50 Pomero Gatorade. Over a dollar for this, and it seems like the price is jacked up for my benefit.



A place called Garganta del Diablo is noted on my map, and though I’m not expecting anything remotely similar to the one in Iguazu here in the desert, my curiosity is piqued. I climb up the road past a water treatment plan and turn a bend and it soon grows apparent that either the map is wrong or the Garganta isn’t what I expected. The road hugs the mountain then loops back into the highly situated barrios of Tilcara.



The clouds are lowering and gusts blow by with increasing force. Some lightning bolts zap far off mountains, so I make my way briskly towards the hostel. When I encounter chaperones of some high school kids I point in the general direction, correcting for my error in navigation, and hope they don’t mind walking in storms on exposed mountain ridges, a condition a little too scary for my lily liver.





A dog runs with purpose towards home and I walk in the same vein. I make it in just as the storm begins and put on a pot of water. I drink coffee and eat a cylinder of cookies I keep for such an occasion.



I take a very cold shower after I fail to work the calefaccion once again, and change into the last of my clean clothes. A girl, Melissa, sticks her head into my room and invites me out to dinner and I marvel how easy it has suddenly has become here in Argentina.



She’s a sexologist, she tells me, as we open a bottle of wine and I take almost instantly to her, but not because of that. We listen to reggae and talk. But she is nearly falling asleep so we leave. She pops back out of the hostel and a few moments later she is dragging me back out. A Bolivian singer is performing at the café in which I saw jazz the night before. Alas, when we arrive the show is done, but a show of sorts has ended up at our table. A drunk native with missing front teeth serenades us trying to convince us he is part of the act. He chats us up, well, mostly Melissa, and we try to tell him "chau." He finally falls asleep at our table.

Finding monkeys, nearly missing a bus.

My bus out of Iguazu is not until late in the evening and the day is too lovely so I gather some pesos, and a camera and board the cataratas bus once again. Iguanas are out in force throughout the park sunning themselves. The coatis scrounge for handouts by the food courts. I take the catwalk above the falls, a section I had mostly neglected before. I then revisit the lower falls in sun rather than torrential rain.

On a popular connector trail, the Green Trail, some park visitors are gathered by the mangroves. They spot a coral snake. I make a note of it and am wary of stepping off the trail from that point forward.

I search in vain at first for the Sendero Machuco which I finally find next to the train station. I am immediately relieved to abandon the throngs of tourists, senior citizens, school children and wander off in relative solitude. The trail is favored by the occasional group of young Argentinians clad in bathing suits and bikinis walking to and from the lagoon several kilometers out with a lone waterfall and flat rocks for sunbathing. I stop by a group peering into the canopy above. Small monkeys are swinging high in the trees and they, and I, are following them with digicams.

This is one of my favorite spots in the park. These falls are isolated and unfenced and accessible by a challenging trail. Exploration and adventure inevitably heightens beauty and solace in a way accessibility never can.

I return to the hostel hungry and listless and wait out the rest of my time by the pool wielding a Fanta and a book.

Here I am at the bus station staring at the Andesmar bus to Mendoza for twenty minutes not thinking to ask if it is going my way to Resistencia. As the bus pulls out, the baggage man frantically asked me my destination, snatches away my backpack and ticket and rushes me onto the departing bus. I settle in for a not so champagne, this time, semi cama ride drinking warm Fanta and eating cold ravioli, and not sleeping well for my ten hour ride.

Washing, Baking

Today is my day of rest, to go downtown, take care of some delinquent chores and then lay prone by the hostel pool with a book and bake. And that’s what happens. The sun is hot today, and spring is just beginning. I will not book any trips here in the summer. I throw my soiled dainties into a garbage bag and hump it to the lavaderia, a kilometer further then I anticipate. I eat another tasty hostel buffet and Irish invites me to a social gathering with his friends, but it is time to pick up my laundry. After such frantic activity in BsAs there isn’t room in my budget for too much more beer, regardless. My laundry is late, so I take another stroll around town.

Laundry in hand, I sit by the bus stop. An Argentinian girl in her twenties asks me, I presume, a question about the bus which I am too confused to answer, but she doesn't give up and proceeds to talk to me. After several discombobulations, she recommends that I use a diccionario, and how can I argue? But what really stifles the conversation is when I tell her my age. A friend of hers stops by in his car and takes her away and that is that.

Gran Aventura

I intend to go into town, mail postcards, gather provision for the day, but the day has other plans for me. The same Aussie who often joined us for nights out in BsAs ended up in Iguazu as well and he is along with El Salvador, another BsAs hostelmate, and Irish, a young lad I ate dinner with the night before. We share a taxi to the falls.

A black cloud billows as we sign up for the gran aventura tour and I worry the whole thing is going to be a little corny, but I go with it for once. The rain comes pelting in a full fledged tropical downpour as we take a guided, and open, jeep down to the river. A poncho holdout, I’m drenched to the bone. An older Argentinian woman working the dock asks for my brazo and slips on a clear plastic poncho. Our gear which is by this time drenched as well is nevertheless dropped into dry bags. The power raft driver lets us know the score right at the get go. He accelerates to a ridiculous speed and banks the boat at an angle so steep that the passengers on the side of the tilt can dip their hands in the river. The rain feels like sleet as we shoot ClassIII rapids up river. The sadist captain then points the raft straight towards the maw of a miniature niagra and accelerates. We skirt the torrents and the large, warm drops pour down.


The four of us take a circuitous hiking route around dozens of cataratas, many in coves isolated from the main falls, over a large network of metal grate catwalks. I eat an overpriced salami sandwich and sip on coffee and we backtrack to the boat launch to embark on a short ride to Isla del Sol. No sol, but plenty of rain. From the island, we get a close up view of the cataract that seemed to be on the verge of swallowing us hours before. Next to Garganta del Diablo, it is the most powerful fall I observe in the park.

I revisit Garganta Diablo, with the posse. No rainbows today. In sharp contrast to the morning, we take a languid raft ride back through the mangroves, sans motor, sans rapids, but several alligators lurk in the vegetation. The row man assures us that we’ll just throw in the fat one. Toucans are perched high in the canopy, well out of my camera range.

Parilla is served at the hostel that night and we have entertainment. Brazilian dancers in Carnivale costumes shake their nearly naked booties and grab as many in the audience who are willing to shake along.

A Iguazu

I say a rushed goodbye to L who is moving to the Palermo hostel with the will o the wisp. Out of curiosity, I wander the lovely sycamore lined lanes of Palermo, where the wealthy reside, that day and when I get back it is time to leave.

I nearly doze on the cement bus platform, dabbled with stagnant puddles, before I find myself wide awake on my full cama seat, in pleasant solitude, but a smidgen too close to the water closet. The steward walks by, in turn, with a shot of rum, a candy drop, cheese strata, tomato salad, chicken and mashed potatoes, wine, cake and then a champagne night cap before lights out. I read Travels with Charlie by Steinbeck instead of watching the four action movies that play. The 16 hours to Iguazu goes by mercifully fast.

I arrive at a resort of a hostel with club music playing at all hours, an outdoor pool, hammocks, a bar by the pool and an indoor one as well, and a restaurant. The place has not strayed far from its casino roots.

I almost immediately make my way for Iguazu, the cataratas, in the soup, the hot sticky air. I walk down the road and a guide in a tourist van, probably questioning my sanity, pulls over and gestures to me. He wants to know if I need water. Out of pride, or reticence or simply sheer stupidity, I wave him off with a gracias and continue to trod on in full exposure to the sun. I am 11km away when I feel like I should be 5. I consider waving a bus down, or anyone really, when all I have left are a few ounces of lukewarm water.

I’m quite frazzled from the heat and sun but I make it and head into Iguazu NP, board the park train and cross the catwalk to Devil’s Throat, Gargantan del Diablo, one of the most dramatic cataratas on planet earth. The drought plaguing the region several months before is not in evidence now.

Swallows zig zag in and out of the towering mist rising from a deep chasm into which the raging falls disappear. Whole seas seemed to be drained in the space of minutes. A rainbow sifts through the vapors. I take some pictures and walk to the bus stop at the entrance of the park.