Iruya

We spent three days in the remote mountain hamlet of Iruya. It’s a fully-functioning town, but four hours away from civilization and reachable only by a vertiginous dirt road. The building at the top of the hill on the right, behind the dome, was our hotel, the Hostería Iruya.

Below are some photos and a video of the crazy road leading to Iruya. The buses would fly down this road at ridiculous speeds. We sort of crept along, but made it there without invoking the “vehicle rollover” clause of our automobile insurance:

This village, like others we’ve stayed at in this region, is made up of mostly indigenous Andeans. The mother and child below are sporting llama-wool ponchos. Speaking of women and children, a local ritual here involves men coming in from surrounding villages once a year to have sex with the women, some of whom can entertain up to five men in a single night. The children born of such pairings are revered by the village. It’s apparently a way to increase the genetic diversity of isolated villages like this one, which are at risk of inbreeding. Note: if you intend to entertain five men in one night, red hot-pants make perfect sense but you probably shouldn’t wear a white poncho.

(If you ever go to Iruya, beware the dog on the left – he attacked our car and left claw marks in the paint.)

Here’s the view from the bedroom window of our hotel. This cemetery was a bit bigger than the others we’ve seen, probably because of the road into town. Good Morning Corpses!

On the third day, we took the Volkswagen on an ill-advised trip up the rocky river canyon to San Isidro. We got stuck halfway up, and walked the remaining distance. Here’s us at the village entrance:

Public transit in San Isidro:

-J

Animals in Argentina

Here are some pictures of animal friends we’ve met in Argentina.

Llamas:

We named this llama “Heather” because she’s clearly the prettiest, most popular llama on the puna. And she’s wearing red ribbons. Lots of them. Not sure why, especially since we came upon her in the middle of nowhere, part of a herd of less attractive, less popular llamas. We’re speculating that the ribbons and bows are the equivalent of a brand, allowing llama ranchers to identify the animals. We’re also speculating that Heather’s rancher is a 12-year-old girl.

Burros:

These noble burros and I may not see eye-to-eye regarding the music of Bob Mould, but I love them anyway. Burros are all over the place here. In Iruya, the mountain village where we’re now staying, they’re used to move food and supplies up the steep trails. Burros also roam wild, and will kick you if you piss them off.

Vicuñas:

Finally, I found my herd of wild vicuñas. Vicuñas are not llamas, but they’re pretty close. They’re svelter, have softer and shorter hair, and are used to make really nice overcoats. The fellows in the video above are part of a wild herd, pre-overcoat.

Tethered Dogs of Buenos Aires:

For the first few days in Buenos Aires, we kept coming across groups of dogs, like this one, tied to fences or street lights. WTF? Finally, we realized that there are a lot of dogs in BA apartments, and the dog-walkers walk quite a few at the same time. These guys are waiting for their walker to deliver one of their friends back to his apartment. If this were New York, two would be stolen, four made into soup and the other six run over.

-J

Las Salinas Grandes

As part of our rather epic day on Wednesday, we drove past huge salt flats—Las Salinas Grandes—shortly after noon. Not content merely to see the saline expanse from afar, we took a detour down an even smaller dirt road that led out onto the stark white of the plain.
When looking at them up close wasn’t enough, we got out of the car and felt them. Sharp!

The temptation proved to be too much, and we had to taste. Salty!

And then we felt compelled to model. Style!

But it wasn’t all fun, and Jim took a moment to check out the extent to which we’ve ravaged the Gol.

She’s more dusty than anything, though I’m glad I don’t have anything invested in her longevity–the undercarriage has taken quite a bruising. (Not to mention the dog that attacked the passenger door with its claws as we drove into Iruya, or what happened today when we pretended she was an off-roading Jeep–stream-fording and all–on the way to some far-off hill town. Except a Jeep wouldn´t get its undercarriage stuck on rocks while trying to cross a river, and so wouldn´t require Jim, plus three friendly college-age Porteños hiking along in front of us, to lift the front of the car as I slammed on the pedal while in reverse in order to extricate said car from a premature, watery death. Oops.)
- M

The clean mountain air

It may have been la cocina argentina; it may have been the bumpy road; it may have been the lower air pressure at altitude–heck, it may have been a combination of all three. Whatever it was, the drive to Cachi, with its twists and turns, breathtaking drops and dramatic ascents, took an especially harrowing turn that left us gasping for air and grasping for door handles–while the puna, spread wide in all its arid glory, watched over us and our pulmonary travails with a silence most puna-like in its sparse, unpeopled timelessness.

- M

Americans do it better

On a long trip to a foreign land, there comes a time when you stop accepting and start judging. I’ve been here long enough to admire this beautiful country and its proud and friendly people. Now it’s time to ask them what the hell they’re thinking. These questions are addressed to Argentinians everywhere:

Why don’t you turn on your car’s headlights at night?

It’s 4AM. You’re attempting to cross a street in Buenos Aires. A cab comes squealing around the corner at 60kph with only his parking lights on. He almost hits you, then flashes his headlights at you as if you did something wrong. Huh? If those headlights can flash, they can turn on. Then the cabbie can SEE YOU, and wouldn’t have to flash his headlights when he’s about to HIT YOU. Same for the bus drivers. Driving around in the dark without headlights on makes no sense, especially if you’re wearing slimming black because you’ve gotten fat eating too many Argentinean steaks. Why why why no headlights?

Your dog just took a shit in front of my new tennis shoe. Why don’t you pick it up?

Dog shit smells bad and is difficult to wash out of the treads of one’s shoes. Plastic bags are light and portable, and can pick up dog shit in a jiffy. Why not use them? I like to walk with long, purposeful strides which convey a degree of grace and poise. It’s hard to do this if one is Irish step-dancing around dog piles every few feet on the sidewalk. I don’t piss in your doghouse – why does your dog shit on my sidewalk?

How many ugly French cars are on your roads?

Beat up Peugeots. Sagging Citroens. Ragged Renaults. They’re everywhere. And they’re ugly as sin. There’s a reason you don’t see these wimpmobiles in America anymore. It’s because they’re funny-looking, they have bad suspensions and they break down a lot. (Note: the author has fallen in love with the Peugeot 200-series hatchback, so that model is exempt from this diatribe.) Where are the Freedom Cars like the Hummer H2? How can old people be protected from harm without their 20-ton Crown Victorias? You Argentinians have your own style – you don’t need to ape the French. Try ours.

Why do you eat bunnies and cute baby goats?

At our hotel in Cachi, Miles ordered “cabrito”, or kid goat. The next day, at the farm adjacent to our hotel, we noticed one less baby goat in the herd, and a distraught nannie goat. The next night, he ordered rabbit. And the next morning, the fluffy white bunny in the hutch simply wasn’t there. Is it really necessary to eat young, cute animals? Why not old and ugly animals like the indigenous American blue-footed mcNugget bird?

This is South America. Why the bidet?

We have it easy in America when we take a dump. We do our business, wipe with toilet paper, and flush. The Argentine people, being for the most part DESCENDED FROM EUROPEANS, choose to use bidets. But there are many kinds of bidets. Like the one in our rental apartment, which I turned on and which promptly shot a geyser of ass-cleaning action directly up and into the plasterboard ceiling of the bathroom. Or the misaligned one clamped to the toilet at the hotel in Salta, which administers a scalding laser beam of water directly onto one’s thigh, soaking one’s sock, and then one’s shoe, with water of questionable clarity. The French call it sanitation; I call it aquatic rape. Why, again, the need to ape the French?

-J

Single-speeds of Cafayate

Soon after arriving in Cafayate and checking into our musty dump of an overpriced room at the Hotel Briones, my heart soars at the sight of so many bikes on the streets. And upon further inspection: single-speeds…everywhere.

Dear Mission, eat your heart out.
- M

The Land of Llamas

It’s been a bit of a shock moving from urban Buenos Aires to the relative emptiness of the high desert mountains, but that shock has been softened by the presence of a large number of magnificent llamas. Their wool is so soft that we just had to buy a large llama-wool blanket, and I have no idea how we’re going to get it back to San Francisco–perhaps if Miles clutches it tightly, sucks his thumb and glowers at anyone who tries to take it away.

Over the last four days, we’ve had some outdoorsy adventures. We’ve had to ford rivers in our Volkswagen Gol – we actually had to drive the little silver hatchback into the water, through the moving current, and up the other side. “Ford” is not a verb used very often in modern times, but that didn’t stop us from successfully emerging, triumphant, on the western bank. We’ve also eaten baby goat, sampled Torrontés and Cabernet wine ice cream, been inside the “Throat of the Devil” and inadvertently shopped at ChangoMás, the Argentine WalMart.

Our trip has taken us over the mountains from Salta to the oasis village of Cachi. We stayed a couple of nights there and then drove over a very rough dirt road Cafayate. From Cafayate we drove through a river gorge back to Salta, and continued on to the posh hillside town of San Lorenzo (this might be Spanish for “Woodside”–not sure), where we’re currently enjoying a bottle of Los Leones Malbec.

We pose in Salta, right after picking up our own personal Gol. Jim shown in front of the Hotel Munay.

We set out on the rough road to Cachi, stopping at a roadside place in the middle of nowhere for a lunch of empanadas and milanesa. Jim brings fashion to locals.

After many switchbacks, we finally come to the pass. Some landmark signs and a small shrine mark the top of the grade.

The wide-open puna (a high treeless plateau in the Andes, for those who have not yet heeded its call) beckons us in the distance, begging us to traverse its lonely expanse.

Llamas!

We didn’t see many llamas on the road to Cachi, but our hotel had a fantastic llama gazebo:

This is the pool at our hotel. That’s Miles luxuriating in the red bathing suit.

The next day, from Cachi to Cafayate, we found a valley of gigantic cactus.

And more rocky vistas.

We did a quick drive-through of a small desert town on the way to Cafayate.

And on the drive back toward Salta, stopped at La Garganta Del Diablo, or the “Throat of the Devil”:

Here’s a 360-degree video of the fearsome Garganta:

Jim and Miles, in uniform, overlooking the Valles Calchaquíes:

We hiked up a canyon today into the mountain jungle of San Lorenzo.

-M & J

Saltamos a Salta

Don’t cry for us, Buenos Aires—we’ve moved on to Salta, though we will see you again soon.

With a tear in our eye yesterday morning, we said goodbye to our little haven at 3363 Cabello. Sure, it could have been the fact that we had our earliest start so far, waking up nearly at the crack of dawn—9:00!—but I think much of our fleeting sorrow had to do with the attachment that we’d developed over the last couple of weeks to the little studio que podría.

We arrived at the airport with enough time to dash off a few postcards to those special humans who raised us—you guys know who are—before getting on the plane. Once aboard, we were treated to sundry desiccated snacks and a selection of hilarious videos involving practical jokes played on unsuspecting residents of what seemed to be Quebec—they looked vaguely French, though appeared, without the benefit of headphones, sometimes to be speaking English. Our favorite of these videos, I think, was of a Port-a-Potty in which unsuspecting toilet-goers were surprised—to put it mildly—when, just as they had locked the door and were about to drop trou, the seat cover flew open and a man’s head popped out. Fantastic.

Landing in Salta was uneventful, and we soon arrived at the Munay Hotel, the Four Seasons Salta having been booked when we called for reservations. Our room had two twin beds, each including a blanket emblazoned with a roaring lion’s head; a door; a window; and a toilet with a bolt-on bidet. Qué lujo!

We had lunch, rented a car, and took a look at the town’s main churches (note the all-seeing eye in the pyramid, similar to that on a dollar bill, in the picture below)—

though we unfortunately missed what our guide book described as the “lurid” statue of St. Sebastian inside the Iglesia San Francisco. We did, however, take note of the “Radio Maria 102.1 FM” poster tacked to a church bulletin board.

Today we set out on a road trip in our 3-door VW Gol—air, power steering and unlimited mileage—heading south towards the town of Cachi, through country that moved the writers of our guidebook to hyperbole.

- M

Food = Love

When you’re well fed and boozed, life is just better. You become relaxed, gracious, magnanimous. You don’t speak, you enthuse. You don’t get up, you rise. You don’t burp onions, you exhale. And you don’t vomit – you certainly don’t vomit, even after drinking a ginger cocktail and two bottles of Malbec – because the red meat absorbs all the alcohol. You simply glide slowly toward the door, carefully avoiding steps and tables.

We reached such an enlightened state this weekend at the parrilla Cabrera in Palermo Viejo. It was the best meal of our trip so far, and included the best steak I’ve had in a very long time. Beef is amazing here in Argentina – the cows are all grass-fed, are injected with no hormones or antibiotics, and have leaner, sweeter and tastier meat than their cousins in the United States.

Now take such a steak (measuring 12″ x 6″ x 2″), place it on a wooden slab, surround it with little Korean-style bowls of pumpkin, corn, garlic, potatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, etc., and voilà, true love:

What we found after ordering two of the above – we shared both a sirloin and a filet mignon cut – was that customers typically share one of these for two people. So we had two of everything you see above in front of us at the same time, piled high onto a small table. I’ve never felt more like a voracious, fat American. We finished nearly all of it. Special touch: the wait was 40 minutes, and the hostess served free glasses of champagne to those of us standing on the sidewalk to make our wait more comfortable. I love this country.

On Sunday night, we went to Cumaná, a country restaurant know for its hearty stews and empanadas. It was a recommendation from a friend, and proved to be an amazingly good deal ($10 USD / person, including a bottle of wine). And now we know what a perfect empanada is supposed to taste like. They had a fantastic empanada identification scheme, where they would punch holes, morse code-style, in the edges of the empanadas so you knew what they contained. We had to consult the back of our menu, which decoded the patterns into the various empanadas we ordered: pumpkin, ham and cheese, spicy beef, and creamed chard. They even offered a dulce de leche (caramel) filling, but we were too full to indulge in such sin.

American Airlines is going to charge an excessive baggage fee for each cheek of my ass on the return flight.

-J

Public art

Here are some pics of the cool spray can/stencil art we’ve seen on the walls of this fair city. I’m still on the lookout for ABSTEMIO neatly stenciled somewhere.

Click on any of the photos to enlarge.