BRAZIL , IGUAZU FALLS, ARGENTINA JULY 14, 2019 TO AUGUST 9, 2019

2019-07-14 - SUNDAY -- MIAMI TO SALVADOR DA BAHIA, BRAZIL

 “I need to see water.”

Five hours and 29 minutes after lift-off from Miami we slip over the bulge of the Equator and slide down into the southern hemisphere, and cross onto another continent, our fifth this year. Five miles below us the Amazon River drains South America into the Atlantic Ocean. Do those waters swirl the other way in this hemisphere? The dark hides the river and the answer.

LATAM Airlines Flight 8197 is packed solid, but at passport control we are the only passengers in the ‘Other Passports’ line and pass visa-free into Brazil in a nano-second. Seven kilos on our backs, we breeze past the hordes worrying about their luggage, through the ‘Nothing to Declare’ green door at customs, and at 10:35 pm take our virgin steps into Brazil. ‘BOB’ scrawls across the piece of cardboard. Welcomed by my very name, and a big smile, we “Olá" Claudio with our fledgling Portuguese and follow him to his cab. We pass skyscrapers and modern Salvador, then twist onto narrow cobbled streets and up into ‘Cidade Alta', the Upper City, the heart of old Salvador.

Eduardo, our AirBnB host, and Blackie, wiggly, perky- eared street mix, meet us, pay Claudio, lead us up narrow stairs, through iron gates and into ‘home’ for the next three nights. Our 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, and a kitchen drop off a long corridor-cum-art gallery, a straight run to a terrace way above Salvador's famous bay, endless in the dark.

Eduardo is 75, American, architect, and found this apartment over 40 years when he was a Peace Corps volunteer. He has lived many places but always comes back here. “I need to see water.”

We understand.

 

2019-07-15 - MONDAY – SALVADOR DA BAHIA, BRAZIL

I sit on the high terrace in dim light, soaked in immensity. Africa is out there, across the low wall of the terrace, down the steep hill, past a few blocks of ‘the lower city', the coast highway, a cement breakwater, and that slate of blue water, straight East. Then the sun comes up. In the East, as it usually does. Behind me. South of the Equator the seasons reverse…but surely not the cardinal directions. I get out the map. The sun is right. Salvador is a long finger jutting south from a bulge in the coast, wagging a “no-no" to the Africa-lapping Atlantic and protecting the great bay that gives this part of Brazil its name, Bahia. Eduardo’s terrace is on the west side of the peninsula facing almost due West, across the bay, not the Atlantic. Geography filed away I watch the light, orange, then pink, then yellow create a new day, our first here.

Eduardo and Blackie lead us down the narrow corkscrew stairs, out the gate, take a right out the door, pass the church, then left down the wide steps, then right again over cobblestones, worn and grey. Above, color rains from the blue sky, then down across the tall houses, painted brightly once, now peeling and patinaed, jammed tight side by side, squeezing the streets narrow, into solid rainbows. Eduardo gets us sorted out in his neighborhood. “There's a bank. That's a ‘kilo store' where you can get take-out by the kilo. Get coffee and sandwiches in that bakery.” Then, points down an alley. ”This is where me and Blackie hang out". And, we take off on our own.

Coffee and 2 grilled cheese breakfast sandwiches in the bakery cost a smidge over two dollars. Streetwise advice about watching our wallets and phones comes free, in Portuguese and crystalline gestures, and a big smile, from the handsome young guy who takes our cash. I catch “orlogia" (watch) in the stream of Portuguese warnings about pickpockets, and point to my black plastic Casio bottom-of-the-food-chain model. That smile widens, gains a sound, a head shake and a thumbs down: nobody wants THAT! We’ve found our breakfast place.

We walk our neighborhood. Brazil, and especially Salvador, has absorbed peoples from the whole planet, most cruelly from Africa, almost 4 million free people captured, imprisoned, forced into slavery. For over four centuries force and desire have created the modern Salvadoran. The color wheel of faces whirls from ecru to ebony, its glory in stunning variations in the range from bronze to mahogany. We see no pink. Our neighborhood is not Tourist-ville.

We wander up steep streets into the Pelourinho, the old part of the upper city, blocks of architectural and cultural significance, linked by huge plazas and anchored by Baroque churches. Here we see some tourists, decades younger than us, though we never hear English.

We hear drums. It is the copoeira, the national dance/ritual/exercise, an explosive combo of ballet, break dancing, martial arts, gymnastics. African in origin, perhaps born as ritual or training for battle, it is alive in this most African of cities in the New World as gravity-defiant magic.

A pair of bodies fly and leap, over, around, under legs and arms, never touching, in a torrential tango of precision. One copoeiristo, shining bare torso, black as volcanic glass, leaps over the scything legs of his partner, lands in a handstand, and erupts---on arm power alone---into a spun vortex, legs splayed flat out. Applause is irrelevant. This needs drums.

As does the sunset, later, from our terrace, and, dutifully, from the West. Eduardo has some chicken and ham lasagna if we want it. We do, then slice a mango. It’s the same color as the waning light on the horizon. We watch the sun leave us, licking juice from our fingers.

Tasty.

2019-07-16 - TUESDAY – SALVADOR DA BAHIA, BRAZIL

 

I wander the cobblestones and narrow gorges of our neighborhood, eyes, then feet, bringing it into my memory, hopeless with geography. Instinct finds our breakfast place, coffee-need finds serviceable Portuguese. Tongue cooperates. “Olá! Café com leite por favor". The baristo asks me where my friend is. I mime ‘asleep'. That gets a laugh.

I sit, watching the city stumble awake in the street, a few morning zombies at a time. One stops. Here's a guy watching me for a change. He tries out French, then more than passable English, grabs a chair and sits at the table. Pele is clearly bright. We chat about his years in…Japan!! Now he sells healing ointments from a box on the streets where he grew up. I don’t buy. Seven kilos don’t leave room for ungents, but there is room in our conversation for coffee, and he accepts my offer. I'm selfish. Pele is an interesting guy, and another anchor to this new city, a specific face that means Salvador, and gleaned from the crowds, now filling the streets.

Eye candy is everywhere, a free gift of Salvador’s unself-conscious, non-body-shamng, easy sensuality. There's a lot of the average Salvadoran on display. A diet high in carbs is not friendly to middle-aged bodies losing the battle of the bulges. Young bodies flaunt those bulges, the women especially. Up top, they round them up and head them out, served abundantly, via plunging necklines, on platters of Spandex. Down below, they are cupped in skimpy shorts, truly short on fabric, and just short of thong-dom. The young women flaunt tight and skimpy, most guys go for baggy and shapeless. (Not the ubiquitous heavily armed police, though. Those into hunky, swarthy, well-turned out guys in tight uniforms and flaunting impressive weapons might check fares to Salvador. Just sayin'.)

Back at Number 58, Dennis, Eduardo, and Blackie watch the sea. A tiny speck heading west sets up our day. It's a ferry to an island way across the bay and “us old farts---even if we're foreigners--- travel free on all public transportation, buses, the elevator down to sea level, everything, even those ferries.” Eduardo points us towards the elevator and the ferry.

On the way we stay long at the anthropological museum with a collection of 26 larger than live-size carvings of the major spirit beings of the living folk religion of Salvador, African roots deep and thick below the surface of colonial Catholicism. The carvings bristle with life, pushing out of the grain, demanding us to pay heed. ‘We have power’ they say. We don’t doubt it. The Church feared it.

At the elevator to the coast, a 4-foot tall grandmother points us to the special turnstile for ‘old farts’, her grin at making it to the age of freebies universally understood. She's grabbed a bit of power herself.

The trip is a smooth slip over an amenable sea. Vera Cruz town is colored tropical, laid-back, the food forgettable, though the setting, right on the beach, is not.

Back home, John from Barcelona dishes us up some chicken, beans and rice in his tiny house-front restaurant. “There was no work there, so I came here.” There must be other chapters in the story between Spain and Brazil, but we don’t flip through those pages. His daughter runs up and they hug, her bronze skin, curly hair, and wide features perhaps telling more of the story.

The night ends with spectacular fireworks from the church next door. They are upstaged by the show in the sky above. It’s a lunar eclipse, stark in the cloudless black sky. That's the full moon passing through the shadow of our ‘little blue dot’.

It’s just the shadow of all we have.

 

2019-07-17, 18, AND 19  - WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, AND FRIDAY – SALVADOR DA BAHIA, BRAZIL TO IGUAZÚ FALLS

The Metro and airport shuttle are free, just as Eduardo promised, a Brazilian Bennie for the Chronologically Enhanced. GOL airlines has a dedicated boarding line for us, too, and we load first, with the kiddies, both edges of the life cycle together. Airborne Brazil does not look like our earthy neighborhood at Eduardo’s. The flight attendants and passengers are fair-skinned, way over on the pink to ecru side of the color wheel. There's less bulging Spandex, less scenic, but a better fit for the seats in steerage.

We carbo-load for lunch in Sao Paolo airport, then continue southwestward to where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay are wrenched apart by the cataclysm of ‘Las Cataratas’, the falls at Iguazú. The airport bus drops us at the main bus station. Host Bruno picks us up after our late night carbo-fest at Pizza Palleno, gets us settled at his grandmother’s sparkly spiffy house, and lets the carbos drag us into sleep.

We’re not the only guests. Bouncy, articulate Breano and his girlfriend are here for their first international trip---to take the bus across the bridge to Paraguay and shop til they drop in the tax-free, low-cost spendatoria of Ciudad del Este. He's a real boon, confirms there are lockers for our backpacks at the falls, and gets us an Uber all the way to the Brazil side of the falls. We wander with the crowds on the Brazil side, then take the bus to the border, get stamped out of Brazil, then seamlessly into Argentina. We will see ‘Las Cataratas' from both sides.

I hate crowds. They challenge my agoraphobia and my claustrophobia. They are huge everywhere at the falls, a huge tide flowing over the landscape.

It’s OK.

Las Cataratas smother my neuroses. They defeat language. The numbers---this many kilometers wide, that many separate plunges, that much water per second--- are demeaning. Visitors to both sides argue which has the better view. The wide view across to the endless white ribbons from Brazil is dwarfing. On the Argentina side we walk on metal pathways across the surface of the quiet Parana River then out to stand at the very top of the ‘Devil`s Throat’. All those falls we saw from Brazil are crashing around us, trillions of suicidal molecules throwing themselves at the center of the earth, some, now mist, reach out to surround us, wet us down, carry our eyes down into the Devil’s Throat. Brazil is cinemascppe. This? This is 3-D, no glasses needed.

2019-07-20 - SATURDAY – PUERTO IGUAZÚ, ARGENTINA TO SALTA, ARGENTINA

“It’s a present.”

Number 479, our digs here in Puerto Iguazú, Argentina, were hard to find two days ago, but a kind señora rescued us with a phone call and arm gestures pointing down the road. Her five chatty dogs send us off with several yips and a grumble. Marcela's place is a garden, rimmed with hammocks, an outdoor kitchen, and bright red. “I love red…and black…anarchy!”. Our second-floor room is The Red Room, up a spiral outdoor staircase---red--- and huge, with two beds, a private bathroom, and a big window capturing the garden trees. We love the place. And the unpackaged look and feel of Puerto Iguazú, Argentina, a speck town compared to its self-conscious touristy sister across the falls at Foz do Iguazú, Brazil.

Yesterday, we joined the hordes at ‘Las cataratas'. Today we are on our own in this quiet town until we fly north late in the afternoon. Stomach leading, we pass more gardens, wake a few dogs, apologize and move on towards town center. Shops open, doors and owners yawning into the quiet. The sign says ‘desayuno' and breakfast is what we need. The owner, Cristian , ‘no H’, almost beats us to the small table on the sidewalk.

His coffee shop, EXCELSO is five days new. The coffee, the ‘medialunas’ (‘half-moons’, croissants), and the orange pound cake, all made by his wife, are carbos worth the challenge to tonight's seat on JetSmart to Salta, next stop on our way north. We sample it all and take pictures of the shop with the flag from Gypsy Souls, our friends’ coffee shop in Florida. We tell him our friends roast their own coffee. ”I want a roaster here…someday" and pats the place for it on his shiny counter. Cristian uses the rough burlap bags coffee is shipped in to cover his seats and make placemats for the 4 tables (2 inside 2 out). It's a great look, and we tell him we'll take pictures for Gypsy Souls. Maybe they'll copy his idea. His grin could reach all the way to Florida. We talk over more coffee.

The torrents of Las cataratas brought us to Puerto Iguazú. Now the town has a face. His.

When we leave, Cristian hands us a package of roasted Brazilian coffee beans. “It’s a present.”

All of it.

2019-07-21 - SUNDAY – SALTA, ARGENTINA

She is 15.

They trek up the slope to the frozen summit of the volcano, 4 miles into the sky, the closest people of their world can get to the heavens. She drinks the potion and falls into a deep sleep. They wrap her in thick wool, then in stone, and leave. She will carry their message upward: protect us.

Soon after, the Spanish come and destroy them.

Five hundred years later she still sleeps, safe, protected by technology, wrapped in a glass cylinder, cold and dry as her grave, in the museum dedicated to her and the two others from the summit. Her face is the face of most of the people who visit her, high cheekbones, sharp nose, faces made for and by the high reaches of the Andes. We join them.

Like them, we are silent.

2019-07-21 AND 22 AND 23 - SUNDAY, MONDAY, TUESDAY – SALTA, ARGENTINA

It’s cold. Something unforgiving sweeps down from the Andes on Tuesday, dragging in clouds above, and the temperatures way below the balmy numbers of Sunday and Monday. We are well insulated. Our digs here at Calle España 658 are an AirBnB crown jewel, a two bedroom apartment all to ourselves with 2 bathrooms, and all the works, wrapped around a tiled atrium. And twenty steps from stunning Plaza 9 Julio, the center of Salta’s historic district. Hosts Victoria and Gustavo are warm, fluent in English, and like us, love Africa. Gustavo was Argentina’s consul in Dakar, Senegal, for 4 years.

He shows us the switches and knobs that make Number 658 work. Victoria, mother hen, all afluff, flutters with assurances that if we need ANYTHING (in UPPER CASE, BOLD, and italics), just call. She Messages us every day to make sure, drops off a stringed clothes dryer frame when we mention laundry.

The Lonely Planet guide, with the usual ‘keep moving’ philosophy of the genre, suggests a day is enough to ‘see what there is to see’ in Salta, checking off bits on a list. We spend 3, do some on that list, ignore many, wander and let Salta tells us about itself.

The Plaza is pure colonial splendor, capped by the cathedral, floodlit at night, an icy white Baroque confection, closed behind locked doors most of the time. That's irrelevant to us, perhaps also to the ‘faithful’. The chatty guide at the tiny ‘Museo de Arte Etnico Americano' walks us through a few thousand years of local culture. “The past is still alive here". The indigenous religion of the Andes peoples was under an open sky, only the mountains for walls. It has absorbed the saints and spirits of Catholicism, but perhaps not the locked doors. Maybe the ‘faithful’ don't mind. There's always the sky.

The walkways under old trees in the center of 9 Julio and many of the pedestrian side streets are fluid marketplaces. Need a shoeshine, a wool cloak, a sweater, something for the mobile phone, the kids, the kitchen? It's all on offer, spread on tarps, and colorful. Up close, much of it is Chinese effluvia, cheap and ugly wannabes claiming local color, failing with garish indifference. The architecture, flowers, the sharp aromas from the popcorn poppers, and the faces of the sellers, almost all with the strong crags of the Andes, wipe out the other stuff.

9 Julio is our hangout. The arcades around the square are linear food courts. Rosetto and its two sweet waiters is our place for dinner, once for over-soupy ravioli (the foods of Italy---pastas, pizzas, and gelato--- are adopted as ‘almost Argentinian’), twice for ‘placada regional’, a platter of regional specialties. We untie the corn husks of the humitas and tamales to get at the smooth stuffing of veggies, grain, cheese, barely spiced but carrying the green flavor of the corn husks. Concessions to the carno-centric preferences of the local cuisine are the meat empanadas, baked rather than deep-fried. ‘Negra’ (Black) beer comes in liter bottles, cold in a bucket of ice. It's potent at any temperature, adding a slight list to my walk back across 9 Julio and up the stairs to Number 658

‘Desayuno’ is at our breakfast place, ‘Plaza Nueve’ (Plaza Nine), which promises ‘comidas rápidas (fast food). Elena knows we'll have ‘dos medialunas con jamon y queso, café con leche, y jugo de naranja'. She is tiny, delicate, my candidate for Tinkerbell in a Spanish version of ‘Pedro Pan’. Fairy dust would glow on her dark skin. Mid-morning onward we nurse those croissant sandwiches, coffees, and orange juices, midwives to these sketches. Elena doesn't mind.

North of 9 Julio is classic colonial Salta, affluent, spacious. South and stretching way to the west is working class Salta, tight, crowded. East is the bus station, and on Sunday, a food fair. Bus tickets for the next stop north in hand, we graze. The fresh orange juice washes the sweetness of crumbly xXxX, local pastry specialty. We pass on cream cakes, apple tarts, and chocolate pies. The dogs---abundant, comatose upholstery on every street---are upright here and more attentive to the offerings. They look well-fed. Many wear colorful winter jackets, for sale in the street markets. Not in the guidebook, that.

Money is an adventure. My bank card is gone. Cash from my account can’t get here from there. Dennis has his card, we both have some crisp greenbacks to change, and unlike most places we travel, Argentina---at least so far--- accepts credit cards. We'll manage. I notify my bank. Oh well, at least now we won`t be extorted by the ATMS. For any withdrawal the steely-eyed thugs charge 434 Pesos, $10.20. The max withdrawal is 4000 Pesos, $94, . Do the math!!

And, BINGO! We guess I left the card in the last ATM…which is a 2 hour flight back south to las cataratas.

There’s a branch of that bank here. Maybe they can find out if the card is still there. At the bank, Mercedes gets the issue immediately, is cheerful, helpful, and just back yesterday from vacation in her favorite city, Nueva York, so on a gringo high. Fingers fly over keyboard and cell phone, but…”come back tomorrow after 10". We do, bringing her some flowers, but she is “infirma" and not in. Maybe she got---no, was given---the Trump Trots from food in the USA? Her co-workers love the flowers.

No card? Not important. My bank has already cancelled the card. Money may be inaccessible, but it's safe, from the ATM thugs. Even from me.

Another bottle of “Negra, por favor”.

2019-07-24 - WEDNESDAY – SALTA TO TILCARA, ARGENTINA

S**W. The kind that sticks. And does. It rushes to the ground, refugee from the grey damp above, cold fluff, but finds no asylum on us, stiff with cold . The orange nasturtiums in the garden outside our adobe house give a place, and droop, bearded with fuzz.

Tilcara is five hours by comfortable bus north from Salta, way up on the altimeter and way down on the thermometer. Many meters way up (2461 meters, 8,121 feet ) on the former and way too many lines down (minus 6 in Celsius…20 degrees in F) on the latter. It’s a narrow adobe pueblo squeezed by barren mountains and filled with restaurants and hostels with a 60's Age of Aquarius vibe. We seek heat in one. La Cheba has waiter Santiago, carrying more than a wisp of Flower Child, and heat. Santiago greets us in English and walks us through the menu. We screech to a stop at cheese and onion empanadas, and then again for a repeat. Welcomed, fueled, and heated, we Google-map our way up away from the main street to our AirBnb, the 7 kilos on our back heavy at 8000 feet. Our room is snug, with 3 beds. The bathroom is 20 feet down the garden. Outside. The weather forecast promises a nighttime cold wave (???). The temperature will plunge to minus 12C. That's 10 degrees F. We turn the small gas heater up to ‘Roast Well-done’ and plunge into the mound of blankets.

2019-07-25 - THURSDAY – TILCARA TO PURMAMARCA, ARGENTINA

It's 1 am. Last night we finished a liter of beer. The baños is out the door, right, and twenty feet across Pluto in mid-winter. Body parts argue. Kidneys win. Extremities? Not so much, at ten degrees above zero

There is no snow. There is no sound. I look up. There is just the black sky, cracked with the cold white light of laser stars.

The morning sky is blue. “It's always like this.” Our hostess points up at the sky, clouds frozen then chipped into snow, now all gone. “But not the cold”.i Her hair is long, tangled waves of snow and night, glorious corona to sculpted angles, a memorable face. Frozen fingers manage a wave. Frozen feet get us down into town to Santiago's place for coffee---anything hot. The town is shuttered. One place is open, not Santiago’s. But Itaman welcomes us to his..

“Good?”. The guy at the next table recognizes ecstasy, takes our rolled eyes as 5-Star agreement, orders the Café Grande and the same ham and cheese sandwich, and just like that we two become four, instant travel buddies. Jasper and Neri are Belgian, fluent in English, he a manager of a health food store not sure ‘this travel thing’ is for him, she a fashion designer, grabbing at the world, and changing his mind about travel. “Maybe.”

The bus trip to Purmamarca softens that ‘maybe’ a bit. The foothills of the Andes are monumental, treeless, patient under whatever the skies and winds deliver, deeply eroded chunks, their skin stripped. Iron and copper seep to the surface, wispy red and green Impressionist washes over the Cubist landscape, against a Gauguin-blue sky. We are impressed. Jasper is softening.

The pueblo of Purmamarca is worth the setting. Cobblestones and white adobe wrap around the center, one side the inevitable somnolent church, the others aflame with the brilliant weavings of the Andes, stacked a meter high. Llamas pose, captured in weave, on just about everything, bored no doubt by the long trip from a factory somewhere in China. The sellers do a happy business in ponchos, serapes, fluffy slippers, and sweaters. The atmosphere is kind. There is no hustle, no hawking, little bargaining, the sellers and buyers polite and respectful. I find some bags, knots hand tied in fiber from the agave plant and dyed with vegetable dyes. They are genuine things. I pass---for now.

Camilla welcomes us just by the door of her AirBnB at the corner of the ’plazita', neighbor of the church. ’Espacio Purmamarca’ is a rambling adobe of thick walls and beams holding up bamboo, maybe reed, ceilings over generous spaces. Some walls are glass doors out to a patio and garden. Our room is down a hall past two huge urns painted in the colors of the mountains. ‘Espacio’ is exquisite.

And warm.

2019-07-26 - FRIDAY – PURMAMARCA, PART ONE

We are just shy of 14,000 feet into blue sky. Purmamarca, that warm bed, and a 7am rendez-vous with Jasper and Neri in the sub-zero abyss-dark, are on the down side of this 2 hour trip. Up ahead is ‘Las Salinas Grandes', Argentina's great salt flats.

Our eyes weep from the cold, and from the light tossed back from the sheet of white laying out to the mountain horizon. The sky is so blue it has weight. The salt flats of Death Valley, USA, and the Danakil Depression of Ethiopia are all below sea level. These are two miles high, geology's offering closer to the gods of the sky, the thin air reminding us humans may not belong here. It is too cold to stay long, but first…the salt is pure, so I wet my finger and taste some. Gotta be good luck, right?

Jasper has softened, though not to cold and altitude. Back down in Purmamarca, Neri floats Morocco, promising a place with neither. We hug goodbye, genuinely hoping for another coffee and sandwich in a warmer place.

Last week I forgot, and lost, my bank card at an ATM. Den's is our only barrier between us and coffee- and-empanada-free penury. We stop to refuel the wallets at Purmamarca's only ATM. Den puts his card into the slot. The lights blink, go out.

The ATM machine eats the bank card. Then goes silent.

2019-07-26 - FRIDAY – PURMAMARCA, PART TWO

The rumor of the cannibal ATM oozes out the door, through the commiserations of other people who come to ATMize their Sunday outing in Purmamarca, and across the plazita to an efficient and smart Tourist Police Officer. She arrives, polished, and clearly up to getting the voracious ATM to give up its afternoon snack. The Google translator is putty in her capable hands. Reassuring smiles topple language barriers, fingers fly, calls go out. Smiles droop. Google delivers the news. This ATM is a lone cowboy. There is no bank behind its innards. When the armored truck comes to load the next batch of Pesos, the crew might find the card, but they will take it back to the main office. We might get the card back if we go there on Monday. That's in not so nearby Jujuy (Hoo-hooey). Her face carries a different message. We get it, go with it, thank her, profusely and genuinely, and say goodbye. To her. And the card.

In a pinch…and this one is squeezing hard…there is always Western Union for sending cash. Google says there is a WU office right here in Purmamarca, right over there on that corner of the ‘plazita’. Liar.

There is hope. The WU website claims there is an office one hour back north in Tilcara. We’ll email friends to send us funds via Western Union. But first we want to know for sure that the office does exist (tricky) will be open tomorrow (trickier), can handle a transfer from Estados Unidos (see above) and has enough funds in the cash drawer to keep us in empanadas and coffee---and warmth--- for the next 2 weeks (apotheosis on the Tricky Scale).

But...the Western Union Tilcara office phone number doesn’t work (truly tricky), so we can't do any of that. Tomorrow we will go to Tilcara to nudge it in person. We have enough Pesos for a valedictory refueling there at Santiago's or Itaman's. Anything beyond that is…well, hardly gravy…and up to Luck, however dimly it is operating.

That's for tomorrow, always a gamble. Here, and now, it’s about 4pm, the light is wonderful on the colors, gifted through the perfect air. We go for a walk up onto the red hill at the edge of the pueblo, into the colors.

 

2019-07-27 - SATURDAY – PURMAMARCA

Our friends, Deb and Don, back in upstate New York, and John, in Florida message offering immediately to send us cash through Western Union. We miss the bus to Tilcara, grab 400 Pesos ($10) worth of cab. Cabbie calls ahead, has friend meet us half way and scoot us the rest of the way right to that to tiny Western Union sign hanging close to the wall on Tilcara’s Calle Belgrano. It's part grocery store, part cosmetics store. Efficient Western Union lady and Google get us the right number of ‘sis’ to our questions. The money will be available “inmediatamente”, and they have enough Pesos. We use her Internet to give Deb the go ahead. WU Lady :“hurry, we close at 1, open again at 5". It's 12:35.

Down the street Itaman whips up fresh café grandes, and 2 sandwiches, gets us onto his Internet. Bingo! Deb has sent the money and sends us the passcode to retrieve it. I sacrifice the sandwich for the chance of future meals. Down the street Western Union lady is ready. I give her the passcode, my passport. Not enough says the WU site. Home address. Not enough. Then...wrinkles erupt on her forehead. Google delivers the news: there is no such passcode. It is 12:59. “Come back at 5. We will try again.”

Itaman is sympathetic, dishes up more café, topping up with brownies. The day is glorious, the market colorful, so we wander. By now long immune to travel shopping, and almost peso-less, this is safe. But... Dennis finds a small gift for Elena, our morning waitress in Salta. We squish a square flag, patchwork of rainbow colors, symbol of the Andean pueblos, into the tiny backpack, next to the water bottle. The truly magical embroidered slip-ons come only in 2 sizes, Peter Pan and Sasquatch, so the pesos stay wallet-bound with the starving moths. Our shopping frenzy safely history, we park on a bench and watch the other shoppers succumb. About 4 we tank up again at Itaman’s, this time on fresh squeezed orange-pomelo-lemon juice.

Then, it’s Show Time at Western Union. WU Lady is ready for us, clicks to the website, adds the passcode, clicks again….and smiles. The money has arrived. There are just a few more details. Title (???) Mobile phone number. Home phone number. And Western Union is happy. She makes a copy of the passport, and there are forms to sign, and sign, and sign. The drawer opens and she counts out a stack of Pesos.

The bus leaves in 10 minutes, down at the other end of Belgrano. We skip-trot down the narrow street, not fast enough. Our bus is gone. Another traveler yells ‘that one, that one’ in English, and points to a bus filling up right in front of us, chariot of another company. Forty minutes and two dollars later we land in Purmamarca.

And, yet again, we are thankful for our friends, and the kindness of strangers.

2019-07-28 - SUNDAY – PURMAMARCA TO IRUYA, ARGENTINA

Its 7am. And totally black except for the dazzle of stars. There are 4 of us stamping our feet to keep the cold away and to draw the bus to us sooner. It’s an unconvincing dance. Then the other guy starts a routine with his hands, smiles at us, adding a nod, and a raised eyebrow. We get it immediately. He’s pantomiming Dennis slipping his bank card into the hungry ATM. We shake our heads, shrug, and with the humility appropriate to local legends, accept his unspoken, but eloquent commiserations. The story should get pretty gripping after few more retelling. Ours will.

The bus fills at the next stop, Tilcara, bringing us fluent and chatty Liviana and shy Marco, great company all the way. The bus climbs through the foothills, turns onto a dirt road and crests at 4000 meters (says the road sign), or 13,200 feet (says Dennis camera). Then it plunges off and down, a gravely snake coilng upon itself, barely gripping the side of the gorge. Way below there is a river, the creator once of this monstrous gash, a sliver now, silver with ice. We coil around the hairpin. And drop. The driver stops, leaves us, fiddles with the air brakes, climbs back in, starts again. We drop. We flatten at the river, 8700 feet. We have dropped almost a mile. We should have the bends. The landscape has sucked us breathless.

We are in Iruya.

Liviana and Marco help us buy tickets onward, and to reach Beatriz, our hostess for the next nights, then head off, waiving “ciaos" . Beatriz leads us from the bus station. The road is dusty, a slit in the mountain hanging over the river, now freeze dried for the winter, patches of ice bright and sharp amidst the river rocks . It’s almost noon. The valley is so narrow, the mountains so high, that only the highest parts of the pueblo are in the sun. Our house is up through the Plaza La Virgen del Rosario then left, steep and up the cobble stones, and left again into a narrow street, steeper still. Inside, we climb still, up narrow cement stairs to our floor. We share it with another guestroom and a bathroom. I go up more stairs, into the sun, already warming the balcony above us. I have found ‘my spot'.

Breakfast was hours ago, a warm tortilla we bought from the guy who climbed onto the bus during a ‘baño' stop. Down by the plaza Tio David makes huge ‘jamon y queso’ sandwiches (“si, con lechuga y tomate, por favor”) . We wash down the ham, cheese, lettuce, and tomato with fizzy water. There are more goodies outside in the small plaza watched over by La Virgen del Rosario.

La plazita belongs to the women of the pueblo. They set up tables to sell Andean ‘comidas rapidas’ , fast food, though they would never call it that---empanadas (carne or queso), tartas (spongy tarts of fruit, apples today), juicy fruit salad by the cup. I recognize some of the raw vegetables, leaf greens, and corn cobs, a finger's length, with huge kernels. The potatoes are the stars. They are purple, red, green, yellow, some of the hundreds of varieties of potatoes native to the Andes. They are tiny, like quail eggs. All are gnarled. Hand-crafted sweaters, hats, blankets, gloves, serapes, ponchos, are the colors of the sheep and goats on the slopes around the pueblo. No Chinese llamas make it up this high.

Village dogs, healthy, clean, and friendly, lounge, hopeful for a dropped scrap. One sleeps on her back leaning against a pile of potatoes, legs splayed, toasting in the sun.

School kids on a field trip from someplace, much lower and far away, pose for pictures. Weekend tourists head down to the bus station to leave, or wheeze up to stay. Most are young, schlepping huge backpacks, breathing hard. They pile on the cobbles, grabbing sun, pull out their thermosses, and refuel their bowls of hot ‘mate’, Argentinian herbal drink of choice.

The people of the pueblo have the sculpted faces of the mountains. Most visitors do not. Spanish and friendliness are the ‘lingua franca'. We splutter in español. Get by---and more---with the latter.

This is home for 3 days.

 

2019-07-29- MONDAY – IRUYA, ARGENTINA

We have climbed the height of a 60-story building up Slinky-tight switchbacks, from 8700 feet to 9300. Legs promise retribution. Lungs calm down…eventually. There are condors riding updrafts way above us, their 12-foot wings black slashes in the blue sky. Eight of us---the others all not yet 30---have followed guide Domita and her dog Coca to this aerie, first down from Iruya, then across the stones on the river bed and up, up, up. Husky, chirpy Freddy---in a tee shirt, not a fleece jacket like the rest of us-- offers to translate Domita's expressive narrations., so we learn how the people of the mountains respect and protect their environment….and still revere Pachamama, Mother Earth, elbowing her into their version of Cathlolicism. At Domita’s family half way up to the summit, her mother has hung strips of meat to dry in the arid air. This is ‘charqui'. English captured it as ‘jerky’. It is the only word from the Andean languages become part of English.

 We stay up here in the sky until the sun is long gone and the only light is from the stars. There is no moon, no clouds. Then we walk down those switchbacks, by star and flashlight, diminished happily by what is above and around us.

On the flats, Coca the dog trots wide circles around us, checking we are all still in her flock.

2019-07-30 – TUESDAY – IRUYA, ARGENTINA

“I cook!”

He leads his horse with one hand across the Plaza La Virgen del Rosario. The other makes a sign of the cross. The horse just walks, one clop at a time.

At 10am the sun bridges the mountain wall. The east side of the tower of La Virgen del Rosario catches the light. The simple crucifix is still in in the shade, if not for the man with the horse.

Tio David is locked shut, open at whim, or tied to when the bus drops the day's newbies from further south. No matter. There are the empanadas, sweet ones, glazed white, from the ladies of the ‘plazita’, and they do for a mini ‘desayunos'. We eat sitting on the wall facing La Virgen, the sun on our backs, the plazita's day unwrapping around us. A dog nudges my hand for more scratches behind her ears. Way down below the man and his horse walk the riverbed.

Mid-afternoon we climb into the bed of a 4x4 for a trip up that same riverbed to San Isidro, next village over…and up. Soon we are 10, fluent Emilia and bouncy Nick, her Tom Cruise lookalike boyfriend with an effusive hairdo straight off a Roadrunner cartoon, and a pile of others inside the truck. There is no road, just whatever the river has left us, passage paid by bounced butts and crunched spines. We ford tendrils of the river, transparent, some rimmed with ice, a harder self. The river bed splits. We follow the narrower slit in the rock. Ahead and behind the faces of the gorge are green, or red, or, sometimes ochre or black.

At San Isidro we climb stone stairs to the village, then down again, following a stream bed, stone to stone. Deep in the gorge we visit a lone weaver. She has channeled a wisp of the stream to run a paddle that turns her spindle whirl and spins fluffy wool into yarn. I’ve done this by hand. This is much easier. And around her is unsurpassed beauty. How can that not sink into her yarn, then into her art?

On the way back we ten stuff 6 of us into the rear of the 4x4. Catalina and Santiago replace Nick and Emilia. The others are 2 middle-aged couples. These are fun folks. By the time we get back to Iruya the mix has bounced into a plan to meet for dinner, language lacks be damned.

Dinner has its choreography. Early on we pass their ‘what do you think of Trump' test’. Hours and 2 bottles of wine later, photos of family (many kids, and grandkids), sport (significant basketball trophies on display), and vacation (petting a cheetah in South Africa), and Catalina’s and Santiago’s excellent English, we end the evening with invitations to Florida. “I cook" , and well-rounded Mariela claims the kitchen. No one objects.

We can’t wait.

2019-07-31 AND 08-01 WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY – IRUYA TO HUMAHUACA

I don’t know what it is, but I drink it anyway.

We come to Humahuaca to see the colors of the mountains in nearby Hornocal. We do, later, but today our hostess, Soledad, tells us we will be very lucky tomorrow.

Lucky? We have been so very lucky. We were in Salvador by the sea for the full moon...and an eclipse of the very moon. Then, two weeks later, we walked deep into the Andean night to see the stars and there was no moon to dim their light.

Here in Humahuaca we are just in time to see Pachamama, the Andean ritual to thank ‘la tiera' for its bounty. It predates the invasion of this world by Europe and the imposition of Christianity, and is alive, real, deep in the life of the mountains. Luck? This is beyond luck. For an anthropologist. About 40 years ago an ethno-musicologist friend of mine showed me Pachamama rituals she had recorded in Peru. I remember the reverence towards the earth

In the morning, August First, We follow the sound of music. It’s ‘El condor passo’ of Simon and Garfunkel. A crowd, faces mostly Andean, some Europeanized, of the lowlands, and us, crowds around the smoke. At the center is a hole into the earth. A pair at a time, people kneel before it and pour libations---liquor, colored liquids, orange soda, cardboard box wine…or add food to the earth. A man thanks everyone for coming together in community for Pachamama in Spanish so clear I can get there from French and my operatic Italian. Then he thanks all those have come from afar, even from… and points to us. “I reply, “Estados Unidos”, and he repeats “Estados Unidos". We have not heard native-speaker English in weeks, so I guess we're the only representatives to Pachamama from our part of the world.

I move around the periphery. A man hands me a glass cup, fills it from a bottle of amber liquid and sticks of herbs. I don’t know what it is, but I drink it anyway. Some people drip some on the earth before drinking. Others, me included do not know the ritual, or forget. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Pachamama will get it eventually.

There is another crowd offering to Pachamama in front of the Catholic church. The crowd grows all morning. At noon, the bell rings. All eyes and cameras turn to a balcony on the tower of the church. A metal door swivels. A mechanized statue of St. Francis, stern-faced, jerks his arm in an awkward blessing and rotates back into his metal coccoon.

The smoke from Pachamama drifts over the crowd.

2019-08-02 - FRIDAY – HUMAHUACA BACK TO SALTA, ARGENTINA

It's cold, grey, and s**wing. And cold. Really cold.

Yesterday, after Pachamama, we found a guy to drive us the 25 kilometers high up the switchbacks to Hornocal. At 4,350 meters (14,355 feet), we crest our ‘hill’, and stop. Dead in our tracks. Hornocal is geology gone Drag Queen. Some say there are 17 colors. Some say 23. Who cares! Counting gets in the way. This is a place that thrives on that other side of the brain.

The trip is a spiral heavenward, then down again, on a narrow dusty gravel road, controlling the car a workout for upper body, eyes, concentration. We negotiated a price with our 4x4 driver, before the trip. Afterwards we tip him, with thanks

Today we are not so lucky, vehicle-wise. The bus from Humahuaca back south to Salta is late. How late? Wellll, says Ticket Seller Lady “ten more minutes”, “ten more minutes", then…a shrug, far more accurate. It’s crackling cold. We are too cold to be restless. Lucky ones have hats, scarves, mittens, fuzzy appendages to draping yards of wool ponchos, one to cover, two to make sure, or have found a friendly dog to lean against. We share shivers with a charming woman from South China traveling around South America by bus. “They're always on time…” One more shiver and she may update that review.

An hour and a half, and five or six cases of frostbite later, our spiffy, two level bus (bathroom, music videos aboard) limps in, loads up, limps out. We crawl southward to the raucous soundtrack and visuals of the armageddon-themed film, Armageddon, another Bruce Willis testosto-epic, the one that substitutes explosions for dialogue. We munch sandwiches, meat (Dennis) or cheese (me), popcorn being in short supply. Bruce saves the world from, well, you know, about the time we get to Jujuy. We try to contact our hostess in Salta to tell her we'll be late, but the Internet does not cooperate. Maybe I should have given Pachamama some of that drink yesterday.

Between Jujuy and Salta there is a traffic jam. We're due at 4:45. At 5:50 We get another movie. I don’t expect a cartoon, but do predict another testosto-epic. I’m right on the former, undecided on the latter. There seem to be a lot of kids, so unless this is about Republican politicians, it's not that kind of film.

Up in apartment 2 at España 658, Gustavo greets us, gets us settled once again in our spacious digs, and offers to let us check out very late tomorrow, at 5pm. “We have guests coming late tomorrow night, but you guys leave the place so clean, we don’t need much time to prepare.” We tell him of the condors we saw rising motionless way above us just before night fell on our hill and he tells us of his grandfather, the Italian one, who raised an injured and abandoned condor chick. He kept it chained. One day the condor, now grown large, got loose and wobbled into flight on its immense but unpracticed wings. Grandpa took out his rifle to shoot it---who knows why?---but couldn't. Maybe it was too wonderful to see it fly. Pachamama at work?

2019-08-03 - SATURDAY – SALTA BACK TO PUERTO IGUAZÚ, ARGENTINA

Yesterday morning our friend Greg died. He was kind, sweet, gentle, an opera and foodie buddy and beloved husband of Roger, my brother from another mother. It was his time, but far too soon for us.

Today we begin to go home, there, but missing a piece.

2019-08-04 - SUNDAY – PUERTO IGUAZÚ, ARGENTINA BACK TO FOZ DO IGUAZU, BRAZIL

People A++++ Computer Z- - - - - - - and -

There's no room here in Puerto Iguazú, Argentina at the red and cheery fantasy house we liked so much two weeks ago. Our digs this time around are more of the brown and murky, slightly creepy ‘Boy Scout camp cum hostel cum Bates Motel’ variety. We don't see any loose chainsaws, there’s a lock on the door, four walls, and blankets enough to get us through the night and launched to an early morning bus from Argentina to Brazil.

We’re the only passengers on the bus. The driver waits while Argentina stamps us out, takes us to the Brazil stampers, leaves us with a chit to get us onto the next bus, due in an hour, and continues deeper into Brazil. We’re stamped and legal before the bus disappears. The next bus drops us in town where we catch the bus out to the airport.

We go to be rescued from Airline CyberHell.

Two days ago, GOL Airways sent an email rescheduling our flight from here in Foz do Iguazú, Brazil, to Salvador, via 2 connections. One is 50 minutes between flights. The other is 30 minutes between flights. That ain’t gonna happen. My days as an Airport Sprinter are long gone. Yes, there is a nice message giving us options and recourse. None of them work. There is no phone number in the email or at the website. We download the mobile app. There is phone number. It disconnects after 5 minutes of brrrp-brrrp-brrrp.

We try again. Several times. Persistence pays off. Eventually a human voice overtakes the endless ‘brrrppps’. Carlos is on our side. “You will never make that connection. I will find you another one.”

Two minutes later we have new flights, with only one connection, a comfy non-Olympian sprinter two hours,  He sends an email with the new itinerary.

The next morning we get a message from GOL with no mention of Carlos wizardry and touting the original change to the 30 minute steeplechase itinerary. The phone line goes brrp-brrp-brrp and dies.

And so this morning, we cross a border, and get on another bus, to the airport.

 GOL Guy pulls up our reservation. It shows the strollable connection Carlos created. I show him the new message with the old changes. Eyes roll! “Crazy.” Underscore that. “Your flight is OK. Come see.” And he invites us over the luggage scale, behind the counter to prove it. I like this guy. He passes us, and another “Crazy” on to a colleague, who shakes her head. They've dealt with their employer's monomaniacal cyber system before. In a nano-second GOL Lady has us confirmed, checked-in, boarding pass-ed, and even seat-assigned.

Thanks and obligados aren't enough, but she accepts our linguistic limitations with grace.

A++++++++ indeed. For service, and sense of humor.

2019-08-05- MONDAY – – FOZ DO IGUAZU, BRAZIL BACK TO SALVADOR DA BAHIA, BRAZIL

“I don’t think I’ve ever downed 3 of these before".

It has been hours since our host in Foz do Iguazú dropped us at the airport at 5am That’s two flights, a bus, and two METRO rides, and a walk, ago. We find Eduardo and Blackie hanging out in the shade down an alley in Mercado Santa Barbara, as arranged, then we two head off for lunch at Carecole, up the hill from the Mercado, and down the hill from the house.

We go for cold beers at a table on the cobblestones. Eduardo and Blackie catch up with us. She nudges for an ear scratch. He zips across the street for a glass of amber ‘local cognac'. It’s late for lunch but there's enough left on the buffet to cushion our cold beers. We load our plates with red beans, rice, spaghetti, veggies, and chicken (me) and osso buco (Dennis). Owner John weighs the piled plates. Lunch for two is 12Rials, three dollars.

And Eduardo starts.

The stories eat up the hours. He's three glasses of the cognac and a few hours into his wildly entertaining monologue. “I don’t think I’ve ever downed 3 of these before". It shows. His stories rattle out---rapid fire if a little slurry now in delivery and cohesion. They are delicious tales of corruption, workarounds, bad decisions, and administrative mayhem in the organizations who have hired him to sort out tourism options in their countries. His specialty is cultural tourism development, a career negotiated with no initial training in the subject, but with vast experience in Africa built atop his undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture. Princeton University should be proud. We lose track of who did what to whom, where, when and why, but the rhythm is infectious.

We ride it, delighted to be back with him and Blackie in Salvador.

 2019-08-06 - TUESDAY – SALVADOR DA BAHIA, BRAZIL

Eduardo, Blackie and I walk up past the church, then turn part way down the hill and shop for mangoes, pineapples, and papaya, sniffing for ripeness, hidden sometimes except to our noses. The grapes are more honest. Blackie doesn’t help. Her interests lie closer to the ground. Sliced and diced, back in the kitchen, the pineapple do our sniffers proud, launching our day.

We do laundry in a pail on the terrace, our backs briefly to the bay.

Downstairs neighbor delivers our lunch, ‘frango fritto’, fried chicken cutlets, thin, crisp overlying tender, and the red beans, rice, and spaghetti dusted with manioc flour, the carbo-heavy sides that make a meal. It’s delicious. It costs 12Rials, about 3 dollars.

Mostly, we stay put here high above the bay, watching the water. The last 3 weeks flutter in and out, wisps carrying faces, tastes deeper into our memories.

The sunset sears the end of the day, another memory.

2019-08-07 - WEDNESDAY – SALVADOR DA BAHIA, BRAZIL

 “Cuanto tiempo”

Blackie knows there's something afoot and all 4 of hers are ready. She barks us down the spiral staircase to the cobblestones, sniffs our way along the high ridge of the ‘upper city', then follows Eduardo down into new territory of the ‘lower city', through the fish market, across the highway, into the BIG market, ignores the huge squashes and mangoes, and settles down under our table on the shore, job done. We get cold beers (cognac for Eduardo) she gets bones and chicken scraps from our ‘frango fritto’. We're all happy.

It’s our last day. The market is new. The rest of the day is for the familiar. The cab drops us all at Eduardo’s hangout. Down the street is our breakfast place. “Cuanto tiempo?”—how long has it been?—says the Coffee Guy. Our ‘usual, two coffees and bananas fried in dough, squash the time. We wave goodbye. He smiles, thumbs up. There's another customer.

LATAM Airline's mobile app defeats us. Yes we have tickets. Yes, our three-flight, two-connection aerial hopscotch down, then back up, then across Brazil and on to Miami is still leaving at 3:45 tomorrow afternoon. Maybe we have assigned seats.” Please give us your passport info again.” “No, you can’t check in on line.” We take refuge in the sunset.

Later we walk up the hill and through the Pelourinho, the old city center. The buildings glow in soft floodlights, holding back the night sky from the wide squares. A street concert is promised. We skip the crowds, sit at a table at John's place nursing beers. Whatever the concert is pumping out up the hill is smothered by the loudspeakers and boom boxes of the neighborhood. The street is crowded, a tight stage for over-stretched Spandex, Rasta coils, toddlers, dogs, an exuberant life full-ness, alien to the north.

Dennis notices a middle-aged woman across the street. She seems to plead with two young men who ignore her. Her actions are frantic. She staggers, laughs, paws them, greets a friend. She bums a cigarette. Spits. Her nose drips. Her hands shake.

There is light up above, holding back the night. Down here?

The music booms on.

2019-08-08 AND 09 - THURSDAY AND FRIDAY – SALVADOR DA BAHIA, BRAZIL TO MIAMI AND HOME

I watch the sun rise from the terrace on our last morning, demanding attention. It’s upstaged by roiling memories of our three weeks in South America, of a couple of thousand miles across the bottom of the continent and almost 3 miles into the air above it, every place now a face, or a crowd of them, indelible.

Dennis joins me to walk down the hill for a last cup from Coffee Guy. He laughs when we come in, holds up 2 fingers, nods. The coffee hasn’t gotten any better, but his smile, and the table by the door are anchors for our memories. Down the street we buy one of Eduardo's favorite spongy coconut cakes to leave on the counter for him.

At their hangout, Eduardo and Blackie seal the farewell with an awkward hug, nuzzle, and a bark. We will see them again.

We and our backpacks pass the coffee shop again on the way to the Metro station. Coffee Guy waves, smiles, and yells “boa viagem”,”good trip!”. It’s a sticky walk from there out of our neighborhood, up the steep hill, around the church to the Metro, but cool in the sleek train, a quick, direct, straight zip to the airport. We slip through the turnstiles, over 55, and so, free.

Our flight from Miami to Salvador 3 weeks ago was non-stop, also direct, a quick linear 8 hours. For the return, LATAM Airlines is more creative.

We hopskotch across Brazil, first southwest from Salvador, passing over Rio, switching planes---for the third time in 2 weeks again in Sao Paolo----then turning back northeast back over Salvador and across South America's big bulge into the Atlantic and its closest point to Africa, landing on the coast in Fortaleza at midnight. Then we fly---now northwest---for 7 hours, always over water, the Atlantic, the Amazon delta, and the Caribbean. Sometime in the morning we cross the Equator and enter Summer again. And I spill a whole glass of orange juice down my pants and into my right shoe. Our third flight lands in Miami 16 hours after the first left Salvador, and on another day, in another season.

We leave again in less than 4 months.