Latinalicious: The South America Diaries (13 page)

I’ve never really been into mummies. Seeking out the withering remains of some ancient human wrapped in cloth is not my idea of a good time. But a guy I met in Córdoba told me that if I was coming to Salta I should visit the Museo de Arqueología de Alta Montaña (MAAM), which houses three perfectly mummified Inca kids. He said that one look at these Llullaillaco children would change my mind and I’d start to look at mummies with new eyes.

I doubted it. In fact, I wondered if he was the sort of person who works in an old people’s home and practises weird things with bandages in the middle of the night. But still, knackered from my bus ride, I decided a trip any further than the town centre was out of the question, so I headed down there to the museum yesterday to check these mummies out.

Salta itself seems a fairly sizeable city. I’m here because it’s on my route north towards Bolivia. It has a nice colonial centre with a pink cathedral in a square surrounded by cafes, plenty of ice-cream eating opportunities and free wi-fi. You can buy un-toasted tostadas in perfect triangles absolutely everywhere, and a lot of bad neon clothing, too, but that’s about it, by the looks of things.

At the museum, I paid my 40 pesos and was led to a dark room in which several very informative boards in English, surrounded by various artifacts, detailed old Inca rituals. They explained how the three kids were discovered in 1999 when a group of scientists stumbled upon a hidden temple at the summit of the Llullaillaco volcano. The children had been preserved perfectly by the freezing temperatures up there.

The museum has in its care a fifteen-year-old ‘maiden’, a six-year-old girl who’s since been damaged Harry Potter style by a rogue lightning bolt, and a seven-year-old boy. You can see photos of their hunched and twisted bodies, revealing eerily perfect skin, before you even arrive at the glass case.

Apparently these poor kids were all fed some sort of strange potion and died in their sleep, whereupon they were sacrificed to act as mediators between the Inca people and the gods.

I looked at the seven-year-old for a while, his head tucked between his knees, wearing his red funerary clothing, a white feather headdress on his forehead. I wondered what sort of parent would think it acceptable to poison their own child and leave him on the top of a volcano. It would never be allowed now. It made me feel a bit sad.

Anyway, short of looking at the mummified boy, there wasn’t much else to do in the museum, aside from stare at a few photos of mountains in the Salta Province. Plus, all the English signs seemed to stop after the section with the mummies, as though the museum staff couldn’t be bothered to translate any more. I got an ice-cream, walked back to the hostel and paid 380 pesos for a day-long trip to Cafayate. Which brings me to now. I’ve just got back. I’m exhausted.

You must go to Cafayate, said … well, most people I’ve talked to who’ve been in this area of Argentina. ‘The wine is so good and it’s so pretty!’

I’ll go anywhere for wine, as you know, and I was quite excited when the minivan pulled up at 7.30 a.m to collect me. It had to come early as it takes three hours to get to this wine-lover’s paradise from Salta City, and another three to get back. I was also looking forward to seeing the limestone hills morph into the ochre-colored canyons and rocky arches of Quebrada de Cafayate along the way — supposedly some of the most impressive rock formations in the world.

Just before we set off, however, I was asked to leave the front seat of the minivan to allow a Colombian girl wearing a pink travel pillow around her neck to take my place. The other people on the bus were old. As you know, I love old people, they have lots of stories, but these people were so old they seemed to have lost the ability to talk. To me, anyway. I pulled out my Kindle but soon realised why I’d been asked to vacate my seat. No sooner had we set off than we were swerving to stop again at the side of the road and the Colombian, still with the travel pillow round her neck, was emptying the contents of her stomach onto the red gravel outside. Eventually her boyfriend climbed out and stood behind her, patting her on the back kind of awkwardly as she splattered another cactus.

Off we set again, through ever-changing spectacular scenery. It was obvious we had a tight schedule to adhere to and having someone needing to vomit every ten minutes was clearly not in our driver Bernardo’s plan. Bernardo (also our tour guide) chattered away merrily, although as usual the non-Spanish speakers got the basic English explanations, such as ‘this landscape has many cactus plants and red rock’, whereas the Spanish-speaking old people were treated to a full historic run down and timeline of the Quebrada de Cafayate, complete with personal stories about his family, friends and pets, probably.

It doesn’t matter how much my Spanish is improving as I travel, when people speak really fast, it’s so hard to keep up. These days I generally get the gist of a conversation and end up filling in the gaps with my own imaginings. Often I’ll be so engrossed in my own idea of how, say, a man gesturing to the sky used to be an award-winning acrobat, or a pilot in Pakistan, that I’ll forget he’s only probably talking about rain, or leaves falling off trees.

When we stopped to look at some seriously gargantuan cactuses and some nice luminous red cliffs, I noticed that one of the old women was wearing an off-the-shoulder T-shirt with the words ‘Dangerous Bitch’ on it. She’d accompanied this with some diamante-studded thongs and was chain smoking at a rate that would put a chimney to shame.

When she finished her cigarettes she would simply flick them onto the ground, whereupon her husband — I’m assuming he was her husband — would bend down and pick them up. She even giggled at him doing it, as if to say, ‘Oops, I forgot
again
that I wasn’t supposed to do that.’

With all the desert dryness around us, she really was a Dangerous Bitch.

Next up, we stopped to see some llamas tied to a tree, which appeared to belong to three old women selling black cooking pots and bowls by the side of the road. Bernardo took huge delight in showing us a kissy pose beside the llamas, which we all copied instantly, and the poor things then found themselves at the centre of a paparazzi frenzy as we smooched them.

Both were cute with the thickest, woolliest, craziest, dirtiest hair I’ve ever seen on any living creature. Seriously, to get the sticks and twigs embedded into that fleece out, you’d need an industrial strength vacuum cleaner and
lots
of patience. I don’t know how they make so many clothes from llama wool. Actually, I suspect the reason llama wool jumpers are so expensive is not because of the quality, but because it takes the average lady half of her entire, precious life to get the crap out of the source material.

This guy had wonky teeth and bad breath. But he did have great hair.

When we were all back in the van, more fag ends had been collected and the Colombian had finally stopped spraying the scenery with her vomit, Bernardo said suddenly, ‘They found some frogs with shells in the lake’.

‘Frogs with shells?’ I repeated. This was good news, as I was getting a little bored. There are only so many cactuses and old people you can surround yourself with before things get a little dry. ‘That’s AMAZING! When did frogs with shells die out? I never knew they existed.’

‘Yes, many years ago. When the lake was a lake. Now it is a river.’ Bernardo pointed out of the window at a sinewy river, winding its way between the craggy cliffs and cacti.

‘But frogs with shells living anywhere is incredible,’ I continued.

‘Ah, I mean fossil,’ Bernardo said then. ‘Not shell. They find fossil frog.’

‘Oh.’ I sank back in my seat. So much for that.

When we finally reached the town centre of Cafayate, we were attacked as soon as we got off the bus in the main plaza by a guy waving a flier for a 45-peso lunch in our faces.

‘Very good place, very good food,’ Bernardo said, nodding enthusiastically. Not knowing of anywhere else in the vicinity and feeling rather hot and hungry, most of us sat down at a sidewalk table at his recommendation and ordered. And then wished we hadn’t. What proceeded to arrive was probably the worst food I’ve ever been served, and that’s no exaggeration. My meal of indeterminable meat, allegedly a
milanesa
, looked like a slab of dirty carpet. It was even gritty, like it had actually been used as a doormat before being slapped on my plate.

The Dutch girl on our tour, who’d humoured a starter of two folded slices of packet, economy-style sandwich ham, was given a salad for her main dish that consisted of just six sliced tomatoes and a boiled egg. I told the waiters that all of it was terrible and that I didn’t think we should pay for what was clearly a tourist scam, at which point they laughed. One guy even said ‘
bueno
’, before whisking my untouched plate away. The cheek!

To be fair, they didn’t charge me, but everyone else paid. I felt a bit bad about that but, really, there’s enduring a bad meal for the sake of being polite, and there’s being served a dirty carpet tile. The moral, I guess, is beware of spruikers.

The Dutch girl was out for revenge. When she came back from the loo, she said, ‘I threw my paper in the toilet, ’cause they deserve it.’

We all smiled smugly. That’ll teach them. You’re not supposed to flush toilet paper in toilets in these parts. Although, in fairness, a blockage might actually cause a flood or an outbreak of typhoid, so I wouldn’t recommend you do this anywhere you’ve been told not to.

We all made Bernardo promise he’d never take people there again, but I have a sneaking suspicion he may have enjoyed a fine
asado
of succulent steaks with the staff out back, while we were picking bits of grit from our teeth on the sidewalk.

Regarding what Cafayate is so famous for — wine — we got to sip three tiny thimbles of it at the Bodegas El Transito after ‘lunch’. The lady who hurried us around the barrels and explained the ways of the winery in about five minutes later told me she did ten tours a day. At one point, she even yawned.

It was such a long day for all of us. I’m not sure what was more disturbing in the end, the mummified child, the chain smoking Dangerous Bitch or the gritty
milanesa
, but I’ve signed up for another tour tomorrow nonetheless — to the little mountain city of Purmamarca. Let’s hope the slice of carpet tile I braved doesn’t repeat on me, or it’ll be me vomming on the cactus plants in the morning instead.

20/10

As I type, I’m sitting at a tapestry-covered table with salsa music blaring. There’s only one plug in the entire reception area, so I’m taking my ‘turn’ to charge my computer. Opposite, I can see the Mama Coca Hostel manager smoking while bashing at a laptop, and a glass display cabinet featuring rocks and Andean relics against the wall. I’m not sure if the relics are real but it wouldn’t surprise me as I’m in Purmamarca, a tiny Andean ‘city’, sitting in the beautiful glow of the Cerro de los Siete Colores (Hill of the Seven Colours).

The mountains I can see from the window are a number of colours; I’m guessing way more than seven, thanks to the varying mineral content in the rock walls. Hues of pink, orange, green and red swept into wispy layers by the hands of time have formed what look to me like Cadbury’s Flakes set on their sides. It keeps distracting me from my screen. Mmm, chocolate.

I’m pretty far north in Argentina right now, making my way, as I am, up to the border at La Quiaca in order to cross into Bolivia. I got today’s tour bus to leave me here instead of going back down to Salta. I figured this way I might meet some more happy travellers going in the same direction.

Purmamarca, from what I’ve witnessed so far, consists of the odd tourist wandering aimlessly about looking for something to do, and little old ladies selling handicrafts in colourful ponchos and top hats. The name of the town is a combination of the Aymara words
purma
, meaning desert, and
marca
, meaning city, which is pretty apt, although it’s barely big enough to be called a hamlet, let alone a city. I really love it, though. It feels powerful somehow.

Every now and then a huge gust of wind will gush down from up high and whip the ground into a frenzy, making you think a tornado has struck. Everyone stops in their tracks to pull their clothes over their faces and, for a second, everything freezes like it’s been paused by a remote control. Everything is so dusty, too. Forget wearing contact lenses.

Before arriving here, I took another tour from Salta. This one involved yet more time on a bus en route to Salinas Grandes, Argentina’s famed salt flats. We drove through more cactus-riddled scenery, gawping at swirling mini sand tornadoes around every corner. It was yet another arse-numbing journey that was so bumpy I feared my buttocks would be battered black and blue by the end of it. Our driver Jorge spoke way more English than Bernardo did, however, and I also made friends with a delightful couple in their late sixties from Wisconsin who’ve been travelling to amazing places all their lives and raised their youngest child on a US airbase in Germany. Hearing their stories made things a bit more interesting. And thankfully there were no travel sick Colombians hogging the front seat and forcing us to stop every ten minutes.

Today’s most entertaining passenger, though, was a French man. I followed him down the steps of the van to admire a sight called Tres Cruces (basically, three nice rocks) and saw that his bum crack was fully visible above his slack trousers. He was clearly wearing no underpants. He tried to cover up this fact by yanking his trousers up quickly but by the sheepish look he shot me at the bottom of the steps I knew he knew that I knew. It changed things. At lunch I had to sit next to him, which was awkward.

Lunch was a beetroot, carrot, lettuce and tomato salad with olive oil (they’re not big on fancy salads in Argentina) in a teeny-weeny town called San Antonia de los Cobres. After we ate, I went for a walk and met a sprightly 87-year-old lady called Lia who posed for a photo and then sold me a llama — a toy llama, I should add, although it was covered in real llama hair. This cost me twenty pesos, which I thought was a fair deal, until I found out that the man with no pants on had bought one for ten.

Moving on, we stopped to take photos of the Cuesta del Lipán (the Corridor to Chile), which is an impressive sinewy road that winds though the province of Jujuy, and from a distance reminded me of my brother Simon’s old Scalextric race track. As we drove on around giant hills constructed of what appeared to be brownish gravel, I felt like an ant who’d crawled into the bottom of a jar of gravy granules, although I also noticed a heap of human detritus cluttering up the landscape here in numerous places. It was mostly plastic bottles, which I thought was a shame.

Once we reached the Salinas Grandes we were blessed with a slightly longer stop, a whole thirty minutes. Roughly twenty of these were spent in the vicinity of the toilet, because I was asked to pay two pesos to have my pee in a porta-cabin. Not having anything smaller, I apologised and gave the man in charge a 100 peso bill, thinking he’d probably let me off. He didn’t and I waited fifteen minutes with my legs crossed while he scrambled around all over the place collecting change.

I was then free to use my new toy llama as a model on the salt flats, which were really quite striking: as cracked and dry as parched lips in the desert. I think the look of these places depends on the time of year you visit, though. People keep telling me Salinas Grandes is not as good as Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia and, if I’m totally honest, I saw a much prettier, less cracked and whiter salt flat in South Australia a couple of years ago in the Gawler Ranges. That one is so dazzling they film car commercials and movies set in cold places there because it looks so much like ice. It’s much better. Call me a salt flat snob but there you have it.

You feel quite small when you’re standing on Salinas Grandes. Clouds linger on distant hills like fluffy albino llamas, giving the whole place a rather dreamlike quality. I imagined a whopping great Monty Python foot coming down from the sky and hovering over me as I used my remaining few minutes to walk around the turquoise-coloured pools of water that occurred in places where the salt had been dug up. It was quite exhausting just walking about, thanks to the altitude. There are 6000 km
2
of salt flats here at Salinas Grandes at an altitude of some 3600 metres. Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia has 10,582 km
2
at an even higher altitude.

The giant heaps of salt laid out in rows ready for export (for cows, so we were told) looked to me a bit like the world’s longest lines of cocaine for giants. I saw the no-pants French man getting his photo taken on top of one of them looking particularly joyful, and wondered whether he’d forgotten his pants because his mind had been racing too far ahead on another white substance that morning.

There’s a small building made of salt on the site the tours all stop at, which was originally intended to be a restaurant, but, according to Jorge, it got rained on, and it melted. We saw it. It’s only been partly rebuilt. It makes me worry a bit about the salt hotels you get to stay in for the night when you do the Uyuni tour. A quick change in weather and you could very well go to sleep in a hostel bed and wake up in a wet, sticky, freezing pool of water. Let’s hope it’s not the wrong season when we do that one.

Anyway, I have to pack up now, not only because my poor battered bum cheeks are hurting even more from sitting on a rock hard hostel chair, but because the lovely couple from Wisconsin have invited me for dinner at a restaurant near their hotel and apparently we can eat llama. I’m thinking why not? I’ve kissed one, bought a tiny toy one covered in real llama hair — why the hell not ingest one, too, and let it roam free-range around my intestines? Ah, Argentina. I’m going to miss you when I make it over that border.

24/10