Jungles and Salt Deserts

Next week is the three month mark of my stay here in Buenos Aires, which shockingly means that I only have two more months here. I can't believe how fast everything has gone and while I do miss my family and friends in the US and can't wait to return, it is definitely going to be an adjustment going back to New York and Columbia. I have gotten used to the pace of life here and I know there are going to be a lot of things that I miss when I get back. But in the meantime, I'm going to try and not dwell on the future, and really make the most of the time that I do have left here. And now that my extensive travels have come to an end, I am going to keep working on exploring the city, and believe it or not, do some school work. As one of friends put it: even though you might have come to the conclusion that my life here is just one long vacation made up of smaller vacations strung together, and even though you might be right, I am actually taking classes, reading texts, writing papers and generally engaging my brain intellectually. Which is not to say that traveling around doesn't inspire deep thoughts. In fact, on my two most recent trips I found myself contemplating infinity as I stared at the rushing water in Iguazú and again as the hexagonal salt flats unfolded before the mountains in Jujuy. Borges would have been proud. And to be honest, I'm not sure even where to begin to talk about all the wonderful things I saw. I'll be brief and try to let the photos speak for themselves.

The first trip, two weeks ago, was to Iguazú, up north near the border of Paraguay and Brazil. Another long, but fairly comfortable eighteen-hour bus ride delivered my friends and I to this major tourist destination. The city is tiny and quiet and clearly only a place that people pass through on their way to and from the waterfalls. We stayed at an enormous hostel, filled with young travelers from all over the world, all there for the same purpose: taking millions of photos of the falls to show to their friends and family. I must admit that I took a spectacular number of photos myself, and through a cruel twist of fate at the end of the day "formated" my memory card, and thereby erased all of the photos. Who knew? The following photos you see are my friend Lara's. Lesson I learned? Don't press "Format Memory Card." Also, take time to look at what is around you, without the help of a camera lens. You might not always have the photos, and your memories are more precious anyway. Luckily I did spend a good deal of time just staring at the water as it rushed over the rocks, plunging into the mist, and I don't think I will be forgetting it anytime soon. Even though it was cloudy most of the day and even rained a bit, it was a spectacular sight. There are multiple different systems of waterfalls, all easily accessible through walkways that traverse the forests. We even took a crazy boat ride that zoomed us right up close to the waterfalls. Said boat also went dangerously fast, careening around at 45 degree angles, which was exhilarating even without the crashing water. We watched enormous, red, armored ants carry leaves. We wore expensive, glorified plastic bags. We saw the same people all day long as we walked from place to place. We got our shoes muddy. I'm not sure if this place is considered a wonder of the world or anything, but it sure is in my books. I experienced for the first time the truly furious power of a crashing waterfall and the lush depth of a jungle, and it was beautiful. 

Garganta del Diablo

Dos Hermanas

The next weekend we flew by plane to the province of Jujuy. The idea of this trip, which was organized by our program, was to give us an idea about other regions of Argentina, outside of the central provinces, that are very much influenced by indigenous cultures and have a distinct history that shares elements with neighboring countries and geographical regions, such as the Andes. We visited an Anthropology and Archeology museum in the city of Tilcara where we got to see old tools and even some skulls and bones. I realized that while I quite like the idea of human bones, and even artistic renditions (pictures, drawings, etc.) I am quite unsettled by real human bones right in front of my eyes. But thankfully that was only one activity of the trip. 

We stayed in cabañas near the mountains in the city of Tilcara. At night when the sun set, it was amazing to see the moon and stars, but almost more magical was to see the tiny lights of the houses dotting the mountainside, shining as if they themselves were stars. In Tilcara, we visited the pucará which in the indigenous language (forgive me for forgetting its name) means fortaleza which in turn means fort. It was an old settlement that at its height might have been home to 1500 people, quite a lot for this tiny village on a hill in the middle of the valley. There were a number of reconstructed houses to show how cactus wood and other natural materials were used to construct the houses. I did not know that cacti had wood. I also did not know there were so many cacti in the world, or that they could be so huge! My favorite parts of the Tilcara pucará were probably the garden (one which hilariously only contained cacti) and the llamas. I have a fondness in my heart for these animals, mainly thanks to the acclaimed (among my friends) film The Emperor's New Groove, which is actually an Disney cartoon, and on my list of top Disney films. 

But, Disney films aside, while in the province of Jujuy we also visited the towns of Humahuaca and Purmamarcas as well as the stunning Salinas Grandes. Each place had its own very distinct terrain and a feria in the center of town, selling llama sweaters, multicolored bags and tablecloths, mate cups and many other fun items. As I think back about the trip, I am so glad that I got to experience this other Argentina that is so different from the Argentina that I have come to know and love living in Buenos Aires. Everything there has a different flavor, from the language, the style of dress, the terrain, and of course, the food. The Spanish spoken in the North has a very different accent and there are words still in use today that are from Quechua (the indigenous language I could not remember earlier). The religion today is of course mostly Catholic, from the Spanish Conquistadores, but there are remnants of the pre-Incan "religious cosmology" shared by many peoples of the Andean region everywhere. Many of the older women have a style of dress that I quite envy; they wear all of their brightest, most patterned clothing at once, topped off literally with a wide-brimmed hat (You can see such a lady in my first photo. While you can't see the way she mixed her colors, you can see the shape of her clothes and her hat!). I found the regional cuisine super delicious: rotund tamales, rich goat cheese, and a desert that tasted just like mincemeat. The whole trip made me wish I was exploring this region of South American, going to Peru and Bolivia as well. I am glad that I at least made it as far as I did. 

Sunset in Tilcara

Dusk by the cabañas

Garden at the pucará

So many cacti!

Sadly I saw more llamas on sweaters than actual llamas

On our last full day in Jujuy we took a long bus ride up an enormous mountain (almost a fourteener) and back down the other side to get to the Salinas Grandes. What you see below, though it may look like a regular sand desert, or perhaps hard-packed snow, is neither. It is salt! Here they make salt, or rather, natural processes make salt and they collect it. I guess you could call it salt farming. From what I understand, this used to be a lake, but clearly all the water evaporated leaving behind all the minerals and such, which was mosty salt. To get this salt from the ground (because it is a very firm ground) and the make sure that it is clean, during the summer when it rains a lot they dig a bunch of rectangular holes in the ground that are maybe a foot deep. The water seeps up from the ground, filling the hole with water. Here is where I got confused, so please forgive me. As the year passes, the water and sun together (I'm sure there are some other forces too) crystallizes and purify the salt and evaporate the water, leaving a clean salt rectangle before the next rainy season during summer. That might not be correct. What I know for sure is that the process is completely natural, we humans have to do nearly nothing and coolest of all, the actual flat part of the salts is patterned. As the water evaporated the salt forms big hexagons in the sand, all interconnecting, all exactly six sides. I was truly amazed. Not remembering much from chemistry class in tenth grade, I think this must have something to do with the structure of the chemical compound, but again, I'm not sure. Clearly this whole trip to Jujuy was quite the learning experience, and not just the learning about myself and the world, but actually thinking about tangible knowledge like Pre-Incan history and the formation of salt. In the pictures below you can see the super cool hexagons as well as the rectangular holes that make the salt (and the piles of dirty, unusable salt next to them). Since salt actually is its own food group down here (mayonnaise is too), I was happy to learn where it is actually coming from. I looked at our boxes (yes, plural, boxes) of salt when I got home and sure enough, they are from Las Salinas Grandes. Now I'm off to eat some homemade empanadas and then prepare for a presentation on Borges. One activity will be delicious, but I'll let you decide which one.