In the ocean depths of northern Argentina
It all started with a dream, one of those you forget as soon as you wake up, but leave some reminiscences and vague images. I saw the Titanic, the ocean liner that had a tragic maiden voyage, its bow was lying on the seabed. What puzzled me was the sheer amount of light that surrounded me, incongruous in the 3,800 meters of Atlantic depth. I was there, enveloped in an unusual sense of lightness, adventure, and joy. Until the alarm clock brought me to the surface.
I forgot about it with the first sip of tea. The cold of the polar wave over Buenos Aires and the Roca Line train at rush hour entertained my mind already busy with a work routine that had not even begun. The day advanced between news and journalistic publications in the light of a screen while dealing with urgent matters.
On my return, I moved with the crowd of office workers after a productive day. We commuted along the current of the subway in its railway combination to the southern suburbs. I got on the wagon, a Japanese Toshiba formation that inaugurated the electric line back in the eighties. The tumult was like a shelter that evening, and the circulation system mixed the flu-like coughs. In a corner, I just focused on my cell phone.
"Do you need to get out of the city? Get to know the Argentinian North," an ad on Instagram attacked me. There is no doubt that the cell phone listens to us and reads everything we receive and write; I think it can also guess our thoughts. I had never been to the northern provinces, and that ad lit a spark in me. After a few weeks, the idea materialized in tickets and reservations to visit Salta and Jujuy.
Traveling is walking and eating in unfamiliar places
I arrived in Salta on a flight that had barely lasted two hours, but everything felt different. I left my stuff at the hotel and toured the central square, a perfectly preserved jewel of our colonial past. In Buenos Aires there are no buildings like this in their original state.
It wasn't just the architecture, there was something in the air that vibrated differently, was it the mountain? Was it centuries of history? The people moved without the frenzy of the porteños, I found kindness everywhere and people’s faces showed that they were indeed connected to their land through the blood of countless generations. For a moment I felt that this was the real Argentina, that my metropolis and I would always be a recent annexation, a new neighbor.
I did a lot of walking. I was amazed by the churches, the Inca mummies, the view from the San Bernardo hill, the houses and their facades, the cobblestone streets and the vendors. However, what I liked most was the food.
I tried dishes that astonished me for their unique flavors and gastronomic tradition: I ate the small empanadas of Salta everyday, I tasted tamales and humitas, I had quesillo with cayote for tea, and other snacks. I raved about locro and had it more than 10 times. Today that stew of white corn, pumpkin, meat and ancestral magic is my favorite food.
Divine Nature, cretaceous past
I'm not going to dwell on the wonders that can be seen in the North, they're just a click away, I'm just going to mention some of the places that left me wide-eyed. I visited towns that take you to another era such as Cachi, Humahuaca and Tilcara; I admired colorful and unique landscapes such as Los Cardones, the Quebrada de Humahuaca and the Salinas Grandes; I enjoyed wines, wineries and meals in Cafayate. In every bit of the route, every step, every night, I was able to rest and relax. I wanted to visit many more places, but I ran out of time. I'll be back.
My last day there had come. I was in Cafayate and I had to go to the airport in Salta. I hired a service to take me there and, on the way, visited the Quebrada de las Conchas, which are some vibrantly colored brick-toned rock formations. My driver was serendipity.
Mario Tanaka is one of those who considers silence offensive. He talked non-stop from the moment I stepped into his van, he was the best tour guide I could have found. He explained to me that all that beautiful area of the Calchaquí Valleys, which was inhabited by the aborigines of the same name, had been a seabed in Cretaceous times and that the movement of plates had brought it to the surface two million years ago.
With Mario's explanation I understood how the salt flats were formed and the reason for the name of the Quebrada de las Conchas. He walked me through the formations of the Devil's Throat and the Amphitheater and he rummaged through the earth until he found something and gave it to me. Small and fragile sea snails, witnesses of the passage of time and receding oceans.
The driver and a story about the Calchaquí Valleys
I asked Mario about his last name and he told me a strange story about his Japanese father. Orphaned in the midst of the post-war devastation of Tokyo, Tanaka Sr. was haunted by the ghost of a samurai, perhaps an ancestor, who stared at him from afar with a katana unsheathed. He saw him on street corners, in front of the shelter where he slept and once in the middle of the crowded market. At first he considered it a dire sign, a threat, but then he understood that he always pointed his sword in the same direction: towards the harbor. One day he packed his few things and followed the samurai's instructions to an ocean liner bound for Argentina. He worked on board in exchange for travel and food, finally, he disembarked in Buenos Aires. Not even at the other end of the world did that wandering spirit leave him. The samurai continued to point to the northwest and Tanaka Sr., determined to follow the adventure through to the end and submitted himself to the family's design from beyond the grave.
"My dad followed the samurai to this area of the valley; he walked all the way. He stopped to drink some water right there in the river," he said, pointing with his hand out the window. And he didn't see him anymore, he didn't know where to go. He took a nap and suddenly found him, up there in that formation we call the Titanic, with his sword sheathed. According to dad, he bowed to him and vanished. Can you see there at the bottom? The remains of the small house he built are still there, where he lived with my mother and where I was born."
When he said Titanic, it suddenly dawned on me that it had the same shape and the same profile, the rock giant was the sunken bow of the ocean liner in my dream, and somehow it also rested on the seabed. The midday light flooded everything.
I said goodbye to Mario at the airport with a hug that felt like I was closing a circuit or completing a ritual. On the plane I kept thinking about the story of the samurai and how funny it was to meet that driver and got to know that place. Even today I can't tell which one seems more unreal.