Mayan: May 2015

After two weeks of living like Portenos in Buenos Bires, we began a more nomadic-ish trip through the deserts of Argentina, Chile and Bolivia.
Our first stop was Tucuman, strictly speaking probably not the desert. However, famous for having the best empanadas in all South America, and en route to Salta, this was a great place to stop and eat! We stayed with Juan and Luis who introduced us to some great Argentina music like Tonolec. Apart from the great empanadas this place has amazing churches and convents, ornately decorated with gold and frescos on all the ceilings, and old theatres and libraries where you can sit and soak it all in with a cafe jarito... it also has pizza cones!!! May was in heaven.

Delicious empanadas

Pizza cones...too good to resist

Our next stop was Salta, Where beautiful colonial buildings are shared between tourists and political rallies. Drums, fireworks and fervor are all part of the ways in which people here express their grievances. The political activism and passion in Argentina is definitely not confined to Buenos Aires. The 5pm week night mass at the gorgeous San Francisco catholic church is packed with hundreds of locals coming to sing, pray and receive communion. Here we saw people crying, the poor, the rich, people from all walks of life finding comfort. No matter what you believe in, this was something special to be allowed to watch as a stranger.
Salta also has a renowned high-altitude archeology museum which houses three Incan children buried over five hundred years ago. In 1999, archeologists founds the three children, aged between 6 and 13, at an altitude of 7000m and cryogenically preserved in the mountain. The children were sacrificed as part of an Incan ceremony that aimed to strengthen ties between diverse Incan tribes. each tribe would give their most beautiful aristocratic child as a sacrifice. they would be symbolically "married" to tribes from other parts of the empire, drugged (anesthetised) and then buried alive at specific sacred mountains near their home towns at high altitude (>6000m), together with gifts from all over the empire. The ethical conflicts around digging these bodies up was something that weighed on Mays mind: the desecration of the burial site and removal of the bodies, versus the many insights this particular discovery has unveiled.
The colonial buildings and beautiful churches of Salta

San Roque- saint of dogs

From Salta, at 1300m, we ascended to 4300m before descending back down to 2600m at San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. A totally amazing bus ride where the landscape changes every scary turn you take! The bus doesn't stop for photo happy tourists, so May just snapped away from inside the bus (sorry about the glass reflections!). This desert area is so different to the deserts we've visited in other parts of the world: it´s full of different coloured rock formations, small shrubs and tall cacti, then the dark sand dunes, snow capped mountains and dirt. Sadly, not even our altitude pills and all the coca leaves in the world could stop us from both feeling sick upon our arrival into San Pedro. We spent our first evening in San Pedro with Sam in bed with the chills, nausea and headaches, and May reading to us both. By morning we were right as rain, thankfully! We met Ty and his partner the next morning, an Aussie-Canadian duo cycling around the world, and grabbed breaky together. From San Pedro we went out to the Valle de la Luna, so named because it looks like the surface of the moon, and the Valle de la Muerte so named because there is no water and trying to cross by foot will probably kill you and your livestock. We walked through a dark and tiny cave, glad to have torches on our phones. In the pitch black, the salt crystals were slippery and sharp at the same time so we either lost our footing or got stabbed in the back ( May has a nice scab or three to prove it!) but it is well worth it, and also the best way to hide from the throng of tourists that visit these valleys every day. San Pedro is home to the worlds largest telescopes and renowned astronomers. With a new moon, it was a perfect star gazing night: hot chocolate in one hand and the rings of Saturn in clear focus. The scientists talked conspiracy theories, aliens and astrophysics all in the same breath.

The road to San Pedro

Colourful markets

Valle de la Luna and Valle de la Muerte

Cycling in the desert

Reading list of a conspiracy theorist

We thought it would be a good idea to hire bikes to the "Dead Sea" of South America, to get away from the tourist crowd. We were right! A forty km dirt bike ride in the middle of a very barren desertscape, and no Dead Sea entrance at the end! But as they say...it's the journey not the destination. It was an awesome ride, about four hours in the end and only two people, and one tree along the way. This lonely tree shaded us for our short break, and in-keeping with local tradition, we poured some fresh water on its roots to help this old beauty survive in the harsh conditions.
San Pedro and all its sights were marvelous, but the down side was definitely the hoards of tourists. We decided to take a less common path into Bolivia and to Uyuni, our next stop. We did a beautiful and fun 4wd tour through the desert directly to Uyuni instead of the usual 3-day meandering tour, and then booked 2 nights at a hotel which was perched on its own rocky island on the Salar de Uyuni (salt flats). Here we found solitude and inspiring views, in a hotel made entirely of salt. We decide this place is the fourth hidden magic school, the Hogwarts of South America. We spent our days here curled up by one of the fireplaces in one of the common rooms, catching up on our reading, writing, and just soaking up the majestic salt flats....and Sam just had to lick the chairs and tables to check if they were really made of salt! It was the best way ever to finish up our desert trip.

The voyage to Uyuni

Alien plant discovered inhabiting the Uyuni region - or did we spend too long stargazing last night?

The high altitude desert grass looks just like spinifex, growing in partial rings

The view of the Salar de Uyuni from our hotel

Mapping our desert journey

What a crazy city! One minute you're watching young kids pickpocketing and surviving on the streets or hearing the latest first-hand story about motochorros stealing someone's bag, the next you're sitting comfortably in a cafe that was host to some of Latin America's most famous writers with a jarito (long black) or cortardo (macchiato) with medialunas de grasa.

Our days usually start with the commute from our base in Lomas de Zamora, on a train that is ridiculously packed with people, to whichever cafeteria or place of interest Marcela (our Spanish teacher) has chosen for our class that day. It was Marcela's idea to teach us this way, and I cant believe we never studied a language this way before! We're learning a lot about this city, country and continent, although we get a little bit lost every day, and were always late. Each day, after our classes we keep exploring the barrio (quarter/neighbourhood) and practicing our Spanish on the locals. There's a lot of coffee drinking involved :)

We met Marcela through Romi and Pablo who offered us a place for couchsurfing in their home in BA for a couple of weeks. In the evenings when they return from work, and we return from our day of exploring, we cook together in their quincho. One rainy weekend we spent the whole time cooking, with some breaks for eating and watching soccer (vamos Boca carajo!) We contributed beer stew, damper, scones and sausage rolls as an Australian presence on the table.

From patagonia to the big smoke of buenos aires is a bit of a shock! The poverty, pollution, and crime of urban life here is often spoken about, and is certainly a depressing and scary side. We've seen guys pull out knives, been followed by children trying to scare us into giving them money ( thanks marcela for saving us!) and every single person we have met has at least once recently been rolled. But its also so vibrant and the cultural heart of the country. Some things that have stood out for us have included:
- you order coffee with your hands, no speaking required
- this has to be the most planned city on the planet: every block is a square, even in the suburbs
- there is a sense of nostalgia in the tango clubs, antique shops, and conversations, that hark back to the late 1920s and/or early 2001

English lessons with Marcela
San Telmo - El Federal