Salta La Linda
Late afternoon, writing on the back patio of the Siete Duendes hostel. Drinking yerba mate, of course, as I’ve been doing all day, my first full day in this country. The hostel’s name is a little mysterious; at first I thought it had something to do with the word for owners, dueños, but seven owners is a lot, and in fact the words are unrelated. Apparently duende is a common word and facet of culture in Latin America, but I hadn’t yet come across it in twenty months from México to Argentina. These are something like gnomes or sprites who inhabit a home or other place, and they’re mischievous.
As I just wrote that last word, I couldn’t decide whether or not it should be spelled with a second i, “mischievious”. From the looks of it, that is a whole mess of vowels, and there shouldn’t be a second i — but I realized I pronounce it ee-us at the end. The look test and the sound-it-out test were not in agreement, and my brain got stuck. Next was this growing feeling of dread that mischievous is properly pronounced with three syllables, mis-cha-vus, and I’ve been saying it wrong, ALL ALONG. This is the kind of thing an English teacher should at least know.
A slight bit of research into this quandary shows that it’s not just me. Phew. According to Merriam-Webster:
A pronunciation \mis-ˈchē-vē-əs\ and a consequent spelling mischievious are of long standing: evidence for the spelling goes back to the 16th century. Our pronunciation files contain modern attestations ranging from dialect speakers to Herbert Hoover. But both the pronunciation and the spelling are still considered nonstandard.
This makes me feel better, and leaves me to appreciate the odd bits of flotsam you find in a language when you look at it close enough. In terms of spelling and pronunciation, English is not in any way a science.
As far as the duendes, for context I know I should ask some of my fellow travelers, while we are all staying at a place named after them. It’s a perfect justification for a strange question, like asking “what is a sprite?” or “do people believe that elves are real?” I think I understand what they are: the little people that you seem to find in almost every culture. A little research in literary equivalents shows that the seven dwarves from Snow White are not duendes, but rather enanitos. This word, enano, I came across for the first time in Arequipa. One night Katherine and Karem and I were preparing decorations for the return to town of Katherine’s little sister Karolayn, who had gone back to Venezuela for a month. Among the signs they made to greet her at the airport, a dig at her diminutive stature, was something like “Bienvenidos Enano!” On the other hand, Rumpelstiltskin is referred to as a duende.
After a day here, I feel like this might be the place I was looking for. I don’t necessarily mean just Salta, as this is only my first stop in the country, but Argentina in general. Most of the people here who have been welcoming to me are Argentines from other parts of the country. Or maybe it is Salta; all these friendly people have come here, and the locals also seem to be decent folk. Too soon to say. I have a feeling that I could live here for a long time, and there haven’t been that many cities that fit that description on my journey. After Mexico, where there are many cities I could live, the list would be: Medellín, Quito, Cuenca, Cuzco, Arequipa, and now Salta.
For one, there is the vegetation: the hills that surround the city are green and forested, and not the bright tropical green but the darker verdant of deciduous trees. I have been a long time in dry, dry land — deserts and barren coasts, crackly mountains and windswept altiplano — ever since the north of Perú. It is a revelation to be in this temperate forest, to feel the breath of many trees, big stoic trees with sweeping two hundred year old canopies on the side of a street. In the city there are districts that don’t have that many trees, but the plazas and parks are full of grand ones, and the older parts and the edges are lined with trees.
These are different deciduous trees from Virginia; closer to what you find in California, but they feel relatively familiar. I would imagine that some of them are oaks and laurels or closely related. There are the eucalyptus and pine that seem to grow everywhere, and then there are trees unlike any I have seen. At the Parque San Martín, there are these trees that swell out into bulbous trunks like pot bellies a few feet up from the ground, and are covered with relatively large cone-like thorns. I had to sit down and marvel at them, though any excuse to stop walking on my bad heel would have been welcome.
Despite the slight exotic-ness of the flora, I feel naturally at home in this environment; it is the first sub-tropical temperate zone I’ve come to since I left my own up north, the first place with four seasons. Like Chile, this country appears to be more organized and sophisticated than the countries to the north. At the same time, that relaxed pace of life, that dreaminess I appreciate so much in Latin American culture is present, and maybe in a way more so. Chaos is not relaxing.
Much of South America remains tranquilo in the face of caos, but with less of it you can just sit back and enjoy your mate, or espresso, or wine. Even more so than in Chile, Argentines love to sit around casually drinking beverages all day, at cafés, parks and plazas. And talking. Conversation over beverages. It’s my kind of place. My friend Chris says that “there’s less gravity here” and I understand what he means, though it’s possible there’s more, and that’s why everyone has to be so relaxed. At first look, it reminds me a lot of Europe. Then the fact that a good bit of those beverages are Yerba mate, means that this is especially my kind of place.
Salta is a medium-sized city, maybe about half a million people, and I really am taken with it. There are long pedestrian streets, historic and longstanding buildings, grand parks and plazas, little hill-mountains at the eastern edge of town, much larger ones to the west. There’s a teleférico that goes up the nearest peak to the east. There is a Salteña cuisine, which the denizens are passionate about, centered around empanadas and several kinds of hearty stews. It is a musical culture: the street music is of a higher caliber than I’m used to hearing. Guys singing ballads to karaoke machines on the sidewalk who are actually good, long-haired virtuosos on classical guitar, heartfelt female singers. This is one of the centers of Argentinian música folklórica, and known for its vital traditional music scene.
My trip out to change money in late morning turned into a multi-hour slow tour of places to sit. Really I had no business walking around town at all; my achilles is strained and possibly I should be on crutches, but I’m taking the stretch-it-out-by-walking approach, based more on gut than science.In my second plaza of the afternoon, a long rowdy march of protesters passed by on the street, thousands of teachers from all over the province banging drums and chanting for salarios dignos, with signs for each school and town saying “Escuela so-and-so, Presente”. The marchers looked deserving and resolute. When will we realize that teachers do incomparable and irreplaceable work, crucial to every aspect of society?
A few blocks away from the hostel I happened upon a supermercado and marveled at the wine selection, fine quesos — cheap bleu cheese! — and locally made salame. Then I came upon the promised land in the tea aisle, a whole half wall of Yerba Mate. Fifty different brands. Astonishing. I want to try all of them, most of which I’d never seen before. La Nobleza Gaucha and Playadito and La Merced and Verdeflor. It is early yet, but I feel like I’m home.
✦✦
On my second day waking up in Argentina, I rose late, as I had likewise stayed up trying to watch my Golden State Warriors play the Rockets with an intermittent and weak wifi connection. In two and a half hours I was able to watch about twenty minutes of actual basketball, in thirty second increments. Maddening, and I should have pulled the plug on the whole endeavor, but once I decide I’m going to do something, it’s really hard for me to let go. Somewhere along the way I have come a long way east, as far as Nova Scotia, far enough that I am one time zone east of eastern standard time, so that a game in California starts at eleven thirty at night.
Either way, sleep I did, in what remains my personal windowless dorm room. It can be loud as the door is steps away from the front office, and past that the entrance to the building. Doors and people coming and going always make a lot of noise. But a determined and chronically sleep-deficient sleeper can manage. My Achilles was still quite sore this morning, but better, and my health care strategy of “give it another day and see how it goes” seems to be working. This time when I made it out to the kitchen the desayunos was all put away, but they’d left out one type of tea, the mate, and I availed myself. I was prepared to miss the uninspired hostel food — my remedy when life starts to wear on me a little is to make a proper, hearty and delicious breakfast.
So I cooked up a big mess of eggs with red pepper and onion and this queso pategras I bought which is something like gruyere and actually quite good. Ate it all with a decent baguette and felt better about life. Took my time hanging around the hostel until afternoon — there is almost always someone who wants to sit on the patio, share mate and talk. At first glance, this is such an open, sociable culture. Warm.
I finally set out walking around two o’clock, gingerly at first but then my heel loosened up and I could walk at a casual but measured pace. There is some talk that Salta is the center of the empanada world, and it seemed important to try some of the local variety. Some years back in New Orleans I used to help out with my friend Taylor’s food truck business, the Empanada Intifada. So I have made and eaten my share of empanadas in my day, and have kept him posted on empanada developments as I made my way along this journey.
They really begin to become a central part of the cuisine around Costa Rica, and it feels like one of the first signs that you’re approaching South America. In Panama and Colombia, they only become more important, and from what I have heard — and sampled — from Venezuelans abroad, they would put their empanadas, made with a corn masa and fried, up against anyone’s. In Arequipa, there is a type of empanada called a Salteña, with an oblong elliptical shape, the sealed edges along the top, filled with beef and potato and onion. I never put it together, but Salteña is the feminine name for someone from Salta. So far I think my best empanadas yet were in my last stop, San Pedro de Atacama. I had these large, almost calzone-sized empanadas of acelga, espinaca, albahaca y queso which were as good as anything I’d had, but I suspect recency bias. I had some quite good empanadas in Colombia and Perú.
My destination was a place about eight blocks away called El Patio de la Empanada, a little food court with a number of different empanada vendors. Sounded like heaven. On my way there I happened upon an absolutely stunning church, saw it from four blocks away, turquoise and coral, a four-level ornate tower, domes and cupolas all over the place. It was called La Iglesia de la Viña, Iglesia de la Candelaria. I don’t know why it had two names, or why one of them means Church of the Vineyard but it was one of the most charming churches I have come across. There are many many impressive churches and cathedrals in this part of the world, but most are more imposing than inviting, and this one felt even a bit romantic.
El Patio de la Empanada was a fairly rundown building, paint peeling off the walls in a grungy way, mostly consisting of a courtyard with a number of stalls and stands around, only two of which were open when I arrived. The areas with tables were covered, and the central patio was open air, with grass and weeds growing from cracks in the concrete. The lady at the first stand gave me the hard-sell to sit down, basically commanding me, senta-te, to do so. I never respond well to this approach, so I went over to the other, less aggressive stand and sat down to the first lady’s disgust. I ordered two empanadas de carne cortado con cuchillo, beef cut with a knife, and the waitress said Y? Que mas? I told her solo dos, gracias and she looked mystified. The first lady was still giving me dirty looks from the other side of the courtyard as she swept under tables.
The empanadas were small, thin-crusted and baked a brown-golden-brown. The sealed edges were braided up with style, like a rope tassel on some marching band uniform, and filled with strips of steak, onion and olive. They were tasty, but nothing world-turning. I paid and went to try to make peace with at the other stand, telling the lady that now I was ready to try hers, and she said simply no hay — there aren’t any — and stood with her arms crossed. There were three tables of people eating plates of empanadas and a heavyset woman cooking more in the kitchen, so clearly I was just banned from her stand.
I shook my head and walked out, and across the street was a park called El Pasaje de Poetas, with various plaques to Salteño writers. Unfortunately they were faded and crumbling and mostly illegible. There also didn’t appear to be any actual poetry present in this park, but there were a couple of shabby cafes, and I sat down at a table at one of them where a lot of working class people were eating. I ordered a couple more empanadas de carne, this time with no mention of the method in which the carne was cut. These were fried, and came out golden, softer, with thicker dough, ground beef with potato and egg. The owner of the place had a large flock of young daughters who took turns yelling at each other to do work that none seemed willing to do themselves. The only thing I could extrapolate between the two samples of empanadas salteñas is that they are small.
Feeling more confident in my ability to walk, I decided to cross town, past the central plaza again, still gallant, with the destination of Cerro San Bernardo, the green forested hill-mountain visible from most of the city. All in all it was twenty blocks to the east, just to the base of the mountain. There was a teleférico cable car line up to the top, but that was ten dollars round trip, and though my Achilles was starting to get a little sore, I couldn’t help myself. I like the challenge of a good little climb.
At the foot of the hill was a fancy neighborhood, very impressive hillside villas with Moroccan motifs, a well-heeled leafy section of town. Somewhere back here was the Hotel Sheraton, hosting the Salta casino, which looked to be a reputable enough establishment to have proper table games. There was a lovely park with big boulders under the shade of big deciduous trees, and a lot of open grassy space to look out over the city. There were couples on blankets, picnicking families with kids running around, teenagers congregating in the shady corners of the park.
The colossal grand monument was to General Martín Miguel de Güemes, a hero from the Argentinian War of Independence with Spain. After taking and re-taking Salta, his home city, a number of times, he died from his wounds after a battle with Royalist forces. It was a commendable, impressive monument, the noble general on horseback surveying the horizon, a thirty foot tall base of rough-cut reddish granite blocks, which I heard a tour guide say were from the Andes nearby.
At the bottom of the stone stairs that began the climb was a sign informing that it was one-thousand-seventy steps to the top, about forty five minutes. I greatly appreciated this seemingly trivial information, that someone would take the time to count the steps and then spread this knowledge. I like to know what I’m getting into, and I am also a step-counter. The sign also related that there would be fourteen stations of the cross. Why? Why always with the cross and crucifixion? Why can’t there be paintings of the miracles of Jesus, or a series of his friends and disciples? To a non-Christian at least, that would be much more interesting.
I stretched my legs, massaged my sore heel a little, and started up, wondering if this was a mistake. I was clearly overdoing it, but maybe really stretching it out would be good for the healing process. A little ways up, I came upon the first station of the cross. It seems like a quarter of the hikes I’ve done in South America have these, especially if they’re close to a city. This one had colorful, sentimental painted scenes. I found my breath, my heel didn’t bother me too much, and I kept a steady pace up to the top, where the thousand and some steps led me to a 180-degree vista of this green and gorgeous valley.
I savored the panoramic view along with the inevitable selfie-takers, couples drinking wine or mate, people with dogs, runners who didn’t stay long, more teenagers up to no good. In addition to a viewing platform and the teleférico station, there was a wine stand, a gift shop, and a little cafe. Bought a pomelo soda at the confiteria, sat at a table overlooking the city and wrote about traveling down the coast of Chile last week with Emily. It already feels like a long time ago. I wonder if she’s made it to her retreat center.
Then it was getting on dusk and they were closing up the place, sweeping under tables and the wind turning chilly. I started back down, but my heel, which had given me no problems all day, had tightened up while I sat for a couple hours. The motion of stepping down was much worse than up. I checked at the station, but the teleférico had stopped running for the day, so there was only one way down.
I descended those one thousand seventy steps, which had gone by in an excitable blur on the way up, painfully conscious of their number, each one a potential landmine. Stopped several times to rest and stretch, the lights of Salta coming on below me, and made it to the park at bottom just as it had gotten full dark. Feeling like I was on a winning streak, rather than going back to the hostel, or to the centro for dinner, I took the day’s outing one step further. The casino was only about a block away, and I had that feeling of wanting to try my luck that all gamblers get. Justified it by telling myself that I had spent very little the past two days in Salta, and I could afford to gamble just a bit.
Sure enough, they had real roulette and blackjack tables, and I decided to go in for the latter, not having played since Medellín over a year ago, where I did very poorly. I’d played a lot of roulette meanwhile, almost all of it at these machines with a real wheel and ball but inside a plastic dome. The dealer at the table I sat down at was a middle-aged woman with her hair pulled back into a ponytail and bright red lipstick, a serious face. She asked where I was from in Spanish; I told her and asked the same. Neither of us attempted any further communication except about the game. This was business.
I bought in for eight hundred pesos, about twenty bucks, forgetting the exchange rate and double what I meant to gamble. Started off hot, won most of the hands I played at fifty pesos each until I’d doubled my money. Put half my chips, what they call fichas, aside so I was only playing with house money. Quickly my luck turned: the cards giveth… I’d lose a few and then win one back, lose a few more, until I had lost all my winnings. Like a responsible, restrained gambler I walked away, found the box and cashed out my original eight hundred pesos. This was the way to do it. I just got an hour of gaming entertainment experience for free. But I couldn’t leave well enough alone. To reward myself for good behavior, I took a hundred pesos and bought in to play one turn at roulette.
Watched the players laying dozens of different colored chips in geometrical patterns across the checkered board, little towers and neighborhoods of chips around certain hot spots. At the last moment, just after the dealer tossed the ball into the careening wheel of numbers, I put my four twenty-five peso chips on black. Hit. Sometimes I love gambling. Split my four won chips between seven, eleven, thirty-three and zero — usually I do double zero but they didn’t have that on this table — and at the last moment I put the original four chips on red. Didn’t land any of the numbers, but the spin came up red. I did the same four times, missing the numbers but hitting the correct color each spin. The fifth time around I finally got the color wrong, but that was okay because zero hit, paying out eight hundred seventy five pesos.
Thinking my luck was thus improved, and still not able to leave well enough alone, I went back to the blackjack table and the dealer was now a younger guy who was much friendlier. I played even for a while, win some lose some, and after a while called it a night again. Walked out the door of the hotel living the gambler’s dream, having doubled my money in a couple of hours of playing games. On the way back to the hostel, still feeling lucky, I stopped in at the bus terminal and with my winnings, bought a ticket for the town of Cafayate the next afternoon.
Back at the Siete Duendes a lot of people were hanging out in the kitchen, drinking mate but also beers and fernet mixed with coke. This is a thing in Argentina, and I’ve heard it described as the national drink. I gravitated to the group of Jorge the Uruguayan street clown, David the somewhat strange Argentine long-term traveller, and two new women, Hiroko from Japan, slight and inquisitive, and Candela from Buenos Aires, hippie-ish and friendly. I said hello to everyone, started heating up the lentil soup I’d made the night before, and got to talking.
I started off mostly talking to Hiroko, a young fashion designer at the tail end of nine months abroad. She barely spoke any Spanish, so we talked in English. Eight months of her trip were spent studying traditional weaving in a small town in Denmark; she then had recently flown to Argentina, and was making her way north from the capital to Lima where she would fly back to Japan. The crazy trips these people come up with. Denmark, plus Argentina, Bolivia and Perú in a month. Maybe it looks smaller on Google Maps, zoomed out, but that’s three thousand miles, much of it through the Andes, and on buses.
She was a vivacious and curious person, and we talked about Perú and Argentina and how I’d one day like to visit Japan. David, who obviously had designs on this rare bird, had been friendly if a bit odd this morning, but during this whole time he’d been giving me dirty looks and making under-his-breath comments in Spanish. I couldn’t make them out but they were certainly not complimentary, and I did my best to pretend it wasn’t happening. He opened a bottle of red wine and poured glasses for Hiroko and him — in fact Jorge opened the bottle with two steak knives —and leaned in across the table to make conversation with his desired as if no one else was in the room.
I took this opportunity to withdraw from the game of machismo, and turned to talk to Jorge and Candela while I sipped my soup. Jorge has a young son here in Salta, and had spent the day with him. Unsurprisingly, he has issues with his ex, his son’s mother, and was washing down his frustration with a large bottle of beer. He went out to smoke, leaving me to talk to Candela, who as it happens also works in fashion, in the capital, was also nearing the end of a long journey, one similar to mine, though she had picked her spots.
She’d started in México, then flown to Colombia, passed through Ecuador in two days, and spent a lot of time in Perú, a bit of Chile and now the north of Argentina. We’d been on the exact same path from Arica to here, though she’d taken longer to do it and made more stops along the way. I conceded that I’m traveling much faster right now than I like to. Impressively, she’d hitchhiked from the desert over the Andes from San Pedro to Salta, something I’d considered but decided would be way too challenging. She’d done it in a day. We had plenty to talk about, not least México, which as anyone who knows me knows is one of my favorite all-time subjects. She was funny and intelligent and passionate about conversing, and I liked her right away.
We all felt creeped out by the David-trying-to-seduce-Hiroko scene, so Jorge and Candela and I retired to the back patio. I asked Candela for advice about navigating Buenos Aires, her hometown, and she gave me a lot, got really into thinking about it. Jorge, who’d spent a lot of time in BA, would chime in here or there. They emphasized two things: Buenos Aires was expensive, and not safe. A bad combo. Damn big cities. But they also kept talking about all the good things to do and see there.
Jorge rolled a spliff and passed it around, and conversation shifted to a comparison of Trump and Mauricio Macri, the pro-business Argentinian President, who is also a right-wing populist billionaire elected for a “change”. He is nowhere near as overtly racist or confrontational as Trump, though, so Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro was suggested as a better comparison. We all agreed that he was perhaps worse, if only because he had more of his wits about him. I asked them why they thought people were choosing these heartless rich men, and Jorge said it was an enfermedad de la mente, which was as good an answer as any.
Hiroko came to join us after awhile, followed shortly by a foot-dragging David, then bright-eyed Regal, pronounced ray-gal, a young blonde Israeli guy. Hiroko was mostly glued to her tablet, trying to buy bus tickets for the following day. Every time I would say something to anyone David would start laughing and muttering. It was impossible to ignore it, and everyone would look at him, and he’d just say que dijiste? — what did I say? — and no one knew the answer to that, so we’d have to move on. Nobody paid him much attention and eventually he declared in broken English, to Hiroko and the Israeli guy and me, because no one else really spoke English: “I am be drunk. I smoked much drugs when was I boy, and now be stupid.” No one responded, because what do you say to a person who you barely know who says that, and before long he went quietly away.
I had heard about these traditional folk music venues in town called Peñas, which at worst were touristy song and dance shows and at best were community singalongs and jam sessions that went until dawn. There was supposedly a decent one within walking distance called Peña de Balderrama. I asked if anyone wanted to go out, though it was almost midnight. Argentina keeps very late hours, and the show wasn’t slated to start until eleven. Candela said she did but was too lazy, Jorge said he was too borracho, but Hiroko and Regal were both willing. Fifteen minutes later the three of us were walking out, David skulking in a doorway watching us go.
We walked over to the Parque San Martin, past young couples making out on darkened benches, boys playing soccer in the dark, then turned on Avenida San Martín. As we walked we told traveling stories, Regal and Hiroko struggling to understand each other with their respective strong accents, me leading the way and not saying much except to translate. I couldn’t believe I was still walking on my heel, but it was cooperating. We found the place six long blocks later, a big music hall with white tablecloths, well-heeled Argentines drinking bottles of wine.
Up on the small stage on one side of the room, fully-costumed gauchos and damas were doing traditional dances to recorded music. The men wore black hats and bright scarlet one-piece shirt-pants open to the the chest, snapping cloth whips, these very serious upright proud displays, the women in long flowing blue dresses with white trimming, doing high leg kicks and arching their backs almost to the floor. It was impressive, this dancing, but the whole thing was clearly on the touristy side.
We found a table and ordered a Salta Negra beer and a round of empanadas. The dancers invited todos to come up and dance, and my companions joined the wave of people obliging. I lost sight of them in a sea of dancers and waited for the beer to arrive. After the big group number was done and my tablemates came back, after we’d watched a couple more numbers, our waitress finally came back with no refreshments to announce that there was a hundred and forty peso cover charge each for entrada, plus a minimum of three hundred fifty pesos consumption. This was a bit rich for our blood, and we weren’t all that into the show anyway, especially as it appeared there would not be live music, so we thanked her and walked out.
In search of the beer that had never come, we walked to the almost-deserted plaza, and found a café still open. We sat out at a table and the mesero brought us the hoped-for beer and some short glasses. Salta Negra turned out to be nothing special, overly sweet and metallic tasting. It was late now, and the conversation turned dark. The fate of humanity. How Japan is in trouble with its increasingly elderly population and anti-social culture, the low birth rate. How Israel is in trouble, as the Orthodox and Arab populations, who hate each other, have lots of babies while the secular, moderate population have few.
Regal, who had finished his mandatory stint in the army six months before, was very critical of the ultra-religious people in his country. They are militant in their politics and call for military responses to problems, but their children don’t serve in the armed forces due to religious objections. We got to talking about climate change, the impossible obsession with growth on a finite planet. Everyone had intelligent thoughts, but no one had answers for any of these problems, and we agreed that it might all be too much to ask of humans. It was almost three in the morning and we appeared to be the last people in the plaza. We finished our liter of beer and walked back to the hostel for sleep. I realized lying in bed that I had never asked anyone about the duendes, or why there were seven of them.
