The rhythm at which I change country has increased a lot recently… After about 2 months in Colombia and one in Peru, I spent 12 days in Bolivia, and if I wanted to reach Patagonia during this journey I already had to keep heading South. Which means I crossed the North of Argentina in about ten days only, to get to Chile. And from now on my border crossings will be always more frequent, because going down Patagonia I’ll cross it several times, passing from Argentina to Chile and reverted depending on what’s attracting me in the area (and where the road leads!).

Therefore, I saw only a part of Argentina, or rather I got an idea of it. And it was great!! Argentina has got its own culture, very different from what I’ve seen so far. Argentinians know it and are pretty proud about it, I would even say that it’s the most patriotic people I’ve met on the continent (lots of Argentinian flags exhibited where I passed). There are many aspects of their culture that are quite unique, where for instance the Andine cultures (part of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia) had quite a few things in common. Of course, geography plays an important role: most of Argentina is a huge flats, the pampa, which allowed a strong development of agriculture and breeding, and resulted in a cowboy culture, the gauchos, as we imagine US Americans (whereas Andine people live on a mountain range). That’s why the country is such a great meat producer (and consumer!)! The asado (barbecue) is indeed very widespread in the country, and many houses feature a barbecue, often used, and you can always buy anything necessary related to asado in many stores. You can also easily find grilled meat on the street, as a sandwich, at a restaurant, etc.

They also have certain cowboy elements in their clothing: even on city streets I’ve seen men wearing a typical leather hat, for instance. And the best was the moment where I discovered the Festival Pais 2017: the equivalent of the national celebration for a specifically Swiss type of fighting (the last one took place to my home last Summer), a great celebration of national culture reuniting all stereotypes and lots of very enthusiastic people. Of course, as long as it’s not Swiss, I enjoy these sorts of entertainments and I find music as well as traditional clothing crazily esthetic. On top of the concerts (often moustached old men singing while playing the guitar) taking place during the whole festival, one of the key elements is the doma, a rodeo on horse. Very impressive activity because it really seems like those practicing it (only men, as the Swiss fighters) are constantly about to break their back or neck, but those who manage not to be ejected are apparently quite strong dudes because they can sit through something like  8 or 12 (very long) seconds on a pack of furious muscles. What a show!

I had always felt vaguely attracted to Argentina, and I indeed enjoyed the particularities of the country – the ones I’ve seen, because there are many I don’t know! One of my favorite ones, because I’m a great drinker of too-long-infused tea: the yerba mate (pronounce “ma-teh”). A great many Argentinians own their own mate, a sort of handlefree cup made of pretty much any material (wood, pumpkin, glass, plastic, leather, ceramic…) and decorated in any fashion (with or without aluminium feet, with or without metal circle on the top, wrapped or not inside traditional cloth, engraved or not, with Disney characters or God knows what else), in which one pours the yerba mate herbs, just-non-boiling water, and that we pass around to drink at turns through a metal straw (the bombilla) until the thermos is empty. It’s more of a social moment than just a drink, and often it’s consumed in group (apparently not in Uruguay, where I was told that each walks around with their own thermos and mate that they jealously keep to themselves).

I met several people who don’t really drink it, or not if they’re alone, but me, I love it! Often, if someone is drinking some mate, and somebody else shows up and they start chatting, the first will offer some mate to the second, who will generally accept. There exist several variations of consumption, some add another herb to the mix (no, not weed… well, not as far as I know), others prefer drinking it with a cold beverage when it’s hot (beverage that they call juice, it’s cold water with sugary and flavoury powder added, the whole mix then becomes terere), some drink it with sugar. Well, I knew before getting there that I loved the ritual, it was my mission to find one I’d love (and I had to think a lot to know what I’d prefer, with all these options!). I opted for a wooden mate wrapped in a piece of aguaio (the traditional Andine cloth that I love so much), and a bombilla with the Pachamama (our Mother Earth) inca symbol, this way I’ve got a concentrated version of my travel that I keep with me as a souvenir. I had to cure the wood for two days (with butter and the herbs of an old mate, to slowly humidify mine) so that it wouldn’t transmit its taste to my drinks, and I was ready! I still must learn how not to boil the water too much, and some techniques to drink it properly, but I obviously love it already!

I also like how people call me mami or mamita here, it’s cute. And I love empanadas, known to be best in Argentina, among others because they make them in the oven and not deep fried (apparently you taste the best of the country in Salta). I therefore arrived in Argentina from the Northern border with Bolivia, in a suffocating heat like I love, because yes: I calculated and made sure to be in Argentina and Chile in the Summer (we are below the equatorial line, thus of course the seasons are inverted). Knowing my love for the sun, you can be sure I enjoyed it to the most! My first stop in Argentina was Salta, located in a famous wine-making region.

There, I saw Mauricio again, a friend met in a few chats in our hostel in Mancora, Northern Peru. We spent some very nice moments together, I even shared a meal with his very kind family. He showed me the different places where people from there like relaxing during the weekend or drinking a mate, and made me discover the very filling matambre (= hunger killer), a sandwich full with meat and sides to choose. In brief, I remembered, after about a month and a half of errands with other tourists between Peru and Bolivia, how cool it is to know people from the place you visit to really see how one lives there and better understand it (you’ll see in a future post that, later, in Chile, I was well served!). Salta is a cute little town not yet too far from the Cordillera de los Andes and decorated with a few very beautiful and colorful churches.

Leaving Salta, I experimented hitchhiking for the first time, because the region is known to be safe and because Argentinian buses cost way more than in the rest of the continent. Therefore, I took a bus until Cafayate, a cute little village in the vineyard area, ate there and was expecting to move ahead by raising my thumb. First obstacle, and quite major: a massive and sudden rains flooded the streets in a matter of minutes as if a river was crossing the village. It was literally impossible for me to cross without destroying my shoes, to the point that I stayed there waiting for a good while, until the kind sir working in the store right next to where I was waiting went to his jeep just to help me reach the next sidewalk… and so on and so forth! I depended upon the kindness of several jeep drivers to get to the end of the village. And there, chance didn’t fall upon me: I raised my thumb for two hours without anyone stopping for me. I ended up asking a bus to stop and drop me a few 100 pesos (6$) further away, so that I’d have at least gone some kilometers during that day. That was a bad start for my hitchhiking adventure…

The bus dropped me at Amaicha, a tiny little village completely lost and unknown in a desert area, that proudly introduces itself as such on a signpost: “Welcome to Amaicha, the place with the best climate in the world: 360 days of sun per year!” My heart dropped. I had just got off the bus that someone approached me and told me about his hostel, which was comparatively the cheapest one of the village. The argument seduced me and I went meet his wife who waits for the customers up the hill and shows them the dirt and stone houses that make up the dormitories where pennyless backpackers, mochileros coming from anywhere and everywhere, from Mexico to Argentina, and obviously Europe. The place is simply charming: very simple, of course, its owners living and working elsewhere during the year (she is a lawyer, for instance), and they come spend the Summer in the calm of this very special nature and with the human contact of these yougnsters with stars in their eyes who pass through their hostel. The night I slept there, a cook friend who spends his Summer with them offered himself to cook for the whole group, and the dozen of people spending the night in those little houses in the middle of nowhere sat down at a table under the stars, all together, sharing a local altitude wine (if I’m not mistaken, they said that’s the wine produced at highest altitude in the world! wasn’t completely convinced by the taste, but that stays between us). Enchanting evening, very simple, along with the sounds of nature and the heat of Summer nights. Some instants of paradise, a gift.

The next day, I tried hitchhiking again. I left with my two big bags (at every step a little heavier, because every time I add some material and souvenirs, even if I could give Emanuele some things to take home to Switzerland for me) and I started walking along the road towards Tafí del Valle, an oasis of freshness in the mountain for those who suffer from the heat in nearby Tucumán (capital city of this Northern province). A kind sir stopped for me and picked me up for several hours of discussion about Argentinian history and  more explanations, economic ones among others. The landscape we drove through was great because he picked me up almost in the middle of a desert full of cacti, and as we went on we got to a more humid and fresh area. This way, we also got to something resembling my Swiss landscapes very much: green and surrounded by mountains, with a charming little village. Then, we went back down to a forest area bathing in the mist, and he dropped me where our paths parted. The rest of the day has been full of such encounters, shorter or longer shared journeys  depending upon where the driver was headed to. Thus, I could reach la Rioja, a little town between Cordoba and Mendoza where a tornado had passed through a few days earlier, leaving the town partially devastated, with among others an electric post lying diagonally through my hostel street, as well as a fallen and uprooted tree. Quite impressive! This said, you can tell that the country is modern and organised, because the cleaning and fixing operations had started almost immediately after the catastrophe, and you could see through the damages that the town is generally clean and tidy (after Bolivia, that was quite a change for me).

I spent one night only in la Rioja and immediately left, still hitchhiking. That was the activity of my day, and I really enjoy it a lot. Of course, it allows you to save the price of bus tickets and it doesn’t cost much to those who pick you up, because they’re going there anyway and enjoy some company to chat with (all of them were either truck drivers  or people who travel for work, all men, and who spend a lot of time driving alone – I’m guessing most others don’t wanna risk it or want to be left alone). But it’s a nice experience because it opens a door, or rather something like a window, allowing you to eye on a stranger’s life that you’ll never get to meet again. It’s a real exchange, all in Spanish, with someone who really lives in the country, it allows you to get to know the region better. The realities of life, what each thinks about politics or other topics they’re into; sometimes the dialogue is very rich, sometimes just limited to sharing a moment and talking about our families and lives (by the way it’s really cute here, to say “my wife” they say mi señora, “my lady”). Fantastic moments! And so many kind people!

To answer to those of you who already worry for me, here is my general impression on hitchhiking: of course I wouldn’t do it in a particularly poor country, nor in a particularly dangerous area and about which local people say it’s not recommendable. I actually didn’t hitchhike before getting to Argentina (between the moment I was writing these lines and when I edited them I met an Argentinian girl who crossed all of Colombia this way and during… 10 months!). But for all the fears that exist about this topic, how many actual stories are there really, of hitchhikers to which something bad happened? I must say I have heard little hitchhiking stories in my life, but 100% of them were positive, and the negative stuff have heard were always fears, not facts. I do think that something bad can happen when you hitchhike, but I believe that you gotta be quite unlucky for this – I’m quite convinced that going to work by car is statistically more deadly than hitchhiking and ending up with a serial killer. And, for me, what definitely convinced me that I was quite safe was what I heard several times: guys who stopped and picked me up because “it’s really unsafe to do that and I worried about you, a lonely girl hitchhiking like that”. That means that they either stopped and were super nice with me and did it for the company, or they stopped because they thought I’d be safer with them than with someone else. Conclusion? For me, people are mostly good and kind. I am determined to hitchhike again in Patagonia, which is very known for this sort of transport and for being inhabited by extremely nice and helpful people (both tourists who went there and Chilians and Argentinians I’ve met confirmed).

Then, I arrived in Mendoza, my last Argentinian bit of that part of the journey. The day had been warm, it had started walking in the desert at around noon, by about 40 degrees (I know, there are more strategic times to get out there). Generally, my trip in the North of Argentina has been a dozen of days of hard Summer. This way, the air was still hot and I was wearing shorts and top when I left in the evening to walk around Mendoza (knowing that at the time, my Swiss friends and family were telling me about snow and a cold wave going through the country). I went out to eat some… empanadas, obviously. A nice guy who worked at my hostel (and whom I was meant to meet again later, more in an upcoming episode) had recommended me that restaurant, among others for their seafood empanadas: delicious!!! On the way back to the hostel, I heard music and stopped at a little square bathing in a yellow light and decorated with little colorful banners. A speaker in a corner was playing some salsa, and about thirty people were simply dancing, pairs forming and unforming along the songs, several generations mingling through the joyful melody and the sensual steps of this music. There’s something eternal and universal to music, isn’t there? A magic that you can feel independently from age or origins, that makes people vibrate and can give a tone or particular atmosphere to any moment. For a long time, I enjoyed this agreeable little gift/moment, in the Summer by 25 degrees, alone and happy on a square in Mendoza, looking at people dancing gracefully and smiling because they were sharing a few twirls in that peaceful atmosphere.

Later, coming back in the middle of the night and walking through the quiet streets of Mendoza, I passed by a colonial building flanked by palm trees. The crickets that were singing accompanied me all along my walk back to the hostel, from one cuadra (block of buildings) to the other stopping only to buy a delicious dulce de leche (milk marmelade, basically caramel), coconut and maracuya ice cream, almost as good as my beloved Italian ice creams.* Some people were riding around in rollerblads in the parks on my way, I also passed by very green squares with beautiful fountains, as well as quite elegant restaurants and I thought that, for what I know of Spain (very little), this city could resemble it – I mean it could be a European city. It’s made of large and well-lit avenues, clean, well organised, and very modern compared to many things I’ve seen so far (actually it’s even in a better state than many European cities if I think about it, but let’s not dive into details). And even the least fancy cars are in a better shape than the average Bolivian car, for instance.

*the maracuya, the passion fruit, really is my tropical drug and I absolutely adore it… I’ll miss it a lot once home!

In Mendoza, I went biking from one winery to the other with people from my hostel, beautiful vine landscapes… and good wine. Happy ride in the sun, visit of an old Italian family’s cellar and learning of some notions about wine. Later, I could enjoy a typical asado. This means, roughly, that I was given some lettuce leaves and apart from this I was fed meat up to explosion. This includes less appealing parts of the meat such as the stomach, if I recall well. Done! After this, a nice discussion started with two porteños, guys from Buenos Aires (called this because the city is a puerto, a harbour), until it started being almost a little late for me, and at that point one of them says “so, shall we go out?” Right, I had forgotten, I had read that in Buenos Aires rhythms are like in Spain and people go out way later than what I’m used to (ok I’m not the most party-girl, agreed). It was 2am… Very hard for me to invert psychology and convince myself that I had the bravory and the motivation to follow my two new buddies. But yes, I ended up going dancing (on electro cumbia, a typical latino music that varies nationally in many countries on the continent, here tinted with electro to suit the club atmosphere). I’ll have to be psychologically ready for Buenos Aires! And that’s it, my journey through the North of Argentina was already over. I crossed the Chilean border by brushing against the Aconcagua, the highest mountain in South America (6962m, that some friends would later heroically climb), to continue my travel toward Patagonia.

A word on the Argentines: the country being quite an immigration land, anyone can seem Argentine because they look like everything and its opposite! I mean that they can be tanned with curly hair of with blue eyes and pale complexion. Even blond, sometimes! What there isn’t, on the other hand, are blacks or indigenous people. If I recall well, a nice little extermination of indigenous and slaves took place, along with incentives for Europeans to immigrate, at a time where Argentina wanted to become whiter (that would be to the taste of that asshole Trump). The country is therefore constituted mostly of people who’ll tell you they have Italian or German origins, dating back to a few generations. There’s quite a strong Italian influence in the culture, by the way, between people’s last names, the quality of the ice cream, the wine, the gestured language and other expressions inserted in the local Spanish, as well as the strong pride for their home country (I almost feel at home!). There’s also a very curious contradiction: not only was the country a welcoming land to many Germans as well as… Nazis, but Buenos Aires is also the third biggest Jewish community in the world (after Israel and New York). In a nutshell, Argentina is a surprising country. Argentinians hate their Chilean neighbours and their accent, they say it’s for historical reasons (when Argentina was at war with the UK because of the Falklands – Maluinas for Argentinians-, Chile was the only country to side with the Brits, which wouldn’t have been forgiven yet). Some Chileans told me that in their opinions it’s rather because they win at football… I won’t side with anyone!

To conclude, Argentinian Spanish has got a few unique features that make it quite recognisable: the most striking of all being that they say che (to pronounce tchay) all the time (from there came the nickname of Ernesto Guevara by the way, Argentinian guerillero who left to fight in Cuba). The most disturbing of them, for me, is that instead of the tú (you) they use vos, with a distinct conjugation that lies somewhere in between the tú and the vosotros from Spain. The first times I wouldn’t understand anything! They also have their own vocabulary, sometimes shared with Chile: bácan/chévere (cool) is said piola or copado, muy (very) -> re, excelente -> la raja, joven (young man) -> chango (mostly in the North, I belive), etc. And, finally, I must mention the lunfardo, the particular accent of the porteños of Buenos Aires: where the rest of Latin America pronounces the double LL “jee” (and the Spaniards “ee”), the lunfardo transforms it into… “sh”. Example: breakfast = desayuno (day-sa-jioo-know) = “day-sa-shoo-know” in Buenos Aires. I needed some time to adapt, and now I adore this accent! By the way, it’s the favorite across the continent, the ladies always love it.

PS: very sorry for my language mistakes in both French and English, I must say I spend so much time writing and translating that I sort of neglect post-reading, but I prefer sharing my stories as such than saturating and abandoning the blog. Long live grammar anyway!

Current reading: a Peruvian book called “Deep Rivers” by José María Arguedas. I’m still in Peru because I unfortunately have quite little time to read, always on the way or with people, and on the bus… I try writing my articles!

Next steps: Chile, from Santiago to Chiloe, then my dear Patagonia

Where I am now: already in Brazil, and very late in my travel stories! What I just told you about dates back to about a month and a half. Not easy to find the necessary time and connection…

For more photos of Northern Argentina: click here!