Perspective

Ever one for a dramatic gesture, I fled Argentina in the wake of a complicated romance. Sometimes even a seven thousand acre estate can sometimes feel as claustrophobic as a fishbowl. A voice, which sounded at lot like the ghost of Butch Cassidy, whispered in my ear: "Pack your bags Kid, Bolivia beckons. " A few days later I found myself at the border at La Quiaca, backpack on my back, and small (yet surprisingly heavy) Bolivian child in my arms. Arriving as we did at the height of Carnaval, we were forced to run a gauntlet of water jets, foam and firecrackers, as brightly costumed devils pranced all around, all of which the child found far more amusing than me.

I had met Angelie and her mother just a few hours earlier on the bus from Jujuy and our new friendship was immediately put to the test. Sticking together as lone female travelers will do in a dodgy border town at dusk, Carla and Angelie’s problems had become my problems. And our main problem was that despite being a native Bolivian, Carla was suffering from the effects of altitude and could carry neither Angelie or her pile of fast-disintegrating suitcases. We paid a man with a cart to take the bags across the border and tried balancing the baby on top, but she wobbled precariously. So I carried her, hoping that at least she might provide some form of shield from the water cannons. She didn’t. That night we all camped out in a five dollar room, and then parted company at the bus station the next morning. Much as I enjoyed the company of Carla and Angelie, they were seriously slowing my progress, and I had places to be.

I was heading north to Uyuni meet my friends Stephanie and Kamila, I was on the road again, and it felt good. Flat tires and bone-shaking buses did not bother me. Hours and miles passed as I stared out at the arid and luridly coloured landscapes strewn with cacti and llamas adorned with pink tassels. On one frigid night bus I awoke snuggled under a blanket with an overweight Bolivian miner. I had not seen a bed for days but I didn’t care. I had missed the sense of anonymity of traveling alone, no one judges you, and if they do, you don’t care. At this particular moment I found comfort confiding in complete strangers. Taxi drivers, waiters and random strangers in bus terminals all lent me their ears and kind facial expressions, as I wove my tale of woe, explaining how I had fallen in love with an Argentine gaucho but that he didn’t love me back and was probably a bit of a rat. Shaking their heads, they would always say the same thing: that Argentine men are scoundrels and dirty dogs, everyone knew it, had no one warned me? And was this man Cordobese? Those are the absolute worst, as they are the best looking. What I really ought to do was find myself a nice Bolivian. In fact, did I want to meet their brother /colleague/neighbour? At which point I could politely decline and continue with my journey.

At long last, the bus spluttered into the outskirts of Uyuni, my illustrious destination. To call it a foul dump of a town would be a generous description. But no matter, Stephanie and Kamila are girls who like their creature comforts and would surely have found a nice room where we could all rest our weary bones. They hadn’t. But they had saved me a space in the queue for tickets for the 01.45 train to Oruro, and so the journey north continued. They had also hooked up with a few more backpackers, so we all boarded the train, bedded down, and eventually it lurched forwards into the night.

Oruro is Bolivia’s Carnaval capital. If you arrive on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday you can expect to see a spectacular procession, with thousands of costumed dancers prancing through the streets in the Diablada: a lavish visualization of the epic battle between good and evil. If you arrive on the following Tuesday, as we did, you can expect to get pelted with dirty water. Especially if you are five squealing foreign girls with oversized backpacks. At first this was all good fun. It didn’t bother us that the pavements were completely devoid of pedestrians and the roads full of pickups full of mean-looking thugs armed to the teeth with super-soakers and foam canisters. Heck, we even bought a few water bombs to chuck back at them. This was Carnaval, and we were going to enjoy ourselves. However, we were soon forced to admit that the atmosphere was far from fun, it was downright menacing. One well aimed water bomb to the earhole left us a man down and had us scurrying back to the hotel with our fallen and teary comrade in our arms, all of us vowing never again to grace the streets of this godforsaken town. Holed up in our room, we fancied ourselves as foreign correspondents in a warzone. We watched some TV and listened to the melé outside. Eventually hunger forced us to don every bit of goretex and plastic we could find and to jump in a taxi to go in search of an open pizzeria.

From Oruro the girls headed north to La Paz, but I returned south, hoping that a few days spent contemplating the desolate salt flats and desert badlands around Uyuni would be good for the soul. I couldn’t procure a horse with no name, but I did find a Landcruiser packed with four young fun-seeking aussies, and one dutch weirdo. Together we sped over the salt flats, took trick photos of each other balancing on top of beer bottles, scaled great heights, chewed coca, marveled at the Dali-esque desert dreamscapes and bathed in thermal pools at dawn. Sharing a room with the dutch weirdo was less fun, but like a good gaucha I slept with my knife close to hand.

At the end of our tour we crossed the Chilean border where San Pedro de Atacama waited for me like an old friend. I had passed through seven years ago and was pleased to see its friendly sandy streets and adobe buildings again, to step over the stray dogs who nap haphazardly in the sun, oblivious to the throngs of backpackers around them. But by now my thoughts had turned to the estancia, and I was glad that my route back involved only paved roads and modern and roadworthy buses to speed me home. And soon enough I was back in a pickup on the ranch track. The sun was shining, foals were frolicking in the long grass, and there were two weeks of estancia gossip to catch up on. With great relief I dropped my bags and ran up the hill behind our casita, and stopped to look out over a world of gentle hills bathed in golden light and devoid of people. Our little empire. Sometimes it seems you have to go away to want to come back home.

Of Hearts and Bones

I awoke to the sound of his whistle, a sound I’ve come to recognize from several hilltops away. It was my day off and I was sleeping late, but the whistle and the thundering hooves were enough to drag me out of bed and to the door. A herd of criollo horses galloped past: bays, greys, chestnuts, roans, practically over the doormat. And at the back, there he was. Dark bay gelding, dark gaucho, a devastatingly handsome pair. I stood frozen in the doorway, hoping that I was looking attractively disheveled rather than bedraggled and pillow-faced. Halting as he drew level with me, he reached down to take my hand and to wish me good morning. How beautiful, how intoxicating, the heat coming off the sweaty horse, the gentle caress of the late morning sun, the intensity of his stare…

But that is quite enough of that. I’ll save it for a chick-lit book. Besides, the real love of my life at present is my physiotherapist. Yes, after seven long weeks, many dates with antiquated x-ray machines and countless hours spent dodging child vomit in hospital waiting rooms, my arm is finally out of plaster. Unfortunately, it has emerged a weak and shapeless noodle, a mere shadow of its former self. “So, doc’” I say to the traumatologist as he puts down the saw, “when can I get back on a horse?”. He fixes me with a look of weary exasperation, and embarks on a lengthy lecture on patience and the process of ossification. I bring in my boss from the waiting room, hoping that he can get a more satisfactory answer, and the two men get into a discussion about my future at the estancia, ignoring me completely. “Look”, says the doctor, “come back in two weeks. If she can squeeze my hand really hard, I’ll sign her off. But it’s 50/50.” I take that as my challenge.

And so it is that I have been making the epic journey into town most mornings for physiotherapy sessions. It takes nearly half an hour just to leave the estancia, what with opening and closing of gates, crossing cattle grids, fording streams and steering around horses and cows, and then a further twenty minutes on a winding mountain road to reach the town of Rio Ceballos. There, my physiotherapist Alicia watches me squeeze a ball or points archaic heatlamps and ultrasound machines in the direction of my wrist while I read trashy Argentine magazines. I hope it is doing me some good. If nothing else I will emerge with a new-found expertise on the sex lives of Maradona and his offspring.

Rehabilitation aside, this past week on the estancia has been utterly idyllic. The Christmas rush over, we have had several days with no guests and our bosses have gone on holiday. Work for me and my three female English comrades has revolved around such arduous tasks as walking the dog, and driving the pickup around to collect bales of hay. Much of our time is spent lounging by the pool or playing scrabble. We have also been tasked with taming some yearlings, and spend many hours in the coral with ropes and buckets of feed while the gauchos stand at the side sniggering and shouting unhelpful suggestions. It is most unnerving, but then we are foreigners, and we are girls, there is no way we could be doing it right.

This week has also brought the 45^th annual Festival de Folkore y Doma, that’s singing and rodeo, to the nearby town of Jesus Maria. Extremely excited about the prospect of a Saturday night out, we book a taxi, and go about planning our outfits. What does one wear to an Argentine rodeo? We ask the gauchos. “Miniskirts,” comes the reply. “High heels.” “Bombachas and bikini tops.” In the end, we go in our jeans, topped off with our boinas for that campesino touch. When we arrive we realize that most of the men have put more effort into their attire and are dressed in their gaucho finery, booted and dripping with silver, and each one with a knife of varying size tucked into the back of his belt. Apparently if drunken brawls ever break out they get very ugly indeed owing to the amount of sharpened steel to hand.

We take a seat on the stands, load up on beer, chips and choripan from passing vendors, and wait for the action to start. Suddenly a horse erupts into the centre of the arena bucking, rearing and twisting furiously. The aim is for the jockey to stay on for twelve seconds, (or eight if they are riding bareback) and if they manage this they are plucked skillfully off their careering mounts by two other riders called apadrinadores. Watching so many riders and horses hit the deck feels like aversion therapy for me, my own accident replayed many times. How is it that they leap up each time unscathed? The secret must be in learning how to fall, I think, as the ambulance only comes out once in the whole evening. A few days later however, there is a fatal accident at the rodeo. These riders are clearly not invincible, just brave. Or foolish.

As the vendors keep up a steady stream of fernet and coke flowing in our direction, we get more rowdy and merry, shrieking as two gauchos manage to pin a calf between their horses, and cooing in admiration as the gauchos sitting behind us show us their knives. On our route back to meet Miguel, our trusty taxi driver, we get distracted and indulge in some drunken shopping. Eventually we stagger back onto the estancia in the early hours dripping with lassos, whips and belts, looking more like a hen night gone wrong than fearless horsewomen of the pampas. A few days later we have given up trying to lasso the gatepost and have started using the lasso as a skipping rope, much to the disgust of the gauchos. Like I said, we are foreign, and we are girls, we are bound to do everything wrong. But at least we keep them entertained.