Estar Acá

From top left: road to Iruya; Cerro de los Siete Colores, Purmamarca; Iguazú Falls; vineyard in Luján de Cuyo; Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires; estancia in San Antonio de Areco; Lago Perito Moreno, Bariloche; Glaciar Perito Moreno, El Calafate; Monte Fitz Roy, El Chaltén.

Man, we miss Argentina. It's been three months since we returned to the States; four since we flew out of Buenos Aires. That's plenty of time for nostalgia to seep in. It's also time for memories to seep out: What street was that on? What was the word for that? I'm dreading the day when we will be further from Argentina than the time we spent in it. What will we have lost?

That's the pessimistic view. The optimist asks, what will we have gained? As our repatriation to the United States continues, what new perspectives will distance afford us? It is useful and relieving that experience compounds. The more things we do, the more potential meaning we give to the things we've done.

I had been putting off writing summary posts about Argentina because that seemed to imply it was over. But I've accepted that it's more productive to do the opposite, because by documenting it, I can stop some memory seepage while still preserving the benefits of compound retrospection. That is the point of this blog, after all. Still—it hurts a little to write, and it's been harder since we've returned. There's a difference between writing about Argentina from Argentina and writing from an opposite hemisphere. It's the same reason why the Wikipedia page on glaciers can be a quick skim one day, the Rosetta Stone the next.

I found the name for that reason somewhere in Argentina, scribbled in the bottom-right corner of a painting: estar acá. "Be here." It may be ironic that I don't remember where I was when I saw that, but I am sure I was there. And that makes all the difference. All the reading about glaciers can't replace standing on one. So while I'm sure I'll forget the geological terminology to describe them, I will always remember how it felt to touch their icebergs with my own hands. As I write to you about Argentina, I'm not just trying to say "you had to be there"; I'm not even necessarily trying to convince you to visit. More than anything, I'm arguing my thesis for traveling: that it makes things irreversibly more interesting.

Street in Cafayate

Here are some facts: Argentina is the eighth largest country in the world. It covers a million square miles. Most of the country is sparse, as a third of the population lives in and around the capital. These things can be interesting on their own, but they didn't really register with me before we moved. The big deal at the time was that we'd be living in Buenos Aires, and I honestly didn't think that much about the rest of the country. I had seen photos of Patagonia, but didn't know which national park was what. I knew I wanted to visit the city of Salta, but had no idea what surrounded it. I figured we'd be traveling around a lot, but didn't expect that almost all of our travel would be within Argentina, and we wouldn't get tired of it after a year.

It was after we were there, looking at bus and plane tickets in Buenos Aires, that I realized the enormity of the country. Those facts from before got a lot more interesting when we started thinking about how to navigate. Before, the Andes were just a name on maps and thin mints. Now they would define a year of traveling.

Argentina covers a lot more latitude than longitude, which means its north looks dramatically different from its south. Its south already gets a lot of fame: Patagonia, for which I've already professed my love, deserves its status as destination number one in the Southern Cone. We were eager to be there and made it one of our first trips. But it may have been our last trip, to the Argentine Northwest, that exceeded expectations the most.

Quebrada de las Conchas

Where Patagonia has glacial valleys begging to be hiked, the Northwest offers the perfect road trip through quebradas—varyingly translated as ravines, gorges, canyons, or mountain streams. (Most literally, it means "broken", an appropriate descriptor for violent formations in a painted desert.) Patagonia blows sleet in your face; the Northwest blows sand. One is too cold to visit in winter, the other too hot in summer. Whatever their differences, they share the drama of their landscapes and the raw beauty of their extremes. I was consistently reminded of the other, and wondered if the Northwest is what Patagonia will look like in a few million years.

Glaciar Perito Moreno meets Cuesta del Obispo.

There is one irreconcilable difference: while Patagonia ambles at sea level, the Northwest is high-altitude terrain. Mountain passes reach 14,000 feet, and you feel it. It's here that I got the most shocking sense of how big the Andes are. Even from such heights, they tower up and look as if they're going to block out the sky. Improbably, towns are nestled right up to them, or even carved into them.

Plaza in Iruya

So are their burial sites, usually overlooking the living.

Cemetery in Maimará

More than anything, though, the defining feature of the Argentine Northwest is its culture. As much as metropolitan Buenos Aires oozes European heritage, the Northwest implies a distinct Argentine tradition, underscored by the country's largest indigenous population. There is simply a different feel. One of the more tangible products of that culture is Argentine folk music, whose reach is far wider than that of tango. It's traditionally sung impromptu at peñas, with booming emotion and aggressive guitar. You couldn't ask for a better soundtrack to the high desert.

No discussion of Argentine culture is complete without mentioning fútbol. For the sport that transcends all borders except the United States', an unforgiving mountainous terrain poses no exception. It just means there are soccer fields in some ridiculous settings.

Could be anywhere.

Argentines sometimes refer to the noroeste argentino by the hip initialism NOA. It's a popular winter destination for them, but remains relatively under the radar for other tourists. If it's any indication, the foreigners we met there tended to be on long-haul trips, sometimes of more than a year. Nobody batted an eye when we told them we were living in Buenos Aires—because of course we were. By contrast, travelers we met in Patagonia, Iguazú Falls, or Mendoza were usually just there for a couple weeks. To me, this implies that the NOA is highly underrated.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. The region is proud of its tourism and has put a lot of effort behind it. The locals seem to be in that precious balance of appreciating tourists and not yet getting sick of them. The Northwest calls back to me the most. Outside of Buenos Aires, I think I could spend the most amount of time there. That counts for a lot.

That's also not a negative on the more popular destinations. Iguazú Falls is phenomenal, but it's hard for anyone to argue that you should spend more than a few days there. At the same time, no one will argue that it's not worth the days spent. Who wouldn't want to be here?

By the way, it's pretty amazing that you can get from the arid Northwest to a subtropical jungle at the Brazilian border on just a two-hour flight due east. You're flying over a lot of stuff—the alternative twenty-four-hour bus ride gives you an idea of just how much—and at the end, you might be lucky enough to have a pilot willing to make a short detour.

To new perspectives.

This is even more of a plus when you consider that the Brazilian side offers helicopter rides over the falls for an exorbitant amount. It's actually really irritating to hear those things hovering around several times an hour. It scares animals away and definitely detracts from the experience. Argentina banned this practice because of its environmental unfriendliness; score one for their side.

"I approve."

I'm not a big animal person, but spending enough time exploring Argentina made it impossible not to notice some things. The easiest to spot, especially for Northern Hemisphere laypeople like myself, are the llama and its relatives—alpacas, vicuñas, and guanacos. Vicuñas are especially prevalent in the Northwest, where after seeing a sufficient sample, I concluded that they are in fact the cutest of the camelids.

"We approve."

Guanacos are hearty creatures and they teem in the South. We saw a lot on the side of the road in Patagonia, though probably more dead than alive. Skulls were strewn around; on one fence, there was a full skeleton of one that was apparently trying to climb over and failed horribly. Their conservation status is "least concern". Sounds about right.

And what about the classic, run-of-the-mill, working-class llama? They're all over, and they're cool. They're just not always the most graceful of animals.

Funny because it's true.

But no animal represents Argentina better than the mighty cow. The country may be human-sparse, but its vast fertile lands just outside Buenos Aires are a bovine paradise. There is a reason Argentine beef is famous, and it starts with the land. Argentines know this, and they pay respect yearly at the massive Exposición Rural, an 11-day extravaganza dedicated to all things agriculture. Above the grandstand, a banner reads Cultivar el suelo es servir la patria—"To cultivate the soil is to serve the motherland."

Every porteño we met told us that we must go to this event and warned us that one full day might not be enough. When we arrived, I don't think I had ever felt more like a city slicker, and I was in the middle of Buenos Aires. Gigantic farm machinery was on display; pickup trucks were showing off on obstacle courses; roosters, sheep, and pigs were being evaluated. But the biggest stage always belonged to the cattle.

Ahab's cow?

For vegetarians and carnivores alike, food cannot be divorced from the land. If my motto for traveling is estar acá, a close corollary would be comer acá—"eat here." Photos often don't do views justice; they are even worse at conveying taste and texture. Thus, it is our duty to go forth and eat.

Early on, I complained about a lack of diversity in Argentine cuisine. After several more months of meticulous research, I determined that in general, the food is better outside of Buenos Aires. For example, dining in Mendoza was consistently excellent. We had gourmet empanadas stuffed with gruyere and pancetta, which were so good it didn't seem fair to compare them to regular empanadas. We were even able to find spicy (!) Peruvian food. And it wasn't all gourmet eats: at one hole-in-the-wall, we had a simple, impossibly juicy chicken thigh. We asked what kind of sauce they cooked it in; they said mayonnaise. So sometimes it's better not to know.

Patagonia kept it simple. A lamb, split open and cooked on an open flame until its skin is crispy, speaks for itself (though fresh chimichurri as accompaniment doesn't hurt). That was not only one of the best lambs, but the best meats I've ever had.

The stuff of dreams.

In Bariloche and the Lake District, we sampled every ice cream flavor we had never heard of: calafate, sauco, rosa mosqueta. We also tried some that were more familiar, like fig or ristretto, for good measure. In the Northwest, perfectly doughed empanadas were brought to life with picante sauce, which was only spicy by Argentine standards. For a region where every menu had the same stuff—stews like locro, humitas, tamales, empanadas, and not much else—they managed to keep it interesting with consistent quality. Also, we were able to find good vegetables in the arid Northwest. Buenos Aires has no excuse.

Argentina is a big country, but there's one place that to me best captures its trinity of land, animal, and food: the estancia. It's one of the most distinctly Argentine institutions, and they are dotted all around the country, even within an hour of Buenos Aires. Estancias are essentially ranches, but it's hard to imagine them in the United States. For one, it would be exorbitant to stay there. In Argentina, you can get a full day of horseback riding plus full room and board for a steal. They can be touristy—at one of them, a gaucho performed a horse-taming show that was borderline erotic.

This is before it got weird.

However, estancias withstand their touristiness by remaining unmistakably about the animals. To add to the reasons they couldn't exist in the States, horseback riding at an estancia is done without helmets, lessons, or any instructions whatsoever. You just trust the animal and your instincts. And that they have properly tamed their horses.

Estancias are a reason to travel unto themselves. The landscape is always pretty, but not so different that you can tell where you are just by looking at it. The people are calm, respectful, and deferential to the land. The food is always excellent, and you have a heightened sense of where it came from. You can sit there all day, on the surface doing nothing, and not feel bored, but restored. You're just there.