Salta Todavia es La Linda and My Shoes are Full of Holes
It well may be that before long I will be gone from this part of the world, but for this June day, I am still very much in the heart of South America. For nearly two months I have made my home in Salta, in the northwest of Argentina, my first stop across la frontera last time around, and what turned out to be my favorite place in this country. This would also appear to be the last stand of my migration. If a last stand is to be made, this is rather a good locale to make one.
We are getting towards the end of a Wednesday, a late autumn day that flirted with warmth, now turning cold at dusk. I watch the day’s close from a little hilltop park at the very limit of the city. On the evenings I’m not teaching, I like to come up to this nameless, threadbare park which is not without its charms. The thirty minutes’ walk uphill gets my blood flowing and takes the edge off the chill. It’s quiet up here, and there’s a view. At the edge of the city I sit on the grass and take my evening mate and watch the sun go down. Often I bring my guitar if the day’s not too cold, but today I left it behind in order to write.
Just behind me, on the other side of a chain link fence, is a steep and sudden slope covered in the thick vegetation of temperate cloud forest. A wall of mountain. At least in Virginia we would call these mountains, and from a distance they would fit right in with the Blue Ridge, but because of their proximity and relative size as compared to the Andes, here they are simply cerros — hills. The neighborhood below that I live in, Tres Cerritos, is named for them.
I love when a city just ends; when it runs up against some natural force that says “the works of man will cease here”. Water. Mountain. When I live in a city, I find myself repeatedly visiting these edges. The Pacific or the Bay in San Francisco; the Mississippi in New Orleans. A city can become all-encompassing, and these places remind me that there is a world beyond. And so most nights I come to sit with forest at my back, a view of city blocks before me expanding downhill into the distance, though much of the city view is obscured by the sleepy houses with their curtains drawn that face the park. Opposite is a solid massif of Andes, now purple in twilight.
Salta sits on the east side of the Valle de Lerma, a green valley stretching some sixty kilometers north to south, and half that at its widest from east to west. The valley is bordered on the west by the first frontal range of the Andes, blue in the distance; brown and arid up close. Some fifteen minutes ago, the sun set behind them. Beyond are mountains upon mountains, interspersed with altiplano and desierto all the way to Chile and the Atacama desert. The eastern side of the valley is a different world: a parallel line of much smaller hills, technically also part of the Andes, but these are gentle foothills, and remarkable considering everything to the west, completely green. This place is where the rain shadow happens. Further east are a last few conflagrations of hill-mountains, then pampa turning eventually to jungle, Paraguay, Iguazú, Brazil. I have not been that way. Looking at a satellite map, everything east of here is green, and everything west, brown.
Salta is set right at the foot of the green hills on the east side of the valley. The old part of the city runs parallel to them, and my neighborhood in particular nestles up in between two of the cerritos. If you go any further than this park, you have essentially left town. Except for me, no one really hangs out here for any length of time, at least in the evenings when I visit. Some dog walkers will let their pooches run around and relieve themselves. A few times I’ve seen teenagers up to no good on the shaded benches at the far end, and a man who lives across the street will walk around with his toddler daughter. There are a set of metal swings and a little short slide painted red, but I’ve never seen a child playing on them. Down in the city, there are bigger and better- maintained parks, though this one lends a peaceful out-of-the-way perspective. And you can’t see the mountains as well from down there.
In addition to morning classes four days a week, I teach classes two nights. Most of the other evenings, I come up here to sit and drink my mate from the matero I bought from the old man in Montevideo who gave me a good deal and spoke well of my country. I pour hot water from the thermos I bought on my last day in Arequipa, which has by now lost most of its heat-preserving qualities. Now that I’m out of hostels, almost no one offers to share their mate with me, and I take my yerba alone, but still I relish the ceremony of going outside at the end of a day and sipping on this strong and bitter tea. In my life here I am perpetually worn down, and an evening pick-me-up is much needed.
At this hour the streetlights have come on, the wind is picking up, the sky opposite is streaked with pink. My thermos has run dry. This time of year it gets cold here at night. Time for me to walk down, think about what I will cook for dinner, stop in at the verdureria or supermercado on the way home. Unexpectedly, some time now after the sun’s exit, a bank of clouds above me has suddenly turned a deep-saturated, heavenly gold, a last burst of glorious color before the dark. If you keep your attention too much on the human reality, it is easy to lose sight of what a beautiful world this is.
✦✦
Another evening, three days hence, the world looking significantly less beautiful at the moment. Not for any metaphysical reason but simply meteorological: some weather is ugly. The sun never came out today, lost behind a low thick covering of gray cloud, and by early evening this descended to ground level as fog, bringing with it dew and a chill damp. It never got much above fifty degrees, and I’d call the present conditions, say, forty two with one hundred percent humidity.
A bad combination, made worse by the fact that this drafty mansion-villa where I live, like most buildings in the city, lacks any system for heating. There’s this general idea — I assume because we are so close to the tropics and it doesn’t usually freeze — that it doesn’t get that cold here, and artificial heating would be excessive or gratuitous. As this is no weather for an evening paseo or a sit in the park, I am taking my mate indoors, in the expansive rec room with a full-size billiards table that in my time here has never once been uncovered. When there are guests, they take their breakfasts at the large round table in the back corner, but other than that this room doesn’t get used, and late in the day I often claim it as a writing room.
Yes, I am staying in something of a villa —the building has six bedrooms, a yard-sized enclosed courtyard, two patios, a pool (covered up for winter), and a poolhouse with a bar. It was likely very fancy when it was built in the sixties, but by now has a bit of a shabby mansion feel, which suits me just fine. I rent out a large furnished room on the second floor. This is by far my best accommodations of my journey: a queen size bed, private bathroom, large closet, and a terrace just down the hall. It all feels very luxurious. The room is quiet at night except for the barking of dogs.
The owners, a lesbian couple in their fifties who live in Tucumán, keep one bedroom, and in theory spend weekends here, though they’ve only visited once in almost two months. The woman that runs the place and her daughter share another bedroom. I’m the only semi-permanent lodger. The other three rooms are available for rent on various booking websites, and sometimes there will be a guest or two on the weekends. Tres Cerritos is one of the tonier neighborhoods in the city, and one of the hills directly above has some kind of a religious shrine and a woman who supposedly performs miracles. So if you want to make the pilgrimage and pray for a miracle, this is a good place to stay for it.
The school where I teach in the centro is about a thirty minute walk from here. Usually running late, I generally take the city bus to school and then take my time walking back. I would prefer to live closer to my work and the rent is too much for what I make, but it was the cheapest lodging I found that wasn’t terrible, and I like the place.
For three weeks after I arrived in Salta for the second time, I was staying in the dorm room of the Siete Duendes hostel again, looking and looking for a room or an apartment. So many times the advertised price would increase by fifty percent or more when they realized I was a gringo. Though the rent here was more than I wanted to pay, I was desperate to get out of that hostel and into somewhere I would at least be comfortable. Sleeping in a shared dorm at forty one years old is bad enough, but doing it while working at seven thirty in the morning is another thing altogether.
In the kitchen down the hall, three generations of Argentine females are engaged in a bizarre ritual that plays out almost daily. These women would be Silvina, in her early thirties, who manages the house, her mother and her daughter. Silvina has a sweet and sassy disposition, rounded figure, piercing amber-colored eyes, and is probably my best friend in this city. “Mamita”, in her sixties but whose rough existence has left her looking older than that, cleans the house and seems to be here most days for one reason or another. She technically lives in a village in the canyonlands south of here, on the way to Cafayate. Killa (key-zjha) is Silvina’s ten-year-old daughter, still firmly in the category of “girl” and doing terribly in school. She has a good heart but tends toward the bratty. Killa is the Quechua word for moon. This part of Argentina was — and still is — part of the Inca sphere of influence, a far southern extent of Tawantinsuyu, the empire, the four directions.
What these women are doing is yelling at each other — though ranting or whining would be better descriptors than yelling — in high-pitched, highly emotive tones. It sounds like an argument, and there are strong emotions involved, but no one seems to take it personally, and it’s often interspersed with laughter. While a very high intensity is maintained, it never escalates, just goes on for a good while and then peters out. They seem to do this almost every day, always in the kitchen, never when there are other guests around — I have apparently become part of the scenery — and only when all three of them are together. If it’s just Silvina and Killa yelling, it turns into an argument, a fight, and someone ends up crying, maybe both.
Because they’re all talking very fast, I can’t make out anything of what they’re saying. My best guess is that it’s about Killa’s tablet. A couple hours ago she was prancing around the rec room with it in hand, singing along to reggaeton videos. She loves k-pop and reggaeton and isn’t old enough yet to be self-conscious about her singing, so she belts it out. She must have tripped — all I heard was the sound of breaking glass, and then her screaming “¡Ayudame!” I rushed over, but there was really no ayuda to be given, and many many tears followed.
The explanation I’ve come to is that they’re having some kind of ritualized bemoaning, complaining, in an understood space for it. I suspect it is over the broken tablet, but since they do this almost everyday, the loss of a valuable item does not seem to be required. My Dad’s Jewish family does something vaguely similar, the difference being that along with the raised voices, often there is criticism or questioning of the grounds for complaint, and someone’s feelings get hurt. My Mom’s Protestant family does absolutely nothing like this at all.
These women play a major role in my life. I see them first thing in the morning and in the afternoon and at night. We communicate in Spanish, and we talk a fair bit. Not so much with Mamita: I am polite and friendly with her, but it is clear that she is painfully shy towards me. She’s mostly been a domestic servant in her life, and there seems to be this idea that it would be inappropriate for her to talk to me. I have short odd interactions with Killa, who usually wants to tell or ask me something, maybe show me a video she likes. Her mom has enlisted me to help with her English schoolwork, a subject she is currently failing and doesn’t really want help with. But mainly I talk with Silvina.
We talk about all sorts of things: Salta, the local culture, her family, her story, mine. She likes to ask about the places I’ve traveled to. It’s her dream to go someday to Perú. Part of her ancestry is Diaguita, the native people who still live south of here, around Cafayate and up in the Andes. She is of a generation that is proud to have some indigenous heritage, and feels connected to the Incas. We have good conversations — sometimes I forget I’m speaking in Spanish. She has lived around this area most of her life, and also worked a long time in hospitality, so she’s an excellent resource and guide to Salta.
We even watch basketball games together. She used to play point guard and appreciates the game; my Golden State Warriors are currently playing in the NBA Finals. I’ve had to learn a lot of words to try to talk about my team the way I want to. We keep vowing to go out some night, but it’s never yet happened. Some of her friends will come over weekly for drinks after Killa has gone to sleep. She introduces me and I make a little conversation, but as soon as they get going in normally-paced Argentinian Spanish, I become lost, and excuse myself.
It is eight-thirty on this Saturday, and there is absolutely no chance of me going anywhere further on this night. It’s cold out and I have no money and everything at night costs money. Sitting inside, I’m wearing a sweater and a fleece along with an alpaca-wool hat, pouring hot water over a gourd of mate long past the point of being flavorful, just for the warmth. Winter is on the doorstep, and I have to say that after spending two winters — by the northern calendar — in the tropics, the onset of something resembling a real winter is fairly shocking. The days offer less and less sunlight, and both the high and low temperatures are steadily and precipitously declining into a general and pervasive state of coldness. I mentioned at the top that I am considering putting an end to my journey, and realize that the second sentence in the previous paragraph neatly summarizes my situation. It’s cold and I have no money.
I don’t feel ready to go back. I don’t feel done with this journey, like the person that I’ve been building hasn’t crystallized yet. Were my finances in a different state, I would carry on with the migration. Not because I don’t like Salta, I do, but because I am struggling financially and haven’t found better work. I would go to the next place and teach there, but I’ve run out of money to travel with. While I do deeply miss my family and friends, and I am tired of always being an extranjero, this wouldn’t be enough to bring me back. I could just go visit for a month. It’s that I am not far off from insolvency, and five thousand dollars in debt. At the moment, that’s still not enough to tip the scales in favor of returning to the states in the third year of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Some of my goals setting out have been accomplished. To travel over land to Uruguay. To live in South America. Get a job teaching English. But others remain out of reach. I am most certainly not fluent in Spanish. Now that I understand what it means to be fluent in a language, I realize that I am years away. It is clear that I’ve made significant progress, particularly in my time here, more than in nine months living in Perú. There I lived with all English speakers; here when I wake up in the morning and go to bed and everything in between, I speak Spanish. Really the only place I speak English is at work.
Another goal is to write the whole story of my journey. I’ve made it to southern Ecuador, which means I have all of Perú left to write, plus Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. A year’s worth of places. Luckily I was writing in my journal at the time, preserving enough details to summon up those places and times now. I’m not close to being done with the writing; I don’t feel close to done with South America. There are so, so many places left to see, and I have so much more to learn to even begin understanding these cultures.
In an ideal world, when I was ready to go back, I would make my way slowly northward, over land again, stopping and teaching in the cities I like, re-visiting my favorite places, checking out many others that I missed. This seems like the right way to go back to the states. It would take a number of years. But it would also require money. In the process of making it to Uruguay, I long since spent the money I started with and the middling amount I saved working in Perú. In fact I actually ran out altogether and had to take a loan for a thousand dollars from my best friend. Coming back up here to Salta, then living for a month before I got my first paycheck, nearly exhausted that money, too.
The problem is that the income for an English teacher in these parts just isn’t sufficient. I can cover my essential expenses but really nothing more. There is no money for travel, for going out, for saving. I allow myself one cheap meal out a week; for entertainment on the weekends I take a city bus somewhere and go on a long walk. There is no money for basic upkeep: I have holes in my shoes, shoes that I’ve had repaired twice already, in Arequipa and here in Salta. This is a significant problem just in itself, especially on rainy days, but moreso the condition of my shoes is symbolic. They are worn out, breaking down. Most all my t-shirts and boxers and socks also have holes. It is winter and I am lacking a real winter jacket. The only way to buy or replace these things would be to use my credit card and go further into debt. I don’t like for money to be a major factor in my life or decisions, but the reality is that in my current state of poverty, I think about money all the time. In Perú, my pay was just enough; here, in a more expensive country, I’m actually making less, and it’s not enough.
The schools can get away with low pay because native English speakers accept this work as a temporary status allowing them to live in exotic lands. It was the same in Montevideo. Almost all of them arrive with savings, which allow for luxuries like going out to bars and restaurants, weekend travel, etc. It’s also possible that deflation of the currency has something to do with it. It takes forty five Argentine pesos to get a US dollar; a year ago that was twenty five, and when I started my journey it was fifteen to the dollar. The prices of everything keep going up, but I realize now the real problem with significant inflation. Wages don’t keep pace. My salary was probably decent a couple years ago. Now it’s not.
✦✦
The following Monday, just after sundown. The beginning of a week, a strange yet typical day in my present life. It started at six-ten a.m. when my alarm went off, interrupting the “Stream Water Flowing” white noise that I employ at night to drown out the sound of barking dogs. At six ten it is very cold and still completely dark, the sun not due to come up for another couple hours. I make a cup of tea and then toast tortillitas, these diamond-shaped scones of layered dough that are pretty standard Argentine breakfast fare. In normal life I don’t eat breakfast when I first wake up, certainly not at this hour, but it provides something, some warmth and sustenance to get through the cold and the dark.
By five past seven I am out the door, walking a ways down and to the other side of Avenida Reyes Catholicos, to wait beneath the naranja tree for the 8B Transversal bus. The ride is about ten minutes. If I’m lucky I get a seat, if not I’m surfing the curves and potholes and sudden braking of the driver. Today I was unlucky. Then I walk five blocks to this little plazoleta in the middle of Avenida Guemes. I pause here to have a smoke and a cup of tea from my thermos, the streets still dark, but the sky starting to turn grey-blue, illuminating the outline of the hills to the east. Then it’s one more block to the school.
On Mondays I have two private lessons, first an hour and a half with Pedro, an accountant at a lithium mining company in his late thirties. His understanding and comprehension of English are pretty good, but his speech is halting. I try my best to get him to talk, asking a lot of questions. Some about his work; more about his family and his wife’s family farm outside of town and the animals they have there. It’s easier to get him talking about that stuff than work.
Then I have two hours with Luciana, eighteen, preparing for some high-level proficiency test. She is planning to start University next March in Buenos Aires and wants to be a doctor. Her English is excellent, and she knows words that many Americans wouldn’t. I really like her. She is bright and curious and though she is soft-spoken, she has strong opinions about things. The material for the test she is studying for is some of the most difficult I’ve taught thus far, and I generally have to prepare in depth to be able to teach it. Today we worked on Defining vs. Non-Defining Relative Clauses.
After, I walk half an hour back home under gray skies, make a sandwich with ham and salami and cheese and green olives and onion. Try to stay awake, but by one thirty I’m in bed for a nap. Sleep deprivation plus daytime sleep often leads to strange and wild dreams, and in this one I was at the main bus terminal in Montevideo, which in the world of the dream was a place I’d often hang out. There were various people from New Orleans there, not close friends but people I like, along with a bunch of random people from my neighborhood growing up in Virginia. I was excited to see all of them, but no one was happy to see me, and I was getting cold shoulders from every direction. I sat down with my back to the crowd, feeling hurt.
Then there was someone giving me a big kiss on the cheek, whispering in my ear something like “it’s okay, don’t worry, they’re just awkward” and even before I saw her face, I knew it was Chessa, a friend from New Orleans. She sat down next to me and then I reached down to tie my shoes, but my shoelaces were made of strips of chard and spinach, and would break when I pulled on them. She showed me to do it properly, by tying a thin string around the whole shoe and all the produce. I don’t remember anything after that.
A bit after three I wake up for the second part of my day, try to get some writing done. I’m working on a chapter about leaving Ecuador and crossing the border into Perú. But it’s hard to sit and write in the cold house and my mind feels dull. I cook some pancakes with walnuts and banana more for the sensation of warmth than because I’m actually hungry.
At four thirty I head out for my evening walk, this time twenty minutes towards the center of town, to the other park nearby that I like. This one is the monumento to General Martin de Guemes, a hero of the War of Independence with Spain, and sits on the slope of the line of hills, two down from the hill I live under. It seemed an appropriate place, as today is El Dia de Guemes, a federal holiday, the anniversary of when he was killed in battle one hundred and ninety seven years ago, just outside of Salta. The sun decided to come out for the close of day, and made us forget about the cold for a little while.
In fact there was a big concert festival this afternoon, but it was at the estadio de fútbol and I didn’t feel like dealing with the crowds or the noise. I could hear the music — bluesy rock in Spanish — just fine from the park above, sitting below the epic statue of the General eternally saluting the city on horseback, high atop a pedestal of pink-beige-colored granite. There was a smattering of other people doing the same, but less than a normal day. Seems a lot of them are at the stadium. The sun went down behind the mountains, it got quite cold, and I walked back home.
If all my days were more or less like this, I think my life here would be a lot easier and I’d get the swing of it. Early morning classes, take a nap, whatever. But tomorrow I have the opposite schedule: afternoon classes start at 4:30 and I don’t get home until 9:30. This is followed by morning classes on Wednesday, so I have to eat some dinner and try to be in bed by 11:30. Thursday I have both morning and evening classes, and Friday just mornings. Then on the weekend I sleep as much as I possibly can. Impossible for me to find any kind of rhythm, and sleep deprivation is a constant specter. Though I only amass 22 hours a week, because of the schedule I feel like I work all the time and am exhausted by Friday. It almost feels violent, the dragging myself from bed in the dark on five hours sleep, the collapse at mid-day, the constant consumption of caffeine.
And all this to be on the brink of insolvency. Makes me think it might be time to hang up my traveling shoes. The proverbial ones, that is, at least for a while. My actual shoes need to be thrown away.
