29 November 2024

Fast and Glorious

It's hard to imagine such a landscape without having been there yourself. Let's plant the setting: we're at 4,000 metres above sea level, in the Argentinian Andes. At that altitude, the mountains are barren, devoid of any bush, let alone any tree. The constant strong wind is probably another reason nothing manages to grow tall.

But here comes one of the surprises: each mountain has its own distinct colour, either a shade of red, dark green, beige or volcanic black. It's not an optical illusion. In fact, the colours stand out including in post-sunset light, even more so as the mountains and the volcanoes rise over a carpet of yellow steppes.

Here's another surprise: to reach that altitude, there's not a single hairpin bend. That's because the road extends over 200 kilometres, going from an altitude of 1,505 metres in the dusty village of Fiambala to 4,040 metres at the Argentinian border post of Las Grutas. And so the road, in perfect condition, goes ever so slightly uphill, almost completely straight over multiple kilometres. The valley between the mountains is thus like a wide-open plateau.

While there's not much vegetation, there's still life: sand-coloured llamas in small clusters and, unexpectedly, pink-white flamingos in one of the few wet areas. The wind blows hard, so hard I’m scared the door of my car will detach and fly away every time I get out to snap a photo.

There's nothing and no one at this altitude. I could well be on another planet. Only the very long stretch of road reminds me of mankind’s presence. It feels liberating to drive here alone. Time, distance and speed lose their meaning before the immensity of this place. Time because more than once did I come back to the same locations in my trip to see how the light would shine on rocks at different moments during the day. Distance because the sights were beautiful and changing regularly, whether in terms of shapes or colours, despite the 200 kilometres that I only wished would carry on farther. And speed because the road was so straight that I could drive fast, very fast, without realising I was going as fast as on a highway.

But in those arid landscapes, there's also everything one truly needs, which isn’t much – although that is always easy to say when one is overall healthy and not struggling to put food on the table. Yet as Augustin and Diana shared with me, they manage to live on 250 dollars a month, together with their two dogs and domesticated iguana, travelling around Argentina in their 1970s Citroën 2CV.

As soon as I had left the Ruta de los Seismiles (literally, the road of the 6,000-metre volcanoes), I wanted to return to it. Such a strange feeling, for there wasn’t much to “do” there. There’s one hotel though, right in the middle of the 200-kilometre stretch – but it’s the entire experience that makes it unique, not a single spot in isolation. For once, I believe I was able to seize the uniqueness of the moment while being there, possibly reflected by my naive and simplistic expressions that I couldn’t help but  verbalise out loud: "wow, it's so pretty!".

PS: a first draft of this story was written in the dawning hours of a sunny day a few days later, on a bench outside a little cabin rented in the quaint town of Cachi located in the Salta province. To my right, mountains reaching 6,000 metres. To my left, a big black dog was lazily resting, observing me with half-open eyes.