A trip to the north

How lovely it is to daydream. I was reminded of my trip to Salta, which ended in La Quiaca. It began with a Conference in Salta, to present a paper. The preparations for packing the suitcase, the first thing was the material for the conference, then trying to bring only what was strictly necessary since afterward we would travel overland to Jujuy to see the mountains of different colors, which we'd been told were due to the different metals that made them up.

After the sessions we went to the place where the cactuses are enormous, the story goes, they form like rows, and that the patriots, faced with the enemy's numerical superiority, dressed the cactuses in the soldiers' clothes, and the Spaniards from a distance thought they were soldiers and fled in terror. The trip through Salta was a dream I never thought I'd get to live. We set off for Jujuy despite the protests of the organizers who wanted to make the trip by plane straight to La Quiaca. Luckily the overland trip was wonderful.

Only one person in the group got a little crazy because she got altitude sickness, that happened to almost all of us, they had to give us bottles of oxygen, for some it wasn't needed. The next day we crossed the border into Villazón, Bolivia, a deplorable sight, people use the street as a bathroom, because of the altitude many of us felt sick and we needed a bathroom, we couldn't find one, we went by the civil registry and asked and they told us «that they were sorry but they had no bathroom» and they mentioned that very few people had one and they didn't lend it out. We found one at the truckers' union. They came with us, they opened the door which was locked, and when the group handed back the key they went to check that everything was in order.

The return to Argentina was a relief, we were bringing cardboard boxes with what we had bought. Luckily the next day we were happily heading back to Buenos Aires.