Teacher on Two Wheels

Wednesday 2/4/09 Near Lujan, Argentina

I laughed in the camp ground owner’s face when she told me how much it would cost to pitch my tent for the night.

“Sixty pesos,” she said.

I thought I misheard her. Sixty pesos was about $17 U.S.

“Did you say six or 60?” I asked.

“Sixty.”

I laughed. I hadn’t paid for a single camp spot in weeks because Argentina is full of free municipal parks, and the one time I did pay for a spot I paid $2 U.S. I didn’t want to waste time trying to figure out why she was attempting to rip me off, why she was taking me for a fool—the sun was casting long shadows around us. I turned the bike around and started riding, looking for the first inviting dirt road that came my way.

*****

With the bike bouncing under me from all the rocks and ruts in the road, looking for a camp spot amidst the surrounding farmland was difficult; avoiding potholes and jagged rocks demanded my full attention. I came to a quiet intersection where three dirt roads came together at odd angles. Towns and pavement were far enough away that no car horns or engine noise cluttered the sounds in the breezes. Leaves rustled in the wind. A dog in a neighboring field yelped and cried. I looked down the narrow dirt roads stretching out before me and tried to determine which would be most promising.

A voice called out to me.

“Hey! Hey what are you looking for?”

I turned to my left. There, a stone’s throw from the road, surrounded by a pack of dogs in a dusty yard behind a mold-painted house, a man sat in the shade. I hadn’t noticed him. He was shirtless, exposing a plump tanned belly, and wearing the thin canvass slippers you see all over Argentina. He waved me over.

“What are you looking for out here?” he asked in Spanish. Closer to him, I could see that deep, squiggly grooves zig-zagged across his brow, giving his countenance a stern intensity.

“I’m trying to find a camp spot for the night. Do you think it would be OK if I camped in this field of soybeans here?” I asked, motioning to the field across the way.

He laughed.

“Are you crazy? You camp there and you’ll be robbed. For sure you’ll be robbed! No, no. Camping anywhere in these fields will bring you trouble,” he said, shaking his head. “You can camp here tonight, behind my house. It’s safer,” he said.

“Are you serious? It’s dangerous here?” I asked in disbelief. The area looked like so many other peaceful rural areas I’ve visited on the trip. Nothing but fields and small farmers’ homes. “Isn’t it quiet out here at night? It’s all farmland around here,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s all farmland, but at night we get lots of people around here from the city, people who don’t live here. They run drugs to and from Buenos Aires out here. Lots of drugs. And there are thieves here, too. Horse thieves,” he said, holding my gaze with his bloodshot eyes.

I’d never heard of horse thieves, but I didn’t tell him that.

He continued, “Just last week I lost two of my best horses. We all lost a bunch. In total, 120 horses gone in a single week. One week!”

The man took a long swig from the large dented metal cannister in his hand. It looked like a cross between a coffee mug and a tea kettle. I assumed it was water or something cold, it being such a hot and humid afternoon and all. He cleared his throat and offered me the cannister.

“Wine?” he asked.

Sweat was stinging my eyes. “Is it cold?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t.

“No, no of course not,” he said.

“No thanks,” I said. “It’s too hot for warm wine.”

The man thought for a second. “Well you like mate don’t you? You drink mate, right?” he asked, picking apart my excuse. “Mate’s hot. Mate’s hotter than this wine!” he said. Pause. “Well, it’s here if you want some,” he said, drawing the mug to his lips.

*****

Sallo [pronounced Sa-show] has only met two other men named Sallo in his life. “One was a dentist, the other was a doctor. Ha!” he said. Recently divorced, Sallo lives alone in a small dilapidated house at the edge of a two acre horse pen. He raises sport horses that he sells to polo clubs. He told me that he has 220 horses on a farm nearby and only uses the area behind his house as a showing area when prospective buyers want to see a group of horses before a purchase. Sallo carried himself in the horse pen in a way that revealed his decades in the business. He walked confidently up to a bucking horse and grabbed its mane to control it. He whistled and the horses all came from the far corner of the pen to their trough. When he gave a special grunt, a female horse stopped neighing and squeeling and stood still so a male horse could mount her. Despite looking disheveled, despite his tea kettle of wine, he was a firm master of his surroundings.

I set up my tent, filled my water bag and took it to a far corner of the property to shower, and started cooking dinner. Every once in a while, Sallo would approach and comment on how much he liked this thing or that among my camping equipment. “That’s a beautiful tent!” he’d say, or “With a stove like that, you can cook anything you want anywhere you want to.” I finished dinner and was cleaning up when one of his friends rode into the backyard on a horse-drawn wagon.

The man, a fellow farmer, donning the typical gaucho attire–floppy faded beret, loose shirt, embroidered thick waistband, baggy pants–talked with Sallo for a while near the back of the house. Sallo disappeared at one point only to emerge from the house a moment later with a set of clothes that mirrored his friend’s in every way but color. He mounted his horse and rode over to me.

“We’re going out for a while. I’ll be back later tonight. Make yourself at home, friend! You’re safe here, don’t worry,” he said. He smiled and turned his horse. He threw his legs out away from the horse and then slammed them into the animal’s sides. The thing burst into a sprint and bolted out of the yard. His friend slowly turned the wagon around and stopped to close the gate on his way out.

*****

Sallo stepped from his house into the damp morning air with a mate cup and straw in one hand and an old kettle in the other. Pouring hot water in the cup ever few minutes or so, he sat on a bench and watched me eat my oatmeal.

Above: A horse drinking water just after sunrise

“How’s that oatmeal?” he asked, passing me the mate cup, curious.

I pulled the bitter tea into my mouth, drained the cup, and passed it back to Sallo.

“Delicious,” I said.

“Oatmeal in the morning! You foreigners love interesting foods. Very interesting. You know what I eat for breakfast?” he asked me.

I was afraid about what he was going to say. Wine? The flesh of one of the most recent drug smugglers he’d caught and grilled up?

He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Meat. Meat! Here we love our meat.” Pause. Long pull on the metal mate straw. “Hey, you know what I eat for lunch?”

“Meat?” I guessed.

“Correcto,” he said, smiling. “And dinner? What’s your guess?” he asked.

“More meat?” I suggested, laughing.

“Correcto!”

*****

As I was pushing the bike out of Sallo’s yard, I rememberd to tell him about something I’d seen the night before.

“Last night I saw one of the dog’s with a chicken in its mouth,” I said. “It was a white chicken with—”

“Was it dead or alive?” he interjected, seriousness focusing his eyes and pulling his head up.

“Uh, dead,” I said. “Why?”

“Oh good. No, if it was dead, that’s OK. That means he just found it dead somewhere. That’s OK.”

“Oh. OK,” I said. We shook hands. I bounced back down the road and eventually found my way to the smoothness of pavement.

Above: Some video I shot in Sallo’s yard when I spotted the dog with the chicken. I’m a bit distracted at the start of this video because of the chicken-in-the-mouth thing. And yes, I look like a sweaty mess in this video–it’s hot here, people!