Christmas in Santa Fe

Meli in Marita's Pad




Christmas is particularly keen reminder of my inability to grow up. The sheer excitement of those few dark December day meant that the last time I anticipated missing them, the thoughts of the christingle and of my ritualistic battle through Redlynch brambles and fog to unearth a gangly tree, managed to lure me home. This year, however, was somewhat different. Perhaps the fact that the festival managed to creep up upon me should be taken into account: the stalwart day-to-day rhythm of the estancia permits little time for either romanticising or realising the luxuries of a Christmas week. Lamentably, cows need both feeding and milking regardless of the red-letter days that arise. As a result, suddenly December was drawing rapidly to a close and I had to curtail my motorbiking; my lawn mowing; my alarming partiality to chewing coca, and set sail for Santa Fé. The journey, had it's hairy moments. As the time for my first bus grew alarmingly near the taxi I had booked failed to arrive at the sleepy Estancia. Fortunately, I didn't have to run to far laden with my bags as a nice motorbiker gave me a lift to the bus station where I arrived, sweating profusely only to be told there were no tickets! Rather bemused by my situation I ended up making a desperate appeal to the assembled audience for a passage to San Miguel.

Me and Meli
(Early days of the tash)

Just to be invited for 'las fiestas' by an Argentine family was a massive honour: despite the frequent warnings from Meli's father over the humble nature of the family home, the prospect of an authentic argentine Christmas was certainly superior to the hostel variety surrounded by myriad estranged backpackers!

I arrived at number 62, 25th de Mayo very early on the 23rd. After being plied with mate and bread around the large table in what served as an entrance hall, sitting room and dining room, Melissa's voluptuous mother informed me that I was due a siesta. This became a stalwart part of Santa Fe life involving a rotation process through the hottest hours of the day to allow all the various family members a stint of shut-eye: there appeared to be considerably less beds than relatives and when Granny rolled out, I rolled in! Somewhat perplexed by lack of space in the house, it soon came to pass that the day-time solution was to exile the family to the street. A neighbourhood wide technique, the pavements of the barrio boil with plaits of children who play amongst the makeshift sitting rooms of nylon chairs to the soundtrack of cumbia santafesina. Various family elders are propped out too and watch their wild offspring with a nostalgic despondency. The nocturnal solution for me and Meli turned out to be a semi-nomadic process of lying where we fell! I particularly liked staying over at Meli's best friend Marisa's house: a crumbling colonial villa at the end of a long alley where time slows down amidst endless mates, picking of guitars and reading.
Both Christmas and New Year's were fabulous. Christmas day itself is a complete non-event – it all takes place on the night of the 24th, commencing with gluttonous quantities of food and elbow clashing with the assembled family. As midnight draws nearer the neighbourhood begins to ring with the cacophony of fireworks and competing hi-fis pumping cumbia, the television has a running update of burn casualties in the local hospital. At about two we set off into town to continue celebrating.

Christmas Supper on the 24th
(Me, Robert, Debo, Toni, Leandra, Pepa, Camilo and Granny)



Life in Santa Fe obliged me to through out the puritanical 'early to rise' maxim and adopt a more Latin lifestyle. Meli has a lovely group of friends and most nights involved cracking open a couple of Santa Fe's famous beers, getting the guitars out, or hitting the town.

The Last Few Days in Tucuman

Tafi de Valle’s erratic mix of ostentatious second homes and corrugated tin buildings scramble from the tidy main street, free from the rigours of planning bureaucracy, and scale the shingled hillsides precariously in a constant battle for the finest views: paradoxically each new generation of fast built homes fetter any previous aspirations to the panoramic vistas and push the building projects onto ever more perilous slopes. Despite the blight of middle-class holidaying: banks of homogeneous artisan tat and wealthy families huddling in the faded social club beneath ancestral photos of great estancieros past, the Cachique valleys still have an irresistible allure. From the town, the soft green hills are masked by passing rainstorms, their cartoon clouds dissipate to leave a phosphorescent icing of frozen moisture and an unmatched fertility, in the high plateaus the horses graze contented in meadows burgeoning with wildflowers. This wet weather renders the high foots hills of the Andean cordillera unforgiving: for every leathery gaucho we pass as we ascend there are skeletal wooden crosses and shrines lodged above deceptive drops. The unpredictable weather makes hazardous territory for horsemen: swollen streams and shrouding of fog warrant the respect of even the brazen.

One of the last days I spent in Tucuman before heading south to celebrate Christmas, Hugh and I left the estancia in the blistering sunshine with the hope to explore the mesalas a couple of hours up from the town. We ate lunch on the vastness of the green meadows under a burning sky, but as we picked our way higher a cooler wind teased our light shirts and created a tangible difference in the atmosphere. The climb leveling out we played witness to the vast meteorological theatre of the high plateaus: two jealous storm systems rivaled for our attentions simultaneously spitting lightening. The bloated clouds carving across the hot green valleys to our right soon took priority and the impression of the impending storm made my skin prickle. Within seconds of turning the horses towards the path back down towards town the wind hit us. Laced with a hail that soon turned to a constant and rain our shirts tacked to our backs, Doradillo and Tusoj slipped on the instantly muddy paths and so we dismounted to slip down ourselves. I always appreciated the speed of how weather changes, particularly at high altitude. However, amongst Tafi's high valleys, these hills and dales on a scale that would mother the Brecon Beacons, I really got see the velocity and unpredictability of the weather.