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.