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In Argentina’s central sierras, there are several small towns and villages tucked in valleys circling Cordoba, Argentina’s third largest city at 1.2 million. A popular resort destination is the alpine community of 6000 residents called Villa General Belgrano. Named after a hero of Argentina’s war of independence, VGB, as locals call it, is reachable by car inside of two hours south from Cordoba, six hours from Buenos Aires.
The traffic was heavy on this long weekend celebrating the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. We decided to stop for lunch at a restaurant along Route 5. Restaurante San Cayetano is built into a narrow cleft off the highway which hugs the mountain’s edge, enjoying a lovely view over the houseboat-dotted reservoir.
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| pic: Dan Cooper |
Trout is a specialty of the area and the menu offered ten different ways to enjoy them. Many diners were coincidentally enjoying ten different ways to get plastered at lunch. Whole bottles of Argentine wine stood on most tables. I saw a pink cheeked waitress rushing a platter of peach schnapps, another local favourite, to a large party finishing off their meal ahead of us. Diners came and went constantly, many professorial types, men with neatly clipped beards, fancy wives in leather espadrilles and matching shoulder bags. Everyone was in vacation mode and as relaxed as Malbec a las rochas could make you at a rest stop still miles from home or hotel. Argentina might have banned smoking in restaurants a few years ago to our delight, but it still has work to do on the drinking and driving front.
An hour’s drive more and we found ourselves pulling into a parking spot on the main street in Villa General Belgrano.
GVB is more a Swiss Alps theme park than a town. Residents have a taste for all things German, like pastry, chocolate, and artisan beer. They also enjoy cartoon dwarfs.
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| pic: Dan Cooper |
Wood signs commonly feature the likes of Disney’s Sneezy, Sleepy, Dopey, or any number of anonymous gnomes. Carved in relief, painted on buildings, sculpted life-size, moulded into chocolates, beaded or stitched in needlepoint, VGB’s dwarfs are, ironically, given their size, in your face.
Since we need to find accommodation for the weekend, we head to the tourist office which everyone says we can find on the main floor of the bell tower next to city hall. We’re told we can’t miss it. But we’re not told that the street holds any number of distractions which might deter us: someone is yodelling in front of a beer hall and wants to pull us inside. There’s a chocolate shop which commands my immediate attention. Dopey is pointing to a selection of freshly baked kuchen. But once we find the office, we’re in and out with German efficiency and on our way to the recommended Blumenau Bungalows, a few streets off the main drag.
The resort’s owner, Pablo, is a retired veterinarian. VGB attracts an older crowd of vacationers and now more and more full time retired residents, favouring its moderate climate and fresh air. Pablo was making the transition himself half a dozen years ago, during the economic crisis in Argentina. At the time, along with the devalued peso, you couldn’t take your money out of the banks, discouraging those who might have wanted to retire out of country. You could, however, move it around from a buyer’s bank to a seller’s bank, which is how he and his wife came to own their hotel. They bartered for whatever their cash resources couldn’t cover to improve the property.
In spite of its continuing economic struggles, we observe that small town Argentina does not seem stressed about money. Stores close for whatever reason during the day outside of the usual siesta hours. We’ve encountered only one tout, a small narcoleptic man whose pitch about a restaurant trailed off mid-sentence. There are also few advertizing billboards once you leave the big cities. At least advertisements may not be where you expect them. Last week, while on a day trip to view condors, as we drove around a blind switchback on the Sierra de Achala, my eyes were dangerously drawn to an invitation to taste one of Cordoba’s finest cookies.
We were able to follow through on that invitation in a pastry shop in VGB. Seeing Dan salivate in front of a display case, the clerk offered him a free taste of the national cookie that’s as ubiquitous in Argentina as a dwarf carving in VGB. Alfahorjes are sweet biscuits, this one infused with dulce de leche, an oozing, caramel like cream, as rich and satisfying as its name suggests. She wouldn’t take any money.
Pablo tells us not to miss the festival in town that night. Not only is it the long weekend holiday of the Immaculate Conception, but it’s the official start of the summer tourism season. There’s going to be a procession to city hall.
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| pic: Dan Cooper |
On the walk to town, we wonder if we’ll be able to get a good view of whatever happens at processions when there are hundreds of people lining a cordoned-off downtown street. As a mostly Catholic country, we’re expecting a devout gathering, speeches and a priest’s blessing, not unlike what we’ve seen in small town Mexico or Peru at similar festivals. “Hey, do you remember ever seeing a church in town?” I suddenly ask my husband.
Admittedly, we’ve seen nothing to suggest that the festival will be a religious one. It’s early evening and so far, Mary Immaculate is a no show. Not a priest in sight, instead, half a dozen young pastry chefs-in-training shovelling out samples of hot strudel from enormous pans along three rows of banquet tables.
A film is in progress on a huge screen erected across the face of the city hall. A promotional film, it celebrates the local scenery, the mountains, lakes, forests, and architecture. In time, politicians and media celebrities lead the crowd to count down the last seconds to the beginning of the long awaited procession. In a blast of fireworks and drums, crowds part to allow a small all-terrain vehicle to slowly pass. I’m wondering if now is when Mary Immaculate will make her entrance, perhaps as a life-size effigy in wood, solemnly transported by the faithful.
Instead, huffing and puffing down the street towards the stage, the ATV tows a very long, narrow wagon supporting an equally long narrow platter. On the platter is an unbroken stream of sauerkraut swaddling what’s claimed to be the longest sausage in the world. Cameras flash, and children squeal. Clicking a gaucho’s knife against a sharpening stick, a smiling chef awaits its arrival. A buxom young lady beside him holds a basket of buns pressed against her hip. A cheery big man dressed in traditional mountain shorts and shoulder straps shouts to his friend over the din as he fills plastic glasses of beer one by one from a wooden barrel. I pick up a program discarded on the street. It describes the scheduled events of a Fiesta de la Gastonoia Centroeuropea.
We stumble on Pablo the next day during his early morning walk around the resort and thank him for the tip about the last night’s entertainment. He is puzzled why we would have expected a religious ceremony. He explains that every year, the summer tourism season begins on this holiday weekend. It just happens to be a religious feast day too. “Tourism is really important for the town, so we throw a party.” I thought to myself, Argentina is not Spain. Economics trump religion.
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| pic: Dan Cooper |
Pablo sets us on another adventure, this time on a day trip to Cumbrecita, a nearby Swiss styled town pasted to the side of a mountain. Cars are not allowed and the streets remain unpaved or cobblestoned. It’s a dusty, forty-five minute drive from VGB on a road that’s currently being improved, which may be the death of the town’s otherworldly charm in two years when it will be finished.
We arrive at a well supervised parking where my husband wastes no time locking the keys in the car. The good news, contrary to my fearful notions about Latin America, is that no one here knows how to break into a car. A solution is eventually found when one young man is able to fish out the keys through the slightly opened window with a stretched out coat hanger. He brings them home to a crowd of cheering red shirts, two pink faced gringos, a family of Argentine tourists, and four hopeful street dogs.
The village is a postcard, but a little worn, the beaten earth walkways are pocked from horse hoofs, and I stumble over chipped rocks poking out of the surface. Skip, an expat American who works as a pastry chef at one of the several restaurants in the village, says that most people we see working here actually live here. “This place is for real.” I reflect on his words as we sit down on a bench opposite seven leaping dwarfs partly whittled out of a log. They appear frozen in mid flight, caught in an unsuccessful prison break.
Over three hours, we hike on woody trails, up and over steep hills. We pass a large, luxurious hotel, La Cumbrecita. There are several private summer homes, gated and ensconced in the forest like hobbit houses. We discover by accident the place where most of the young people are spending the afternoon, bathing in a terraced mountain pool.
It’s time to get back to VGB, but this time, on Skip’s advice, we take another route that’s a little shorter, and popular with locals. A dozen cars and pick-up trucks streak by us along the once green winding route, saddened now by a recent forest fire. We quickly close the car windows against the churned up red dust. The usual Argentine élan disappears behind a wheel. Although I’ve not seen anger on the road like I have back home, I have observed bad driving. In a charitable moment, I chalk it up to fear. An Argentine feels most comfortable in wide, open spaces, a characteristic of much of this arid country. On confining mountain roads, their instinct must be simply to get the heck out of there as fast as possible.
I wonder if that’s really the essential difference between us and the locals. No matter how hard we try to pass ourselves off as road-tripping Argentines, the tourist inside is ever so happy to amble along and enjoy the scenery.
Copyright © 2009 Carolann Moisse
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