Nico Bello - Rio Iruya (3) English version

A nice day was accompanying us. Rushing our mount over the hardened volcan of the Higuera stream, we headed south into the Iruya riverbed. It was early and the sun still did not reach the bottom of the gorge. Above our heads and behind a few cliffs, a large number of condors announced the presence of a dead animal.

The hardness of the landscape of the previous day gradually began to soften, though not completely; on the hillsides protected and permanently hidden from the sun, we began to see the first green spots formed by payos (local succulent plants) next to incipient sets of trees, mostly Tipas and Alisos. Without us noticing, the rough mountain that bid us farewell in Iruya began to show us different shades of colors.

We continued to Tipayoc, a hamlet of just three houses whose cultivation platforms were razed by the last floods and buried by the volcan. Two women, one with a child in her arms, receive us with so much mistrust that we failed to elicit even three words from their mouths, only looks with a mixture of curiosity and distrust. We bartered sweets for a couple of smiles and continued our journey to Uchuyoc, where we stopped for lunch at the edge of a crystalline stream.

We passed the narrow of Peña Blanca, where river was encased and curled its waters trying to prevent us from passing. Meters later, we observed a narrow ascending trail that switchbacked up the mountain towards Abra del Sauce. This is one of the many trails through which the inhabitants escape in the summer to the highlands.

Looking closely it seemed impossible to move along that trail, so narrow and steep. But one by one, and with patience, countless settlers and animals scurry to the heights on a regular basis.

Gradually the vegetation changed, and we went from seeing a few scattered little trees to descrying groves of trees. The riverbed widened, showing us a great esplanade formed by the encounter of the Iruya river with the Volcan river, which makes its appearance from the south, showing us its narrow thread of water with the most absolute innocence. This river was, so far in our journey, one of the largest tributaries of the Iruya. Its large basin, which extends to the top of the Cerro Morado in Colanzulí, in Summer spills its turbulent waters into this part of the Iruya river.

In this confluence, one can trace the remains of San Antonio, a town that in the last 25 years has progressively disappeared, and is now almost completely covered by the volcan. So important was this town that it was the only one in the area that had police, a post office, andeven a Church, of which the last wall was dragged by the floods of last summer. The volcan of the homonymous river has practically covered the town; few houses can be seen and every year there are fewer. In the middle of the river, a large algarrobo (type of large mesquite tree of the Prosopis species), already dry, was trapped by the volcan's drag, revealing only its upper branches. Perhaps it is this tree that gave us the palpable measure of what this area was, once upon a time. A single ranch is inhabited, the rest ruins

Without having completely recovered from seeing this particular phenomenon, this town covered and destroyed by the volcan of a river, we found the narrow of Cebilar. The slopes were getting crowded with forest and small pink spots appeared, uncovering Lapachos showing the first colors of the incipient Spring. We ran into some locals who tirelessly drove a barren of mules, loaded with blocks of salt and orange bags, up the river to Higuera, seeking to exchange this precious cargo for merchandise of their interest.

Further on, a battered pedestrian bridge made with sticks betrayed the proximity of a village. We were approaching Matancillas, a small village nestled in a valley next to the river. We dismounted, and one after another the animals scurried uphill in search of the town; we stretched our legs and imitated them. Up above, we found a nice town, a tiny and modest chapel, a modern sanitary outpost, and a school in the final phase of its construction.

We unsaddled, turned out the horses by a neighboring fence with good fodder, and prepared our things for the night. In the kitchen of the sanitary outpost, we put firewood in the fireplace and grilled a goat kid that had accompanied us, already butchered, all the way from Iruya. The kitchen was a shed made of wood with a rudimentary roof that keeps the fire always on; this kitchen arrangement was not just part of the new sanitary outpost, but of the historic culture of these villages, in which similar kitchens are not missing in any dwelling.

Visiting the town, we observed curious and neat stone constructions. The lintels of doors and windows in most of the houses had changed from stone to well chopped and edged wooden beams, some with curiously carved works. The stone had been worked with even more care and tidiness. The wood was abundant, predominantly Cebil colorado alongside Tipas, Alisos, Quinas, Lapachos and many other varieties.