Travelling to my roots

by Mili Carnevale (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Argentina

My trip began with a 14-hour flight from London to Buenos Aires, where I meet Mari - my friend and travel companion. Once in Buenos Aires, we took another flight from Jorge Newbery airport to Perico, in the northern province of Jujuy. In Perico we were welcomed by the Torres family -lovely like nobody else- here we spent the day. From there we were taken to Purmamarca, where we made a brief but beautiful stop to see the Hill of the 7 colours then we continued our travel to Tilcara. To get to Tilcara there is a bus, which takes approximately three hours to complete. The road to Iruya is really incredible, it is something that I want to highlight since it is not only the destination, the arriving but everything that happens before. It is going to the edge of the precipice; it is seeing the adobe houses; it is the different colours of the landscape that goes on an adventure through green mosses and cement colours cut with violet, red, white and orange. It is to think that the turn of the next hill will be your ends meeting but in reality, you turn and there is an infinity to go. It is 116.1 kilometres of being stuck to the window marvelling at the landscape and sounding as if it had been reborn. After a while, we begin to see the longed-for Iruya, the landscape intermingled with little houses, hills, and the famous yellow church with the sky-blue sky, which crowns the town. Iruya feels in the skin, in the soul, in the whole body, in the bright eyes of its saints there, in the pure air that enters our dirty city lungs. The cobbled streets invited me unto them, so without GPS or mobile internet they persuade me, crossing me from side to side across the town, all the corners there were there for having. Until I reach the beautiful viewpoint, where I stay until the sunset becomes and I see the beautiful image from above, at night, the little lights that happen as fireflies, flickering against the dark. I keep this breathtaking postcard with me in my mind's eye. A while later we decided to eat, and to our surprise, a street below our campsite held a “dining room." Basically, they are small restaurants with real homemade food. It is as if you open your house as space for people to gather, open the doors of your home and extend that warm comfort. I am vegan. I had been in Argentina for a few days and I had not been able to eat much more than fries or pizza without cheese. And in this place, with a smell of home, they served me a vegetable garden dish with an inexplicable flavour; a kind of stew with corn, potatoes, butternut squash. I didn’t expect to find something like that in Iruya, sincerely this town was surprising me moment by moment. Iruya left me with a feeling of happiness, as well as melancholy. I felt the need for more time there, to be disconnected from everything and connected with everything; the earth, the real mother earth, the sun, and with that silence, the peace and the serenity. Iruya is peace. It is love. It is the quiet streets. It is a cold night and starry skies. Iruya is a yearning to return, it is homemade food on every corner, it is an eternal silence in the deep night. It is that image burned upon my eyes; that sunset that illuminated the houses in a glow across the Eden. Iruya is the smile of its people, the kindness they showered us in. To look out the window and know that the serenity will continue there. Iruya is to travel back in time and to become part of the earth, the sun, and the clouds. Iruya is seeing you reflected in a puddle and knowing that the reflection there is only a drop of everything you can become. Iruya is an interior connection and an external disconnection, Iruya is always a place to be happy again and a place to feel alive.