Camino del Indio

Never judge a book by its cover, the saying goes. That is the case with Camino del Indio, the place that I’ve been staying and working at. The mere name, which means ‘the way of the aboriginal people’, indicates that it is a sanctimonial place, where people respect nature, the ancestral ways and unsophisticated manner of existence.

The original homestead was that of the founder of Sauce Viejo (the name of the town here), and is next door to our humble abode. It is part of the same property, but is currently not in use. In a previous blog I had referred to it as the ‘workshop’, not realizing the significance of the building. The one that had corrugated iron sheets ripped off during the twister in February, evidently 50 of them, most ending up in the trees of the surrounding forest.

Furthermore, a movie was made in this house, depicting the retired life of the 80yr old surviving spouse of the previous owner. Her name is Bella. It is called ‘Dilettante’ and was made by her daughter, as final product for a degree in filmmaking. Only 3 people act in the movie: Bella, her caretaker Kata, and a lone man living on the property, named Cecil. It’s on YouTube, and Ale kindly let me watch it on his computer. Very poignant and thought-provoking, made me view life here in a different way.

I have come accross the word ‘dilettante’ in Argentina a few times. First in Buenos Aires, where Renato’s friend Christian referred to himself as dilettante, then in the film, and then Ale also referred to one of our guests as ‘dilettante’. It means a person who is interested in and can easily talk about many different things, but does not have an in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. It seems that there are quite a few of them around…

The guest I am referring to is a young man (19yrs) who pitched up late one night, literally blown in by an icy wind. He happens to be a knife maker, who was on his way to do a further course in knife-making. Initially I was completely intrigued, trying to understand the process and taking photo’s of one of his creations. The handle is going to be crafted from special wood from Thailand, with engravings.

The patterns on the blade are the result of a sheet of metal being rolled out and folded double many times, up to 150 in this case. The grooves close to the handle are made manually with a small round file – time-consuming and detailed work. The sheaths are hand-crafted too, and the final product is sold for $800 (USA) in Argentina. By eleven o’clock I gave up and went to bed, feeling sorry for Ale who was victim to a monologue which carried on well into the early hours of the morning. According to Ale, the young man has a keen interest in many things, and is quite knowledgeable, yet he called him a dilettante. How would I know, ignoramus with un poco español.

An inscription on the kitchen wall says: ‘Cocinar es Alquimia’, meaning ‘cooking is alchemy’.

Ale, who is vegetarian, has turned out to be quite thé chef. My contribution to the cooking process has been oats porridge every morning, which is served with sliced banana and a generous dollop of dulce de leche, the popular chocolate/caramel spread that is eaten on bread. Ale, on the other hand, has produced home-made bread every day, savoury pizza with salsa and mozzarella, topped with fresh rocket from his garden

and pascualina, a pie made with chard and eggs. The chard is chopped and fried with garlic, finely chopped leeks and carrots. The dough for the pie is made without yeast or baking powder, only flour, salt, oil and water is used. The bottom layer of rolled out dough is filled with the chard mixture, and then topped with 4 or 5 raw eggs. This is covered by the top layer of dough, which is spread with egg yolk. He baked the pie in the clay oven outside, which by the way, he had built. Evidently his mother is the best pascualina maker in the world, and he must be a close 2nd!

The days are speeding by, each bringing its own element of surprise or satisfaction, such as horses grazing in front of the house, yoga on the lawn, friends dropping by or unexpected guests arriving. On Tuesday for example, we were going to have a light lunch because it was going to be pizza night, but come 2 o’clock (yes, our official lunch time), friends arrived and a pascualina pie was promptly made. Ánd we had pizza that night, albeit at 10 o’clock, which is not that abnormal anyway.

I’ve been helping Ale make a new garden for pumpkin (actually butternut), squash, green peppers and tomatoes. The process involves collecting many wheelbarrows of horse manure and compost, cleaning out the grass and weeds, digging the soil (my idea, he was just going to make mounds) and then spreading first the manure, which had to be chopped fine with a spade, and then the compost. The manure and compost have to be mixed by hand, so as not to hurt the earthworms, and the mounds are covered with a thin layer of soil. The result looks good, but my hands have aged considerably and my nails will take weeks to recover – broken, and blisters everywhere. The sad part is I will not see the plants grow or taste the harvest.

On Friday Ale decided to put another layer of clay on the stove, which meant 5 barrows of clay had to be brought from the river, and I softened the clay while Ale fixed and plastered the oven. And I thought my hands had taken a knock after the gardening…

I seemed to have chosen an excellent time to visit here, as the rainy season hasn’t started and there are no insects around. Spiders, scorpions and mosquitoes abound in summer, but I have only had to deal with gnats, those tiny miserable little ‘muggies’ that sting without you being aware of it, creating itchy welts. The spiders are coming though… We discovered a huge web, at least 3x2m, high above the ground between the trees that line the pathway to the gate, which was covered with hundreds of minute spiders, little black dots hanging there like stars. I tried to photograph them, not very successfully though. When we arrived there again the next morning, the web was intact but the spiders had disappeared. We discovered them clustered together back in their nest. We’ve been watching them, and they seem to come out in the afternoon and move back to the nest in the morning. And we’ve found two more similar webs in the vicinity – who knows how many more there are in the forest. I’m think I’ll be happy to leave pretty soon!

More than 40 species of birds have been recorded on our grounds, and I’ve seen about half of them, such as eagles, water birds, kingfishers, owls and many others. There is a bird, called the benteveo comun, which has a very specific call almost like the ‘Piet-my-vrou’, and the locals have named it ‘bicho feo’ as a result of this. To me it sounded like ‘beat your fear’, and in the beginning, when I was emotionally vulnerable, it was a very encouraging sound to hear as I worked outside. I had a good chuckle at myself a few days ago, when I disvovered that ‘bicho feo’ actually means ‘ugly bug’!

Grateful contentment at the end of each day, sitting on the bankie and watching the sunset over the river: