A very Argentinian Easter

Travelling is almost as much about the people you meet as it is about the places you go. Along the way, I've had the chance to meet loads of really lovely people - but most of them have been other backpackers from Western countries. It's been quite hard to meet and get to know people from the countries I've been travelling through....until now, that is.

Easter is a big holiday period for Argentinians. Not only do they get the Thursday and Good Friday as holiday, but this year the Monday after was a holiday too, in memory of the 'desaparecidos' of the 1970s. I had chosen to spend Easter in a small town near Tucumán in the north-west of Argentina, called Tafí del Valle. My guidebook told me it was beautiful, and a good spot for walking. It also told me it was a popular weekend destination. What it didn't tell me was that every year the people of Tafí stage a recreation of the Passion of the Christ on Good Friday, and it's a huge tourist draw. So when I turned up on Good Friday, just as everyone was heading to 'la Pasión´, the town was absolutely heaving with people. When I got to my hostel, it too was packed...and everyone but me was Argentinian. I have to say that, at first, I did wonder if I'd made a horrible mistake in going there. After all, I'm not in the slightest bit religious. And I had visions of me spending the weekend all alone, unable to communicate with anyone. I can hold a reasonable conversation with one person in Spanish, providing they're prepared to be patient, but I get utterly lost when a group of people are all talking together.

As it turned out, I needn't have worried. Argentinians (at least the ones I've met) are all absolutely lovely, really warm and friendly. On my first morning, I was in the middle of making some sandwiches to take on a walk, when one of the girls from my room invited me to join her and her sister on a walk - seeing as we were planning to go the same way. Unfortunately, the weather closed in and we only managed about half an hour before turning back. The rest of the day was spent hanging around the hostel, chatting (or attempting to chat on my part) and drinking the ubiquitous Argentine drink, mate. I think the others felt quite frustrated at not being able to get out somewhere, but I really enjoyed the day.

Fortunately the next day the weather cleared up, and I finally got to see just how beautiful the area is. I headed out on the same walk I'd planned to do the day before, to the nearby village of El Mollar. This time I was with another girl from the hostel, called Flor. I was feeling much more confident with my Spanish by now, so we had a good chat along the way. The walk itself is lovely, and the town of El Mollar is very interesting. Its main attraction is some 2,000 year old standing stones, called menhires, from the local indigenous culture. Unfortunately they'd been moved from their original setting to a field, so the context is lost. However, a bit further away there were some remains of some old houses which still had some of these stones intact. So it was a good chance to learn a bit about the history of the area.

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