BACK AT SEA LEVEL
But onwards and upwards it was, and after the border, the high, high drive, the doomed cigarette and a long dark run down to camp: a tiny goat's cheese farm where Explora has set up tents, a warm stone bungalow with hot soup, a fire, and showers. It was all rather glorious, and we walked, again, the next day, high and happy, and spent two grand nights at a beautifully converted schoolhouse near Cachi, talking long into the night around barbecues, and walking cochineal peaks at sunset with our new leg muscles: and then it was another sturdy bumping long drive into the Argentine city of Salta, and civilization; happy and bustling, yes, but also the first red lights for eight days.
Coming out of the plane from there to Buenos Aires, back again at sea level, there was, suddenly, almost too much air; just as the designer charms of the Faena hotel were almost too much. Although, do you know, after a few hours by the pool, and the sexiest tango show ever seen outside my dreams, of which there had been a good many - altitude makes you dream constantly in gaudy Hammer Technicolor only with (remarkably) even more ludicrous plots - I soon settled. It became hard to remember, so swift had our descent been from that high forgotten land, what had happened and what had been dreamed.
I find myself strongly remembering a few things. Explora has done something special, and we could not have done the trip without the careful, subtle planning of its staff. And there is a delight in a certain amount of luxury in the wilderness. I feel happy, sometimes absurdly so, that my body didn't let me down: not even a headache. Perhaps I have a few more months left in me after all. Most of all, however, remembering that high, thin land, so far from the sea but so close, so piecrust-close, to the grumbling land below, just for having been allowed to be there, I feel an extraordinary, lasting sense of privilege.
For more information on Explora, visit www.explora.com.
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