Food is a direct window into a culture. Swaying suspended in a bus for fourteen hours, my body cannot adjust:

            "My body moves, but I don't.
             Which one of us has stopped?"

  My traveling companion Michele notes the pressures:

             "Bursting my seams,
              I come to rest just in time".

We have come to the Andes near Mendoza for the wines, mountains and to cook. We have brought with us little packets of herbs and spices, fresh garlic and ginger, and the rest we will improvise. At first we eat out:

              "Pale moon shines through dry, dead leaves
               over the limpid plate.
               Ah! The tastes of autumn".

Yet as we read about the price of staples, our concerns about a limpid plate of pasta seem petty and we resolve to try and contribute something more to what is essentially a political issue.

But we were refreshed by the the local wines, the large, succulent juicy white olives, and sun-dried tomatoes drizzled with oil and herbs; the tastes are not just an interest, but a reward!

So we go up to the snowy peaks of the Cordon de Plata:

                   "Old trail on high road.
                    Water pours fresh,
                    high on it's own."

And now we can cook, each meal full of culinary inspiration - goats cheese with oil and herbs over squares of oven roasted red peppers, with black bread and a good Syrah to drink:

Or a hearty lentil stew, because there is cold that seeps down from the mountains in its aridity to chill the bones. The aspens glitter, rays of colour above the high desert scrub:

             "Golden yellow fly the last flags of summer.
              How prettily they wave goodbye".



We tell stories up here by the fire, and like all travelers after long, physical days, we think about eating. US$30 has covered our food costs for a week, and every delicious meal we have cooked ourselves. With one exception. Lamb from the south of the Province, marinated for 24 hours in white wine, vinegar, garlic and oregano, then cooked slow for four hours... with this is in our belly we walk outside to be pummeled by the full force of the southern night sky, the "View from the Center of the Universe"..

        "The glow in my body
         ignores this magnificent indifference.
         How remarkable!"

How remarkable indeed.

Chris Wenham

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