South American Explorer

James Burt looks beyond the surface of Federación a small town in the provincia of Entre Rios in Argentina

 

The Rio Uruguay flowed quietly just meters away from the bus depot where I got off.  The summer heat had evaporated it down to almost creek-depth and the jagged brown rocks lay exposed all its shore.

 

From a distance the water itself looked warmly blue and inviting, but a local riding the same bus as me said it really wasn’t any good for swimming these days as the beaches were too rocky.

 

This river was something that would play a big role in my discovery and ultimate appreciation of Federación.  

 

My usual travelling mate had suggested I go to Federación as a change of scenery. I had already been to Patagonia two years ago and then to the tourist-ridden beaches of Mar de Ajo on the eastern coast the year before that. That was when I realized I truly preferred the snowy mountains of the end of the earth to the packed beaches of Argentina’s more popular locales. I just wasn’t a ‘sit-on-the-beach’ tourist type.

 

I needed a new sojourn to someplace – anyplace – that could reveal something new. Federación was promised to me as being something of a surprise. There were sunny, vacation things without the hordes of tourists, which is what my friend, a local of the Buenos Aires province, wanted. But I was also promised some insight into Northern Argentina that I never knew existed.

 

But then my mate couldn’t go. He had a family tragedy. I had already booked my time off and was kind of disappointed he couldn’t come. He was a great guide and traveling companion, but he told me to go it alone.

 

Believe me, he said, you will see things you’d never expect.

 

I did what I was told and caught the night bus and arrived to eight o’clock coffee and medialunas in the depot café. As I made my way to the cabañas where I was to stay the sun came up for its daily scorching.

 

Unlike much of the North American weather I was used to, the summer heat in Argentina was almost devoid of humidity and was capable of inducing a burn within an hour, all the while feeling warm and enticing. Seductive, deadly, and occasionally hallucinatory.

 

I had learned my lesson from the previous summers and to avoid anymore burnings, I wasted no time in dropping my bags on the dirt town road to cream up my face, arms, legs and feet.

 

After checking in and speaking to the owner, who gave me a pile of tourist pamphlets plus a map to get oriented, I headed out to scour the area. Despite the heat, the landscape itself was green and healthy looking. There were a few lumbering and fruit operations, and more than once a big diesel truck passed me carrying natural products of some kind.

 

The beaches by the river were another story: brown, stony and inaccessible from the water drop.

 

I followed it along an old concrete walkway for the rest of the day. It was a fun walk but I was still couldn’t see what the big deal was.

 

The next day I slept late, bogged down from the heat. By the time I got up, it was after lunch and siesta time. The hot spring pools across from the cabañas were closed till the late afternoon; the shops were closing down; nobody was out and about. I feared I had landed in just another summer holiday stop. I went and had a Quilmes cerveza at a roadside café.

 

As I looked through the stack of papers I had got at the cabaña, I found a yellow info guide about the local museum. Why not? I thought. So I finished my beer and left, hoping for something exciting.

 

The local museum was lodged in an old church near the river’s edge.

 

Like any small town gallery, there were lots of antiques on display. Old gramophones, medical instruments and survey maps were laid out for the tourists to peer at. And it was hot in there. But then I went into the backroom where a TV played something odd. More precisely, it was a cheaply produced video of the Federación relocation in 1974.

 

Old reels of Super 8 film showed the old city of Federación being cleared and its residents collecting their belongings on trucks for the mass exodus to the new town site. It was during that year that the Rio Uruguay was finally dammed to build the Salto Grande Reservoir and the old Federación site was flooded.

 

I could barely make out the narration but did understand that even many years after the event, old remnants of the former city occasionally washed up on the shore of the Rio Uruguay. The old city wouldn’t be drowned.

 

Along the wall were old tombstones, farmers’ implements and even dolls that locals had donated after finding them on the river’s edge

 

The video played in rotation and the same images of an almost holy pilgrimage of farmers and worked played continuously. Some looked sad and perplexed on the move, no doubt due to the uprooting of their once stable existence. Then the images of the new river formation were shown, plus shots of the many items that had washed up on shore. The memory of the old civilization was impossible to forget.

 

You really could never know this sort of cryptic history existed in a place such as Federación. Quiet, working class and with a layout that could be found in almost any other Argentine small town, it almost seemed happily devoid of distinction. I stayed two more days and explored the area in the heat of the day.

 

The images from the museum had burned in my mind and combing the streets with sweat beading down my face felt slightly spiritual. Looking back, it was just a feeling and I didn’t get the opportunity to discover any washed up antiques or remnants of the old city myself. But the experience was worth it.

 

James Burt lives in the Junction area of Toronto. He has traveled and worked in various parts of China, Europe, North and South America. When not out on foot, he can be found planning another trip or looking for good Guinness taps.