a toilet stop in cafayate

I´m not hoping to confuse you but here´s something that happened to me on a tour from Salta, before the Bolivia crossing.

We were on a tour to look at seven colours in the mountains. Spectacular views, you get bored of leaning over others shoulders to take photos and just look. You can only take so many photos of mountains. We stopped at a tiny village that appeared to be surviving easily, miles from anywhere. It was definitely time to find a toilet, our guide, Fernando, told me how to get to the toilet in Spanish. I don´t believe there really was a toilet anywhere, my spanish can´t be that bad.... I hope. Anyway, I was walking along in the direction that I had been told with a bursting bladder, two minutes later I couldn´t handle the pain anymore, I had to ask a local.

A 60 or 70 year old was standing in a small dirt road next to a mud house. I asked him where the toilet was, he said there is none, I must use nature. Looking around I could see nothing but houses and people dotted around the streets, apparently doing nothing much at all. I didn´t fancy going in the street and my eyes desperately searched the landscape for somewhere, anywhere, a bush, PLEASE! The look of desperation on my face was enough for him, he told me I could use his. Are you serious? I replied (what a response to my saviour). I am serious. He led me in to the mud house next to him and directly to his bathroom. I´m not sure what he did but he went in first and shuffled around and flushed the loo before letting me in. It had not been cleaned in a very long time but who was I to complain. Looking around, he had the shower head almost directly above the toilet, a tiny window very high up and a little bit of dirt smeared on absolutely everything. That was the longest urination I have ever had, and that´s long. He must have heard it through the thin mud walls. Luckily he had toilet roll (clean, yeah!), a rarity in many places.

When I regresed into the living room which led back to the front door, he was sat at his dinner table watching tv. He leant on his lovely green and red flower patterned table cloth that related to christmas time nicely. On tv was a blue screen with a spanish word bouncing around and a fuzziness overcoming the whole screen from time to time. He had a cup of mate and asked me to stay and drink with him. It was obvious I could only understand a few words but he kept talking to me anyway, telling me about his life. I gathered that he was retired and used to work on the train line that closed down (we had just been to visit it as part of the tour). His daughter has gone traveling around South America and he lives alone.

I was grateful for his kindness and tried to give him 5 pesos. He refused it and it hung around after I repeatedly tried to give it back to him, eventually he allowed it to slip on the table and ignore it. He kept offering me mate and said I should sit. The problem was, I only had ten minutes to find a loo and get back to our tour bus. Explaining this in the same way several times, trying out several accents eventually he understood and I was excused. This gentleman let me take a photo of him. In return for the use of his toilet I would send him the photo. He wrote his address down. His house has no number. There are so few houses here that your name is enough.

Back to Bolivia.....