Travels through South America

After three weeks, my Yacu Yura experience has come to an end. I’m feeling such a sense of relief but also some frustration… It’s been so intense with so many nuances and varying emotions and reactions that I don´t feel a post will do it justice. Perhaps I should just stick to the basics and save the rest for a short story with names changed.

Yes, I think I’ll stick to short hand:

Week 1: ‘This is not what I was expecting’ or ‘ how, from one moment to the next, I seemed to channel a different nun from the film Black Narcissus .

Twenty minutes by bus from the nearest town, the charming and eccentric Capilla del Monte, Yacu Yura hides at the end of a 2km trek down a dirt track off the main road. An irrigated oasis of flora and fauna nestled amongst the thorny spines of the more inhospitable natural vegetation, Yacu Yura is a world away from the smoky hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires

Clean air, unspoilt waters, zero light pollution and a warm welcome met us as at the huge communal country-style kitchen. Jimmy, the 50 year old Californian patriach gave us a run down on the place and the ‘non-obligatory rules’ which we should adhere to (if we so wish)…

Meditation at 6.30, make breakfast of porridge and fruit for everyone, eat it in silence, meet for the first (of many) circles for stretching, ‘respiracion de la purification’, then chat about work, hug each other, work until 1pm, meet for a circle to give thanks for the day (each in turn), dance and sing a song from some religion, say a prayer, give hugs, proceed to meditate for 20 minutes, return to another circle to say grace, eat lunch and then do your own thing.

All the above routine was to be maintained whilst the dance meet – The Contact – was also taking place at Yacu Yura – a 2 week long gathering of lithe limbed-free spirits given to frolicking in the nude who were apart from the group and therefore not involved in the volunteering or circles. More on them in Week 2.

I was a little stunned by the amount of circles and meditations and was uncertain of Jimmy’s affirmations that working on the spirit was just as important as working in the garden. Still, I felt that I could handle it so long as I gained experience of permaculture practices and was able to enjoy the scenery.

Sadly, as time went on, I realised that there wasn’t so much of a master plan for the allotments, two thirds of which were totally overgrown. Essentially, we were pretty much left to our own devices in the garden – a bit of a strange arrangement considering none of us had much experience with gardening and didn’t know whether we were digging up beds that had been planted with seeds or pulling up young vegetables…

I ended up taking on the task of clearing pathways, beds and irrigation canals, with occasional forays in to seed collecting. I suppose I have learnt something about growing vegetables in that I now recognise various plants and seeds such as carrots and parsley and at least know how to plant them.

Jimmy kept promising to talk to us about permaculture but unfortunately it never happened. Instead, he really was keen on progressing our collective spirits and enabling our journey into self-enlightenment. The pressure exerted by this regime of self-exploration was intense and, on my part, not particularly welcome. This wasn’t what I had signed on for! Leaving my comfortable and enjoyable life in London to travel across a new continent with no idea of what I would do afterwards is more than enough of a journey of self discovery. In Friday’s ‘heart sharing’, when I was described as someone who is ‘maybe struggling with Yacu Yura’s journey of self-enlightenment’, I felt this close to informing them of where they could stick their self-enlightenment…

I began to wonder if perhaps I had been tricked in to entering a ‘programme’… I’d already had the song Rehab stuck in my head due to the lack of sugar, alcohol, coffee etc but after a few days, it began to feel much more like I’d been committed to an asylum. Maybe I was in fact a self deluded individual in need of intense therapy? Could I in fact leave or was Domingo in cahoots with this institute? He seemed to be embracing the routine and I felt like I was the only one resisting… Was this paranoia setting in?

Thanks heavens that first week for Rachel – a fellow volunteer curently living in Austin, Texas. She’d come with her boyfriend, chef extraordinaire Miguel, for a week and was quite sensitive to my feelings. She and I bonded over working in the garden, swimming and a our first nude mud bath. Thanks to her I managed to chill out a bit about the circles and began to focus on the fun on offer at Yacu Yura.

I kept wishing Domingo hadn’t fallen asleep 20 minutes into Black Narcissus because I could have explained my rapidly shifting moods by alluding to a particular nun in the film. I frequently feared I was Sister Ruth, felt Sister Philipa had the right idea but hoped I didn’t take it as far, had more flashbacks than Sister Clodagh which left me intensely homesick at points and wished I could be more like Sister Honey.

Week 2: ‘Trying to give in and go with the ever shifting flow’ or ‘How couldn’t decided whether we were the plane crash survivors or The Others from Lost‘.

Right, this week I decided to just go with it and thank goodness I did for I think it was the only way to deal with the ever shifting status quo. The aforementioned Contact people (who by now numbered over 100 people) had started to be interested in our little group and the morning circles and were also keen to help out in the garden. All hands were truly welcome and a huge amount of work was accomplished that week. The downside for me was that the circles seemed to last forever…

Rachel and Miguel gone, the core Yacu Yura group became Jimmy and his partner Gabi, Domingo and myself, Cari ( a Canadian who had come for the Contact group but felt drawn to our group) and Laurie (a Californian pastor of the United Church).

Various figures flitted in to the circle for varying reasons, the most colourful of these being Lucia, or La Luz (the light) as she first introduced herself. A flexible and ethereal young girl prone to wearing very little, she was almost laughable in her her attempts to gain either food (success), a candle (success), a room (success) and ‘company’ (multiple successes). Her tenacity astounded me and should she take up business she would be a formidable salesperson because she would tire you in to saying yes. My refusal to succumb to her charms left me very out of favour although I was more amused than saddened.

Like Cari, Victorio had also come for the Contact group but had seguewayed in to our group. A very quiet, smiley young man with strange tattoos of demons on his wrists and his brother’s name tattooed on his forehead, Victorio was skilled in plumbing and DIY and gladly took up these tasks.

On Wednesday, the first of ‘The Mayans’ came. Obviously, a hundred Contact people was not enough of an addition as Jimmy had accepted a booking from a 15 strong group of mostly middle-aged Mayan Calender believers to come and build a sweat lodge and participate in workshops to coincide with the Equinox. It made sense when I realised they pay over triple what the Contact group pay.

Here the confusion really began to set in… They would breakfast and lunch with us but not work, some would take part in the circles (which were taking more and more time) and then some would help themselves to food and blah blah blah… Another strong character entered the mix too: Claudio, the spoilt 4 year old whose parents seemed more than willing to leave him in my care for hours on end. Despite being lovely in many ways, he was a pretty violent tyke who had obviously decided that crying was the best way of getting what you want.

Everyone’s nerves seemed to be getting fraught – like me, Laurie was not gaining the experience she had expected, Domingo was getting frustrated with the ‘permaculture’ situation and Jimmy and Gabi were obviously suffering and seemed to be distancing themselves from our group.

By Friday, I was craving solitude for there was no escape from drumming, screaming, Claudio, mosquitoes… I started to understand why The Others in Lost wanted to protect the island from new arrivals and realised I was beginning to feel (wrongly) like I had more right to be at Yacu Yura. I had given up on meditation but at least was having fun with the songs.

It wasn’t all bad of course. I met some lovely people from the Maya group and had fun participating in some of the Contact dance classes. We also had some great laughs between our group (when Jimmy wasn’t there) and was bonding well with Cari.

The one constant thought though was how much I was looking forward to the third week when all the Contact and Mayans would be gone and how things would get back to normal. Well, for one day they would because on the Wednesday, Jimmy and Gabi were leaving for a 5 day long peace dance workshop, leaving us in charge…

Week 3: ‘Left to our own (de)vices’ or ‘Down to the final week in Big Brother: will the contestants discover the mole or will (s)he make off with the money?’

The final week and one of relaxation. Or so I thought… Jimmy and Gabi were obviously shell shocked and were still in strange spirits so the circles felt even more forced than usual. Laurie decided to stay a full week, rather than the two days expected, and Cari decided to stay on too. Victorio had also become a fully fledged member of the group (minus the bit about paying money) and proved to be invaluable to Yacu Yura as he was skilled in plumbing. He’d come to an agreement with Jimmy to stay a further month and had been given extensive instructions .

The night Jimmy and Gabi left, the gas ran out for the cooker and fridge so we were challenged with using the wood burning oven all the time. Only really a problem when it came to starting it and making a cuppa but otherwise quite fun. It still felt remiss of Jimmy not to think of this in advance, especially as we couldn’t refrigerate anything.

Surprisingly, we adhered to the structure of circles and meditation but with much more frivolity. It wasn’t quite the relaxed week I’d hoped for as group decisions were tough to manage and the kitchen seemed to become a tacit battlefield when it came to cooking. Overall though, we enjoyed some fun excursions and interesting chats. This combination of domestic tension and minature power struggles, group consensus, fun and activities made me instantly think of Big Brother – I reckon we could easily have filled a nightly one hour highlights show.

One evening’s discussion about ‘energies’ (an oft-spoken word in Yacu Yura) left us feeling a little unsettled though… Victorio spoke of a strange energy surrounding our room and of a darkness there. I’d not managed to bond with Victorio at all and didn’t want to admit that I found him a little strange but, in our room that night, Domingo explained to me what he had been saying and I felt even more unnerved by the man.

The next day though, all seemed fine and I felt a little silly about some of the things I’d begun imagining about Victorio. On Saturday, we decided to all go to San Marco on foot and got ready to set off on the path Victorio had described to us. Victoro decided not to go with us but would point us in the right direction. After walking less than ten minutes we decided the path was so overgrown we would walk back and set off up the dirt track to catch the bus.

As we waited for the bus, we saw Victorio emerge from the dirt track and hurry off in the opposite direction. We all thought to call out to him but for differing reasons none of us did. ‘Maybe he doesn’t like goodbyes’, ‘maybe he’s coming back’…

Upon returning to Yacu Yura, we realised that he would not be coming back. The door to our room had been forced open and our belongings had been strewn all over the place. I was so relieved that we had felt suspicious of Victorio and had therefore taken all our valuables with us. The poor lad had only managed to find a bar of chocolate, my razor and Domingo’s cheap mobile phone. It was a horrible feeling though, and it felt strange that he had only targeted us and not Cari or Laurie. Perhaps it was the ’strange energy’ he spoke of before.

So, an unpleasant end to our stay in Yacu Yura. None of us wanted to stay there longer so in the morning we set off for Capilla del Monte and then Domingo, Cari and I set off for Cafayate via Tucuman.

In conclusion

I did love the food and ate better than I’ve eaten anywhere else in Argentina. The place is beautiful and has so much potential but it is yet to be realised. I met some lovely people and I’ve learnt some things about gardening but had hoped to learn so much more. Jimmy spoke of refreshing the Yacu Yura website – I hope he makes it more obvious to people what sort of experience they should expect, for I know that many people would enjoy it and gain things from it but it wasn’t really for me.

Next post will be so upbeat for Cafayate and the journey to it has been fantastic! Off to a wine tasting now