Colalao de Valle

Colalao e Valle

Roughly the same distance away from Quilmes as Amaicha but to the North, Colalao de Valle had none of the exuberance and spirit of its neighbour. Senora Gallega’s house and garden where we stayed was a bucolic bower of vines and ripe grapes, but an enclosed, private space. The rest of the village was dull with a faint sense of disquiet. We were served the worst meal we had eaten in Argentina by an unsmiling indigenous couple, most unlike the hospitality we had experienced before in the region.

             Later I saw a crowd of children and adolescents being led by young people with the European looks of Southern Argentineans’ carrying guitars and singing evangelical songs. It seems the missionaries have not given up their business of convertion, except rather than Jesuits backed by conquistadors, it is the North Americanised version of this old tune. It had been pleasant in Amaicha not to see the buildings with banners advertising salvation, which have become a new epidemic in South America, but instead together with the town church a cairn of stones, altar to Pachamama in the main plaza.