The smile is the same. Eyes dancing, surrounded by wrinkles earned honestly. Thick hair turned silvery-grey. Dressed for a rainy day in Salzburg, Robert is standing at the escalators on the platform as I work my way through the throngs of passengers heading for the waiting city outside the station. He steps toward me with a slight questioning look, and says “Brian?”
We hug – a lingering embrace – and then we stand there holding each other by the arms staring into the aged, grinning face of the other. Thirty-five years have passed since we last saw each other.
Back in 1991 we were navigating the dry arid elevations of the Andes in northwestern Argentina. We first met when we sat across the aisle from each other on a hair-raising bus ride from Salta to Cachi. Robert was traveling with his fiancé Brigitte, slightly shorter than he with contrasting blond hair to his mop of dark curls. Sitting next to me was a traveler from Brazil, the swarthy, wiry Ricardo Cavalcanti, whom I had met only the night previous. The four of us endured the roller-coaster route through the mountains that eventually dumped us on the famed and untamed Ruta 40, Argentina’s longest continuous roadway. Or trail. Maybe not even that. Knuckles white, we arrived in the small dusty town of Cachi at about 7,500 feet elevation in the Calchaqui Valley and proceeded to plan the next step of the journey. Schedules and striking transit workers created impediments to our further progress to Cafayate, so we booked into the Nevada hotel and settled into getting to know each other better.
These travel days were rich in experience and conversation. We shared a passion for travel, a thirst for knowledge, and an unfounded optimistic sense that things would somehow always turn out just fine. Spirited explorers, we were trekking into the far reaches of a challenging environment. Unencumbered by technology, we were forced to engage and work things out with glaring holes in our information and intelligence. Thank goodness for the Lonely Planet guidebooks, and for Robert and Brigitte’s foreign language skills.
To get to Cafayate, we eventually hired a local handyman with a pick-up truck. To make it more financially feasible, we wrangled another family from France to join us. We were 13 souls traversing the mighty Ruta 40, nine of us crammed in the back of a well-worn Chevrolet for over six hours. Once into Cafayate, we fell into an all-night music festival that somehow capped off a spectacular 48 hours together.
This singular experience is etched in our memory banks, as much for the thrill and successful outcome (nobody fell out of the truck!) as for the bond we so quickly developed. Friendships forged under such circumstances enrich the experience but could not be planned. It was the serendipity of pre-digital travel.
Letters and postcards made their way to one another over the course of a few years after this but eventually the communications fell away. Yet the sense that these friends were still out there was like a magnet, pulling me in the direction of finding them. The French family, the Blanco’s, returned to France. Dulcinio’s wife passed away some years ago, and he lives in Madagascar and France now. At 80, he still has vivid memories of that trip. Ricardo has eluded my searches, but I am hopeful one day I will still find him. But Robert and Brigitte, to my joy and sorrow surfaced recently via a LinkedIn request sent to his brother. Delighted to have reunited, deeply saddened to learn that Brigitte succumbed to cancer two years ago.
Our joint exploration continues on this day, trekking around Salzburg with my seasoned guide delivering a tour that only a local can show. A wonderful, easy, deep conversation carries us through the rain and the stops for coffee and food. Catching up on decades of personal and professional life experiences. Sharing the gratitude of having been so fortunate to have lived such moments, see such exceptional parts of our world, and to have shared it all with others, no matter how briefly.
“This is what I call a Museum Day,” Robert said at the end of our visit. “A day to be remembered.”
With certainty I shall remember this day.
Want to read more about our little Andes adventure? The excerpt chapter “The Long and Dusty Road” from A Continental Affliction is provided as a sample for you at shannonglobal.com.
