If it’s the last trip I ever go on, then I have no regrets.
About three months ago, my wife and I flew to Argentina for my brother’s wedding in Buenos Aires and a little R&R in northern Patagonia. The economy was churning, coronavirus was a distant problem in China, and the world was full of hope. Now, the world is a much darker place, each day bringing more death, lost jobs, and human isolation. It’s hard to write about what an amazing experience I had when so many are suffering today, both from the virus itself, and the economic hardship the virus has unleashed. Not only are we in the midst of a novel viral outbreak, we’re also conducting an experiment in social isolation on a scale our species has never seen. This writeup won’t solve any respiratory ailment or bring back a lost job, but perhaps it will feed someone’s lonely soul. It strays far and wide from fly fishing, encapsulating the full range of human bonding I experienced in this beautiful country. I never appreciated how tenuous and fleeting that experience could be, now that we are into our third month of social distancing. It is a reminder of the way the world was, and how it can be again, once we pull together and make it through this pandemic.
We arrived in Buenos Aires on Wednesday morning, after a 10-hour redeye flight from Atlanta. The wedding was on Friday evening, so we had a few days to adjust and prepare for the marathon of partying that occurs at an Argentine wedding. We took a brief half hour nap before heading off to a tango dance lesson, booked through AirBnb “Experiences.” My wife had set this up; I had zero expectations for what were getting ourselves into. We arrived 20 minutes late, and had trouble finding the entrance to Diego’s apartment. I was ready to throw in the towel and take another nap, when a friendly face popped out of a dusty entryway and welcomed us inside. We were led upstairs through an open air atrium to a cramped dance studio where another couple was already taking awkward steps across the linoleum.
The tango is an incredibly intimate dance. The music is a plodding, soulful tune laden with melancholy. The space between the dancers implies an invisible connection. The footwork is largely improvisational, coordinated between the partners through subtle changes in tension in the embraced arms. The eyes are locked, the leader hoping to impart some hint of what comes next to the follower. The slow, dramatic movements that result are incredibly beautiful when performed by an experienced dancer. Even my wife and I could feel an intense connection when we correctly executed an unplanned yet coordinated sequence of steps. We’d taken ballroom dancing lessons before in preparation for our wedding dance, but the tango required another level of trust, connection, and intimacy.
We finished our lesson, but the fun didn’t end there. We spent the next two hours eating homemade empanadas and polishing off two bottles of Malbec with our hosts and the other dancers, a Swiss couple about our age. Fortunately for us, English was spoken by all, and as the wine flowed, we wove a collective story about leisure, work, travel, love, and politics across the globe. We juggled the seemingly incompatible truths of a broad diverse world that was at the same time made small by our encounter.
Fast forward to Friday. I spent most of the wedding day hanging out with my brother and his good friends. We traded old stories over beers and empanadas while watching the austral sun track across the city skyline, ever mindful of the significance of the evening. I took a quick break from the shenanigans to pen my remarks for the reception, thankful to the unseen muse who helped me distill a 28-year loving relationship with my brother into a two-minute speech. We made our way over to the venue and began welcoming guests. I have to admit that I was on an emotional autopilot at my own wedding five years earlier – stone faced in order to make it through my vows and smile for the guests. This time, as a more mature bystander, I was free to let my sentimental side wander the spectrum of feelings. I stood in the front row beside my wife, listening to the prelude, amazed at the beautiful collection of people assembled for this event, and as I saw the bride coming down the aisle to wed my brother, I began to weep at the magic of it all.
The reception was a roaring party, unlike anything you’ll ever see in America. The Argentines have perfected the art of pacing. The tempo ebbed & flowed over the course of the evening, but the energy and excitement was always there. The dance floor at 8PM was complete with backflips and crowd surfing, yet we kept it together to sit down to a nice steak dinner at 9. Along with other family members, I gleefully gave my remarks to the newlyweds and the guests. My parents entertained the crowd with their own rendition of the tango, meticulously practiced back in Virginia leading up to this trip. We were then dazzled by a professional tango couple, who created artwork out of a seemingly tangled mess of limbs. The dance floor got going again around 11 and raged for hours, interspersed by dessert, three guests’ birthdays, Day-Glo facepaint sessions from the bride’s friends, a late plate of empanadas, and relaxation outside on the waterfront deck. It finally wound down around 4AM, at which we took a cab back to hotel, covered in facepaint and glowing with love.
We spent a well-deserved day of recovery by leisurely wandering the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Occasionally we’d cross paths with other wedding guests and rekindle the magic of the night before with stories, laughs, and hugs. Many of us found our way to one of the bride’s friend’s apartment, complete with a rooftop pool. We lounged there in the sun, passing maté, admiring beautiful unmasked faces, listening to the hum of the city and enjoying the eloquent Spanish banter. It appears that one of the guys had passed out sitting on a toilet, and that this was not the first wedding where he’d done this. We didn’t stay for the evening asado, but it was still wonderful to see my brother and his wife and all their friends one final time.
Sunday morning was an early wake up to catch a flight to Bariloche in Northern Patagonia. I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, and was ready to find a home bound flight, but my wife and best friend kept me on track and got me to Bariloche. While we waited to get into our AirBnb, we had pizza and beers near the Centro Civico. We made small talk with some English tourists, and watched the last hundred meters of an Ironman Triathalon. Sunburnt, dehydrated, and demotivated after watching incredibly fit people with a brewski in my hand, I felt like I needed another recovery day before I spent hours in a drift boat throwing a 6-weight, and I certainly wasn’t feeling perky about Sunday night’s activity – learning to make empanadas.
The empanada cooking class was at the home of a local chef, Fabian. As he welcomed us in, he made it clear he spoke very little English. I began to worry, until he introduced us to his girlfriend and her two friends – all from France, and fluent in both French and English. We all hit it off immediately, aided by a mutual love for cooking and the giant jug of Malbec that was poured in an elaborate manner over ones own shoulder. They were eager to hear about our recent trip to England and France, and we were just as interested to hear their stories about attending the Texas State Fair and a Pitbull concert. They were particularly interested that we were going fly fishing in the morning. One of the girls wasn’t quite familiar. I was about to launch into a overly technical description of 10 & 2, stream etymology, and line mending, but Fabian beat me to it with a poetic account, gesturing the hand motion and rattling out the distances of each false cast…. diez metros, viente metros, treinta metros, then delicately unrolling his palm, mosca en agua, and finally mimicking the rise with his other hand la trucha come mosca. The stack of empanadas and the jug of Malbec quickly dwindled, and we parted goodbyes under a beautiful twilight sky. How are we this lucky to keep meeting wonderful humans?
As I do on the day of most fishing trips, I awoke bright-eyed, cobweb free, ready for the days adventure. I took care not to talk too much until my wife had her first and second morning espressos, and by then, our guide Mariano had pulled up in his Toyota Hilux trailering a rubber raft. We weaved through town and made it to the boca (inlet) where Lago Nahuel Huapi turns into the Rio Limay. We were soon joined by my friend Clark and his mother Margot, and my dad and his good friend from law school Joe. The Limay was a deep river, with a stunningly blue main channel flanked by willow trees. As we started our float, I opted for the 6-weight and a streamer, hoping to coax a giant brown out from under cover for a protein packed snack. Colleen made me question that decision by nabbing two nice rainbows on a foam ant within the first 90 minutes.
I was throwing a brand new rig pieced together on eBay – a Sage Pulse 6, a Sage 4260, and a Jim Teeny T-200 sinking line. I quickly got the hang of it, and was throwing some aggressive casts deep into pockets in the willow trees. I had several follows from truly huge fish; they looked like black torpedos jetting out from cover, chasing the streamer, only to turn off at the sight of the boat. The guide suggested I give it a change, and throw the streamer into the deep main channel, let it sink a ways, and retrieve slowly as we floated along. It only took six casts to hook up, but the fish didn’t stay tight for long. Undeterred, I continued fishing the streamer up to our lunch break, which consisted of steak, salad, and more Malbec.
I kept with the streamer after lunch, but began to notice two things – first, my growing fatigue with the heavy rig and second, the changing landscape of the river. It had widened significantly, with broad shallow flats of cobbled stone along each side. I began to see individual fish holding in the current, and my attempts to lay a heavy 6-weight sinking line in front of them resulted in a spook or two. I put down the 6 weight and grabbed the 4-weight with a black beetle It took a few casts to change from chuck and duck with a fast rod to precision work with a much slower rod. I had dialed in my technique just in time to lay a perfect cast six feet upstream of a low willow branch. As the beetle passed under the branch, I gave it a soft twitch. Like a photo being enhanced on a crime TV show, a trout suddenly showed himself amidst the pixelated river bottom. He spun on a dime, lightly waved his tail to get downstream below the fly, and swirled around again for a smooth take. Maybe it was me, maybe it was the Malbec, but I resisted the urge to give him my hardwired hyperactive saltwater strike, and instead patiently struck the fish like every textbook tells you. He put a deep bend in the light rod, and I was worried that I’d break the tippet or pull the hook, but Mariano got the net under him, and I proudly clutched my first Southern Hemisphere brown trout.
Two days later, we left Bariloche and headed north to San Martin de los Andes. The fishing was unremarkable, likely off due to an untimely heat wave. One day, we waded the Collon Cura without any bites. The next day we drove deep into the woods on an incredibly bumpy road, and waded the public section of the lower Traful; Clark caught a few fish on hoppers, while I got skunked and lost my net. But the scenery was incredible and the companionship was unforgettable. We were fascinated by the very rapid west to east transition from lush, mountainous terrain to semi-arid foothills to dry barren plains. The cartoonish Volcan Lanin served as a landmark as we crisscrossed the back roads of Neuquén Province. San Martin was remarkable similar to Jackson, Wyoming, albeit with a Swiss/German architectural flair. Everywhere we encountered friendly faces – tackle shop owners willing to give free advice, passersby who remarked in Spanish at our gawking through a steakhouse window, only to be surprised at Clark’s fluent Spanish response, and the late-night empanada shop owner who gave me a grin when she noticed the half-finished bottle of wine I was smuggling home in my pants pocket.
As much as I enjoyed the pure aspect of fishing, the experience is magnified by sharing it with others. Broken Spanglish with the drift boat guide. Grandiose hand motions across the river towards friends in the other driftboats, describing the comparative sizes of trout. Feeling the ballroom floor bounce from the concentrated dancing of dozens of energetic loved ones. Passing around the maté at the boat takeout after the float. The collective angst that Colleen, Clark and I felt every time our tiny rental car hit a boulder along a remote stretch of road leading to the Traful. Grinning at old jokes with Malbec stained teeth on the porch of our rental in San Martin. I hold these memories especially close during this period of isolation, fear, division, and blame. Weddings are being cancelled left and right. Restaurants and bars are largely empty of friendly faces gathered together to share love over food and drink. Yes, I can still go out and fish, which surely satisfies some basic human urge of recreation. But we can’t socialize around the fishing or even at all, which leaves a deeper, more elemental void in the experience. Whether we ever return to a normal pre-COVID existence is still unclear. But I’m comforted by the fact that these memories with wonderful people – family, friends, and strangers – will keep my spirits up.