On Saturday morning I carefully folded a number of clean shirts into a holdall. I packed my swimming trunks as well. I enjoyed walking out of the apartments with my sunglasses on, wearing a blue linen jacket and striped trousers which I had chosen myself and summer shoes with no socks. Señora Fernández on the first floor opened her door as I passed and nodded at me sourly. I pulled my sunglasses down over my nose and peered at her. She studied me as though she were about to take a photograph of me. I went on to the street and ordered a taxi.

The plane was half-empty and had seen better days: my window overlooked a wing which had a big line of rust. I could hear the engine grinding as we took off. I slept for a while and when I woke we were flying over creamy clouds. I liked being here away from things, and I would not have minded had the flight gone on for hours more. The airport when we landed was like some final outpost of civilization; a small concrete shack had La Rioja written on the roof. There were a few jeeps and nothing else. The two men who stood watching us as we descended from the plane looked as though they had never seen an airplane before and were deeply puzzled by the new phenomenon of air travel. They studied us with mild disapproval. I asked one of them if I could get a taxi to the city center and he nonchalantly inclined his head to the other side of the building. There were several cars waiting there, and a few people standing around outside, but none of them was a taxi driver.

Eventually, one of the men who had been standing on the tarmac came out carrying two suitcases and accompanied by a middle-aged woman in a polka-dot dress. He nodded at me to follow him. I sat in the front and the woman in the back and we began the long journey to the city. The road was covered with dust; at times visibility was difficult, and the land around us was flat and arid and dusty. The hills in the distance seemed to belong to a different world. They were covered with dark green trees. The heat was dry and fierce and there appeared to be no wind at all. I realized that I knew nothing about this place, other than how far away it was from Buenos Aires, and I had never met anyone who came from here. Neither the driver nor the woman spoke. Somehow the occasion did not lend itself to conversation. I was wondering how anyone could live here, when the driver asked me where I was going. I told him to drop me at the Hotel Plaza in the city center.