No matter what time of day you visit the town of Rivas, you will always find it quiet. Among its little more than 800 inhabitants, many of them are young. This is not a minor detail if we are talking about a town where the passenger train passes only twice a week: it arrives on Friday nights and leaves on Monday mornings (if we take Retiro as the starting point). General Rivas seems like a town full of life and future, and it truly is. Its friendly people greet you with a smile and are eager to tell thousands of anecdotes about this place that embraces them every morning when they wake up. Our tour begins by walking along the station platform after greeting a dog that seems to have caught the joyful spirit of those who live in this town that belongs to the Suipacha District, which is located about 20 km from its main city on a paved road and about 150 km from the City of Buenos Aires. The train station seems to be the home of a family today, but we were able to walk around it freely from the outside. The property is huge and very well preserved. The sun, which fought with the clouds to give us its light and warmth, gave us the ideal setting for the photos. In front of the station, old facades told us the story of a place that had its time of splendor when the train arrived to load the milk from the large number of dairy farms in the area; and with it, dozens of workers played a leading role in that productive circuit. The town grew up among dairy farms, general stores, the sound of the train and a hotel located right in front of the station on an imposing corner, which used to house a large number of travelers and workers. Today, many of these buildings no longer function as such or are abandoned, but they remain in the memory of those who, generation after generation, assumed the role of keeping history alive. In their voices, Rivas continues to live those times, and we manage to travel to the past just by closing our eyes. The San Roque Chapel seems to protect the town from the top of its cross, when it sleeps at night or in the afternoons (sacred siestas). The tallest building watches over the progress of those people of all ages who walk peacefully through its streets and who feel proud to live in a small town far from the noise of the big cities. And if we talk about tall buildings, School No. 3 is another building that looks imposing on a corner. In it, they tell us, that its director, on more than one occasion had to stay overnight in order to continue with her duties the next day, due to the poor condition of the roads in those times when the roads were dirt. Today, most of its streets are paved and the entrance and exit to Rivas, as well as the route through each of its corners, are in very good condition. Rivas has a life of its own; after walking around it for a while, we arrived at a bar that has more than just history, a country. It is when we see with love that the youth of our country manage to bring to the present that past so distant for them and preserve it in a sacred chest to tell it over and over again, that is when we say that we find ourselves with Argentines making a Homeland. Bar Don Guille has thousands of treasures that speak of times of gauchos and guitar playing in the moonlight. Guillermo seems to never tire of looking at his bar with those eyes of those who recognize the true value of things. Things that are his but that are also ours and that are there as if waiting to be admired by those who understand the place they occupy in an Argentina full of living history. A shiver runs through your body and you understand that many of the seeds that our grandfathers and grandmothers planted are bearing fruit, when you meet young people this responsible. What can I get them? He asks us, just like that, as if it were 1930. And without further ado, a thick glass arrives at the table with an ice-cold drink (surely kept in those refrigerators that knew how to cool) and a plate of no matter the color or size, with a homemade bread sandwich and lots of cold cuts. And between chat, laughter, anecdotes and emotions, the hours went by just like when our countrymen knew how to “stretch” the hours. Were they Osvaldo’s?, they ask us at the Bar, he is the one who knows everything about the town. But Osvaldo and his stories will be another chapter of this beautiful and emotional walk through the town of Rivas. The sun, now cloudless, bids us farewell hiding in that Pampas horizon that we like to look at so much…we set off with the same feeling of nostalgia that invades our bodies every time we say goodbye to another town in our beautiful country.