Roadtrip!
M as The Littlest Hobo - Retiro Bus StationWe went with a company called Via Bariloche and because of the distance involved we went overnight in a sleeper bus for a few extra dollars. The entire upstairs of the bus had these huge comfy chairs which reclined fully into a sleeping compartment behind you giving you something approximating to those first class Korean Airlines seats which you see in magazine advertisements. Our seats/bed for the trip down were right at the front of the bus on the top level so we got a magnificent 180 degree view of the city at sunset as we left, which was completely stunning. It’s only when it takes you over an hour to get to the suburbs that you realise how big a city BA is.
The drivers of these buses don’t hold back and it’s pretty disconcerting trying to fall asleep as you tear through the countryside along some less than impressive roads in the dark. Once you get off the 6 lane highway (which is only about an hour outside BA) all you get is a simple, one lane each direction roadway with no hard shoulders, reducing the margin for error by about a billion percent. So when you get a speeding tour bus meeting a speeding oil truck, things get pretty tight.
Extreme HGV'ingYou can judge how alert the driver is by the level of corrective swerve the bus takes as the oncoming bus or truck roars by, inches from the window. I went to sleep counting swerves instead of sheep. We watched a heroic Disney movie about huskey dogs and a half hour propaganda special on how they make the ubiquitous queso y jamon (cheese and ham) sandwiches which became less surreal and more fascinating as it progressed.
It brought us both back to the Bosco episodes of our youth where all kinds of advanced manufacturing techniques, predominantly confectionary related, happened behind the Magic Door. These jamon y queso things are made out of supersized slices of bread – think of a slice of bread the size of an open newspaper – with teams of women in hairnets carefully placing the huge slices of cheese and ham, surgically decrusting the elephant-wiches, slicing them up into the recognisable shapes of edible ubiquity we see on the streets of BA and manually packaging them for distribution. I got the impression we were meant to be awed by the industry and wowed by the attention to detail of these sandwich preparation professionals. All I could think of was how quickly they’ll be out of a job when their boss figures out he can afford the advanced mechanisation which Bosco demonstrated in HB all those years ago. But the real saving grace for passing the time was the ipod which we’d packed full of podcasts before we left. NPR.org is an independent news station working out of Washington DC and Boston and their news stories, news talk shows and general reporting are consistently top notch. We listened to everything from interviews with Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) who has picked up his guitar again, to how Hot Cheetos is the new taste sensation sweeping the nation (or at least the elementary schools in the states), to the graphic details of executions in the Mexican drug wars, to “anti stress” bars in China where, for an additional fee, you can pay to beat up your barman at the end of the night. This is truly the stuff of whatever gets you through the night. But seriously, check out their podcasts, particularly the On Point shows with Tom Ashbrook, intelligent and articulate with excellent guests – you’ll learn something interesting every show.
We slept surprisingly well given the circumstances. Although spending weeks living on a bus like that, like Metallica or The Scorpions regularly do, would be pretty hardcore. I had to stop myself thinking too much about Metallica and tour buses though. Here's why. I also found it almost impossible to piss standing up in the little WC as the bus swayed, swerved, braked and accelerated through the darkness. Any male who has ever tried, for scientific research purposes only, to walk while pissing will know what I’m talking about. There’s some very movement sensitive muscle in there somewhere which has the ultimate say in the flow of things even if your bladder and brain are both screaming for release. Needless to say swerves caused chaos.
The trip back was less impressive however. Our seats were at the back of the bus nearer to the engine and air conditioning so it was a little noisier. That wouldn’t have been so bad if the roof didn’t start leaking when the rains came.
Spotting the first droplets of rain coming through the air ventIn fairness these were absolutely torrential showers, the kind of showers where the noise of the rain hammering down on the roof drowns out all other noises, even the voices in your head, even the rolling thunder. The kind of showers in whose wake a carpet of frogs and a confused sasquatch are found. You get the idea. After several attempts to bring the problem to the attention of the road hostess (male) and a bizarre 3 way echoey VoIP phonecall at a bus station in Posadas to try and organise seats on another bus (our bus was completely full) with 2 “Superiors” who had no English – one of whom took humorous enjoyment out of my new hair and my Gilbert O’Sullivan beard, I resigned myself to a long night with a wet neck. I’d look for a refund when we got back to BA. Luckily however the rains stopped and so did my water torture.
All in all the trip was a good dry run (except for my wet neck) for our future adventures. It was useful because it encouraged you to lower or maybe just alter your expectations regarding quality of service down here and that the separation between bargain basement and first class can be as little as a ham sandwich. People take things a lot easier even in a crisis and some gringo fuming at the ears (I relate the laidback attitude of Argentinean males to the fact that mullets are flamable) isn’t going to change that especially when there’s no other solution. A shrug of the shoulders and the raising of a chin or an empty clipboard is the pinnacle of South American customer service and expecting anything more will slowly drive you crazy, especially if you’re simultaneously trying to pole vault the linguistic brick wall with the plastic fork of a portable phrasebook.
So we arrive in Puerto Iguazu a good 3 hours late, 19 hours after we left BA which meant we couldn’t hit the falls the day we arrived as we had planned. The town itself was like something out of the third world, strictly Bundeslige as Rob would say, very dusty – red dusty, ramshackle and underdeveloped - although certain buildings, gas stations in particular, were pretty modern. The roads were barely paved, with whatever carrion the stray dogs and street kids deemed inedible or unsellable, bobbing alongside in open sewers. Mopeds and little engined bikes were very popular, as was the pass time of who could pull the longest most acute angled wheelie up the hill of the main street. Apparently these kids have had a lot of practice. These godforsaken machines would be set alight or thrown in a skip in somewhere like Darndale, but here they were instruments of social interaction, sturdy steeds symbolic of great social standing.
Waiting For Evil KnievelThere were a lot of backpackers and tourists floating around the town but the locals seemed to regard them more as a hindrance, or an unfortunate fact of life than anything else. There was very obvious and very visible poverty with whatever tourist dollars in circulation not seeming to filter down anywhere near the families on the street. We had originally planned to pitch our tent but we soon discovered that the campsite was 5km outside of the town. There were several hostels however a block or two from the bus station where we’d catch a bus to the falls and also get our bus back to BA. So given the time constraints we decided to try for a hostel. The word hostel for me conjures up images of bunk beds, snoring which tickles the Richter scale, flip flops in the showers and half eaten tins of tuna lying around the communal kitchen. While this is exactly what we experienced, deciding to hit a hostel was the best idea we ever had.
The pool at the hostelWe checked in to Hostel Puerto Iguazu, got an air conditioned room sharing with 4 others, dumped our stuff and went out wandering. The heat was intense, close to 40 degrees and the humidity made it feel like you were wading through treacle just walking down the street. I quickly realised I had stumbled into an open sewer, jumped back onto the pavement and the treacle feeling disappeared. Iguaza is situated in a jungle area right on the border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. The weather was schizophrenic to say the least. Intense heat followed by a period of overcast, cloudy and close weather, followed by short, intense torrents of rain - this cycle continues every couple of hours. We summoned up the energy to pick up some provisions for our tea, including a couple of bottles of wine and headed back to the hostel. We met more people that night than we have for the previous 3 weeks in BA. We met another med student from the states, Brandon (the 3rd American med student we’ve met on out travels), a semi pro skater guy called Jesse from LA who was into his final month of an 6 month trek around South America, and also a bona fide cowboy from Wyoming complete with a special hand woven rope which he’d just bought from an Argentinean cowboy and which he used to entertain us with drunken rope tricks later before we went to bed ("Ok, pretend I'm a calf......"). There was also a couple from Belgium, some hectic hirsute ladies from Israel and a couple from Australia, who along with Jesse recommended Bolivia as one of the highlights of their extended travels down here so we’ll have to look into that. We drank well, conversed in English (the release was ….relieving) and retired to our bunk beds with dizzy heads early enough as we needed to get up for 6 to be at the Falls by 7:30.
M at one of the "Lesser Falls"We took the earliest bus and we were treated to our first proper, in-the-wild demonstration of the morning maté ritual. Maté tea drinking is an institution over here. It originated with the gauchos and is still very popular in Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina. Most everyone (even in the urban environment of BA) wanders around with their paraphernalia which includes the gourd (an ornate fist sized bowl where the tea leaves are placed), a pipe with a filter on the end and comically, a supersize Thermos flask of hot water which they use to top up the gourd after every hit. It's a quaintly intimate and very much a shared ritual between close friends with upto 5 or 6 people all supping from the same gourd. One cleancut guy got on the bus at one of the first stops outside the town, obviously on his way to work. As the bus made its way through the countryside and more of his friends / workmates boarded, he became extra busy preparing the maté and passing it to each of them in turn. It was obviously something they'd been doing all their lives, not a word of acknowledgement or thanks was offered or expected, the owner of the gourd always passing the freshly prepared tea to each member of the ad hoc group before taking his turn.
The Devil's ThroatThe falls themselves were pretty spectacular – particularly the dramatic by name, dramatic by nature Garganta del Diablo “The Devil’s Throat”. I’m not going to even attempt to describe the awesome natural wonder we experienced. We got there before the mid morning rush and had a pretty undisturbed and intense half hour staring into the depths. The waters from 30 rivers converge at these falls and the roar of water alone was enough to mesmerise you never mind the spectacular vista.
As you stood staring into the abyss with the spray, like a rain shower from below blowing up into your face and the thunderous roar of the waters it was really all you could do just to close your eyes and completely surrender yourself to the experience. Amazing.
Several impromptu rainbows, a beautiful and surreal side effect of the spray in the early morning light, appeared and disappeared and expanded and contracted in diameter depending on the direction of the wind and how the spray caught the light. I’m pretty disappointed with the photos though - a mixture of shooting into pretty intense morning light, a very hostile photographic environment with the driving spray from the falls and being over protective of the camera. So apparently I’m not going to attempt to describe the falls OR show you any pictures….. so really I have no proof that we didn’t actually go to Bundoran for the few days. (edit : I've included some photos in retrospect - please disregard the Bundoran comment).
So since we've come back we've made it to Uruguay aswell. I'll fill you in on that mini adventure later. We're very close to formulating our itinerary for the rest of the trip. We leave BA on the 5th of February and head towards the Atlantic Coast for a few days on the beach. Then it's down to Puerto Madryn to look at Penguins (maybe whales) and off down through Bariloche (for some world renowned hiking) to Tierra del Fuego and Ushuaia at the southern most tip of this vast continent. That'll get us to the end of February at which point we turn around and make our way back up through Chile, visiting the Lake District and some of the Glaciers in Patagonia. We'll probably spend a couple of weeks with ValParaiso as our base and return to Argentina to check out Salta (the Galway of Argentina) and Mendoza (the famous wine making region). There's a train you can take from Antofagasta in Chile called Tren a las Nubes (The Cloud Train) which takes you from Chile, through a pass in the Andes and into Salta. We like the sound of that. Depending on how the SSIA pans out we may even make it to Easter Island - a kind of a dream for both of us - which is apparently incredibly expensive (flight wise). After that Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. So, exciting times. I'm still loving the craziness of Buenos Aires but I'm very much looking forward to the peace and quiet of the great outdoors aswell. In other news – a ménage a trois plus a kid have leased the house in Ruanbeg for a year so that’s a huge relief. Georgie boy, if you’re reading this, the best of luck with your new neighbours!
Buenos Bizarres 3 – Sitting on the steps of the Argentine Central Bank (cool marble steps in the shade) just off Plaza del Mayo having a Sunday Afternoon picnic and we spot a lot of blonde girls all kitted out in the same white vest and red running shorts, running around the park in the centre of the Plaza. Blonde hair is extremely rare over here. Seeing 30 specimens of Aryan womanhood altogether running around a national monument in the blistering heat looking like they’re having a shitload of fun was pretty odd looking. We figured it was some kind of Aryan race. An Aryan mini marathon maybe. They passed underneath us after completing a couple of laps of the park, followed eventually by some guy sweating bullets laden down with 2 coolers full of refreshments. This vision of bizarreness was followed swiftly by 2 hot blooded young local males legging it after the entourage, eyes popping out of their heads. We figure it may have been some woman’s national hockey team or something….. it could of course have been something far more sinister.
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