The Americas Week 9 - Crossing the pampas plains.

The start of the week saw me still in the Lakes area of Argentina with the plan to quickly leave and start heading to Buenos Aires. In the end the start was delayed a few days as it was so lovely here that I kept putting it off. The day I was finally leaving after an initial two days delay I only managed 15 kilometres before I passed a lakeside campsite at a stunningly beautiful location - and that was another days delay.

Finally getting going, it was actually an easy ride across the pampas plains to Buenos Aires. Three days and 1600 kilometres and I was on the outskirts. The drive across was much like going Adelaide to Sydney; to start with lots of empty space (but always changing so not boring) slowly moving to more developed farming and then in the last 200 kms starting to change into more towns and industry.  A few photos of the week.

One of my all time favourite camping spots
 - near Via Traful

Not the most photogenic of landscapes.

But some nice night skies

I met this character one day
He's walking Ushuaia to Alaska!

And stopped to see this one
The world's largest dinosaur at 40m long

Huge cathedral at Lujan just outside BA

Having been here in Argentina for 4 weeks and South America for eight I think it's also time to put a few of my thoughts down. Sorry if this now gets wordy.

Firstly Argentina and Chile feel quite different. You cross the border and you know you are in a different country, it's as abrupt as Britain is to France. We both enjoyed Chile but the people, whilst friendly, feel very formal and constrained and this rubs off on the towns, they are functional but, with the big exception of Valparaiso, seemed to lack colour and flair. At the very first town we encountered in Argentina (Rio Grande) the sudden explosion of flowers, colour and life on the street was startling and overall it's stayed that way.

So enough comparison now some thoughts on Argentina alone. One overriding impression is it feels like what I imagine Australia must have felt like in the fifties and sixties. One can't overdo the comparison but what I see is a world where life is still lived in the community, children ride bicycles on the street and play unsupervised (stranger danger is not a concept here), families go down the parks together, community sporting clubs seem to be everywhere and booming. It also reflects in the housing, much seems to be owner built and subject to continual change and extension with little sign of over-control or regulation.

Regulations, or the generally laid back attitude for them is another impression here. There are more obvious police here on the street than I used to seeing but they don't actually seen to do much. For example I believe there are laws making motorcycle helmets compulsory here, but as I sit at a cafe writing this, I would judge 75 % or more of the bikes going past, and there are a lot of them, have one or more persons without one. Another example is speed limits: the open road limit is generally 110kph, but this is frequently interrupted by 80, 60 and 40 zones at often seemingly random locations - however if I was to obey these and slow to these limits I'd probably be dead by now so unexpected it would be to the following traffic - which is generally only a metre from my number plate. Safety says at most you drop a small amount only: this gets increasingly bizarre to me when the car that is driving up the back of you urging you to get a move on at "illegal" speeds - speeds sufficient to lose my licence at home - is a police car.

I said there are a lot of police - they come in an enormous range of uniforms from some very casual looking local police, through various types of regional police and then up to the sometimes very intimidating looking, and usually very well armed, national forces. Despite all the forces so far I've only seen one incident of them trying to do any policing - in this case trying to give a ticket to some poor street vendor, but five minutes after they started the process the vendor just ran off, the police looked after him, shrugged shoulders and wandered off in the other direction!

Another very Argentinian thing are dogs - they seem to be everywhere. They come in all shapes but most are small labrador sized but their almost universal characteristic is their very benign and unruffled nature. They wander everywhere and as the day gets hotter fall asleep where there is a little shade - people just step around them and all get along. When I say everywhere I only exaggerate slightly - just today I've seen three dogs sleep under pews in the Cathedral here and I've come across one fast asleep on the floor of the toilet cubicle at the campsite. In fact at most campsites I've stayed at, at some point a dog will turn up outside my tent, appoint itself my personal attendant and promptly fall asleep under a nearby bench for the duration of my stay - interestingly they don't seem to be particularly after food, more just some company.

Anyway that's enough thoughts - next job now is to wander the town here to see if I can find some motorcycle oil, it's time to give the bike a service.