Around South America – Peninsula Valdes

Mother Nature likes to hoard her most valuable treasures and keep them hidden together in different parts of the world, like a pirate burying troves around the globe. Two of her finest bounties are in Brazil – the Amazon and Pantanal. A third is on the Atlantic coast of Patagonia, half way between Buenos Aires and the End of the World.

Peninsula Valdes and the surrounding coastline have some of the finest and most varied marine life that can be seen from terra firma. Being a part of Patagonia, the wildlife watching in Peninsula Valdes is a relaxing, dreamy past-time that takes place under a clear azure sky and on top of a deep marine sea. The area is renowned for whale-watching, but there is so much more than that, including foxes, guanacos and wonderfully obedient armadillos on the land. Just watching the Southern Right Whales that breed in the area would be enough reason for me to return though. Arriving in Puerto Madryn and seeing whales for the first time, playing in the waters just off the beach, is a fine start. The next morning’s high tide at Playa Dorillado was one of the times when I have been almost too excited at seeing wildlife. The steep beaches and calm waters of Golfo Nuevo are the playground of these gentle creatures (that is, gentle as long as you aren’t plankton – in which case, it’s a daily massacre) that come to the area between September and November to give birth to 5m calves that grow to around 18m long. Floating upside down with their huge hands in the air, they look like they’ve just flopped backwards into a cool sea on a hot Bahian day. Rolling around and patting the water with their fins, they duck and dive, breach the surface and land with a boom of spray, and blow air so hard that you can feel it from the beach. But then, it is only about 20m away.

This is the beauty of whale-watching at Peninsula Valdes. Nowhere else on earth can you observe such huge creatures in their own environment so closely and in such a relaxed manner. They are curious too, often coming to sniff around the tourist boats in the bay. One woman even got to touch the tail of a whale, a rare treat when just seeing the classic tail dripping sea water in the sunlight happens only occasionally. The largest whales are female and, being Latinas, they know how to tease, so every sight of the photogenic fins brings gasps from the watching humans. The highlight for me was seeing a whale calf or two lying across the mother as she gently rose above the surface, lifting baby and tail almost clear of the water before sliding slowly back into the blue. It looks like fun being a whale. I can’t see any other reason for this behavior. A whale of a time.

I could have watched all day, every day had they stayed, but there were seals, sea-lions and elephant seals to see by the sea. The Atlantic side of the peninsula is where my favourite nature footage ever was filmed. April and May bring the best chance to see a drama that even the Masai Mara can’t match. The orcas also appear amongst the seal colonies at other times and can also pick up a penguin or two for a snack.

Punta Tombo has half a million Magellan Penguins, the largest accessible colony in the world. So accessible is it that you can wander through the scrubby dunes up to a kilometer inland and see penguins sleeping under bushes, standing above eggs and waddling to and from the ocean. Penguins are one of those species (along with monkeys and ducks) that are funny just by being penguins. Seeing thousands standing in a field with their wings out, drying in the sun has to be on of my favourite surreal sights in nature. Again, the proximity to vast amounts of wildlife is a large part of the attraction in Punta Tombo. Penguins casually wander around your feet as you try to photograph them, but don’t pick a breeding pair as I did. I’ve had a few close encounters with wild animals that might have turned nasty – African elephants, Asian rhinos, crocodiles and caimans, but to have been attacked by a penguin would have been embarrassing. I ran away.

Around South America – Patagonia

So why then, and this is not only my particular case, does this barren land possess my mind? I find it hard to explain… but it might partly be because it enhances the horizons of imagination. That’s what Charles Darwin had to say about Patagonia and I wouldn’t want to dispute his theories. I certainly shouldn’t try to elaborate on them either but I’ll try in this case. For his theory On The Origin of Species, Darwin spent five years travelling the world on board the Beagle, a ship that had the pleasant task of charting the South American coastline, including the Galapagos Islands. I spent a few days travelling there and back on a bus and a few hours driving around, so you’ll forgive the lack of depth in this article. I’m not sure I needed much more time though, there isn’t a lot there.

Excluding the Andes and Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia consists of almost a million square kilometres of flat, treeless landscape, broken only by the rivers that work their way from the mountains in the west. The steppes are covered in scrub with waist-high bushes giving each other a little breathing space. There are genuine tumbleweeds too, I saw my first one rolling across the road in front of me. Normally these bushes are used to show that every body has left a one-horse town. In Patagonia, there aren’t any towns.

At least not many for tumbleweeds to roll through, blown by a constant wind that has nothing to break it down, no trees, no houses, no hills and no valleys. The wind is free to blow where and when it chooses for hundreds of miles in every direction. If I’m making it sound like the Siberian wastelands or the Mongolian Steppes, that’s probably because they sound very similar. So why the romanticised view of Patagonia? There are other featureless landscapes that inspire fear as much as respect – the blinding polar ice-sheets; the burning Australian deserts; the emptiness of the Botswana salt-flats; and the claustrophobia of the open seas. It is hard to find life in such places, and being there is a constant reminder of mortality. Patagonia doesn’t have that fear factor attached to it. An English sailor shipwrecked in 19^th Century Tierra del Fuego walked across Patagonia to Buenos Aires. It took him five years, but he managed it. Perhaps the clear, cloudless skies and the vivid colours of a thousand Patagonian dawns and a thousand Patagonian sunsets kept his spirits up as he dream of returning home.

Is it the knowledge that survival is a possibility that allows you to relax as you stare at the distant horizon? With nothing to distract it, your mind is free to drift away into a dreamland. The chance to dream while awake is rare and therefore precious, it allows you to collect your thoughts and expand on them without interruption. Patagonian Dream Therapy. In my case, it allowed me to stare at the horizon for hours, wondering at the appeal of the area to Darwin, to me and to many more. Perhaps Patagonia only appeals to the dreamers of the world, but isn’t everyone a dreamer?

Around South America - Bariloche

It was love at first sight. I knew immediately that this was one of those places that will always have a place in my heart, like the Costa Verde, Chapada Diamantina or Lençois Maranhenses in Brazil, just from arriving at the bus station. Even Rio, with all of its treasures, cannot boast a stunning bus station. Not many places can, and certainly not many can compare with Bariloche. On one side of the road you have the terminal and on the other a line of solid, tall pine trees, which help the place to smell as good as it looks. Through the trunks you can see the train tracks, then some more trees and Lago Nahuel Huapi, with an ethereal mist rising from the surface as it reflects the winter sun. The lake is a beautiful dark blue dotted with pine-green islands, while the surrounding Andes point at the sky, showing off their winter coats. What an entrance.

It only gets better too. Snowboarding in the Andes was one of the things that I really wanted to do in South America, because life must be going ok as a gringo away from home if you find yourself snowboarding in the Andes. Sadly, having to work as well kept me away from the slopes too much but I’ve never worked in a place with a better view than the cabaña on the road to Llao Llao. If I thought Bariloche was special, then Llao Llao even trumps it with the big hotel looking out over two lakes at once. That area of the Andes has distinct weather systems that change drastically from the high desert of the eastern end of the lake to the lushness of the forests just 30km to the west, brought about by the clouds that sit on the highest mountains and spill the rain. The landscape there is famous for being the inspiration for Bambi, especially the beautiful and bizarre Arrayanes trees that only grow in a few areas of the planet and are threatened with extinction. Their fawn-coloured bark is decorated by light spots reminiscent of – you guessed it – a deer. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luma_apiculata) With a covering of fresh snow on the branches, heavy falls that bring down the bamboo grasses over the forest paths to make beautiful tunnels, and mirror lakes that reflect the mountains that you can see from the beaches, you would be inspired too, if only to repeat ‘que lindo’ at every turn.

What I know and Walt Disney is that Bariloche is also very popular with Brazilians, skiing, snowboarding, riding the teleferico to the top of Cerro Otto, filling the town in colourful groups with their travel company winter outfits, and having photos taken with the ubiquitous St Bernards in all the tourist spots. Like the huge groups of Argentineans who have travelled there to celebrate finishing school, they are generally well-behaved and the only problems come from them somehow not being able to understand each other. Which was how I, with my passable Portuguese and slowly improving Spanish, was totally bewildered at having to translate between the two sides up in the ski station. ‘Eh dificil para pagar depois?’ said the brasileira. Blank looks all around from the argentinos. How could they not understand?

The only thing that I didn’t understand about Bariloche is why I left.

Understanding Brazil: Mosquitoes

I guess it isn‘t a problem exclusive to Brazil, or exclusive to me for that matter, but the fact that most beds in the country don‘t have mosquito nets attached does cause me some problems. Especially as most of the houses that I have stayed in have been somewhat open to the elements. And just like the ladies of the country, the mosquitoes of Brazil prefer the blood of exotic gringos*. I react very nicely to bites - I can wake up in the morning with my back looking like the top of a cake iced in pink and covered in white chocolate buttons. Because of my delicate gringo nature, I need to check the room before I go to sleep. It goes something like this:

I scan the room with hunter‘s eyes and I shake all the dark spots, high and low, that they like to hide. If one appears, I chase him around the room, climbing the bed, moving furniture, slapping, clapping and flapping until I lose him in a dark corner. Half an hour later, I‘m still stalking and apologising to Blondie for being so pathetic.

"There he is!"

A shadow appears. I grab. Got him! Impressed with my reflexes, I open my hand to prove how great I am. Blondie laughs from the bed. He flies happily off my finger, barely stunned. I can‘t give up now, that would be admitting defeat. I waste ten minutes checking the old smears of mosquitoes killed in previous battles. I don‘t like to clean them off the walls. Like leaving the head of your enemy on a pole at the city gates, I believe this should discourage them from entering my room. I can‘t find him. Maybe I did get enough of a blow to kill him. One final look around and I get warily into bed.

Ten minutes later: Zeeeooowm!

Just as I was reaching that lovely dropping off to sleep stage, he comes and sings right in my ear! The most annoying noise on the planet. Somebody I know once grabbed a mosquito, pulled its wings off, then started buzzing in its ear, angrily asking the insect how he liked it. I know how he felt. I‘m getting up again. The light goes on. Blondie gurgles. I find him sat high up on a wall. He flies down. I get ready. He drifts back up. This teasing carries on in a circuit around the room until I lose him and then feel a bite on my shoulder. How did he get there so quickly? Look at him! Still sucking away! I slap him. Oh my god, that is so disgusting. A smear of blood the length and breadth of my little finger is spread across my shoulder. Que horror!

It might be my own - in fact, it‘s definitely my own - but it sickens me. I go to the toilet to wash off blood and legs and wings. I feel contaminated. I return to bed, musing on how there is no such thing as victory in war. Everybody loses blood. I‘ve lost sleep as well. Unlike Blondie. She stays unconscious while I get bitten and irritated. Still, at least now I can sleep. I close my eyes.

Ten more minutes: Zeeeooowm!

I don‘t believe this. I‘m not getting out of bed now. I‘ll turn the lamp on. Look at me! I‘m a cake! How did he do all that without me noticing! That‘s just greedy. Lamp off. I lie listening. Hear nothing more. But within seconds, I feel him! On my nose! I shake my head to get him off and shake it in resignation. I put my head on the pillow. I almost feel like crying. I just hope he gets so full that he gives up and lets me sleep. I finally drift off after imagining waking up in the morning looking and feeling like one of Dracula‘s victims, while a mosquito the size of a cat clings onto the wall.

Mosquitoes 1-0 Burro.

*Just joking everybody!

Brazil vs. Argentina: Statues of Christ

I don't really need to say anything about Cristo in Rio, do I? Good. What people don't realise is that Buenos Aires has its own statue of Jesus, which is probably almost as big as the one towering over Rio (I've only seen his feet close up, so I can't tell for sure but the feet were quite big, and you know what they say...). But unlike the well lit, well prominent Rio version, the Christ in BA is quite well hidden. In fact very well hidden most of the time. I couldn't even see him at first.

I was trying to find a huge swimming pool complex to spend a hung-over Saturday afternoon, and the bus driver helpfully told me to get off about 16 miles too early. After an hour of melting like chocolate in the burning early afternoon sun, and with no shade around, I came across buses at a gateway, and a queue of adults and children queuing to get in. I saw something that looked like the tubes of waterslides above the fence. At last. But the sign said 'Terra Santa'. What? Through the gates I could see three plastic crosses on a hillside with figures attached to them, and plastic figures and plastic palm trees around. Why plastic when you can have real ones? Even with my Spanish, I could work out that it was a theme park based on the Bible story. Possibly the tackiest thing I have ever seen, but I couldn't see right inside to judge properly.

An hour later, and I'd found my way around the fence to the pool complex. After getting my feet checked for verrucas, I made it to water. Sometime towards the afternoon, as the pool aerobics were beginning, I was sitting on the edge of the pool, enjoying the setting sun and splashing my legs, when I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye. Over the fence in the Holy Land, a figure was rising out of the plastic dirt. My mouth dropped open as a huge statue of Jesus came sneaking out of his hole, like a meerkat coming out of its burrow. We pointed and laughed incredulously as he made it to his full height, complete with lighted halo, and began to spin slowly. First to one side. Then the other. Then he looked up at the heavens. Then down at the people. The hands at the end of his outstretched arms swivelled slightly too, like he was trying to feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and nobody had told him that it was now illegal. Unfortunately, I wasn't close enough to hear if he spoke to his flock in a mechanical voice, like The Terminator with a beard and a pastel-blue robe. Sadly, his eyes didn't flash red. Something startled him and he began to disappear back into his burrow, taking his red sash with him. We had almost stopped laughing when it happened again half an hour later. Without doubt the tackiest thing that I or anyone else has ever seen.

Brazil 1-1 Argentina

Brazil vs. Argentina: The Buses

My first long bus journey in Argentina, from Puerto Iguazu to Buenos Aires, was a revelation, especially after seeing some of the local buses, and after having travelled through much of Brazil by bus. Brazilian buses are a plain old long distance coach ride - four seats across, a toilet, stops every few hours, and things stolen (but only with São Geraldo). I've also had plenty of experience of Bolivian buses which is (and perhaps will be) a tale in every journey.

The first shock is the size - double deckers! With only 3 seats across! Despite booking last minute tickets, we bagged the pair of seats at the front upstairs. Fantastic. Settle down, spread out, enjoy the view with your feet up, watch a couple of dodgy films, ah, very civilised. As well as the films, they provide coffee, cold & hot water, sweets, blankets and a pillow. At the pit-stop, there was a three-course meal and 'champagne' laid on, all ready immediately we sat down. The best surprise was yet to come though. A tray of glasses with ice and a bottle of 'whisky' appeared in front of my face. A nice nightcap to help you nod off to sleep delivered to your doorstep, these people know how to treat their passengers! They even had a dog coming on board to pet for those who needed to de-stress. Admittedly, petting a sniffer dog isn't always the best idea. A friend of mine did it once at an Italian airport and before he knew it, he was being frogmarched away for a strip-search and interrogation. He was just being friendly and thought that the dog was doing the same as it sniffed him. Our dog seemed friendly, unlike the moody police who followed close behind him, checking documents. An old woman in the seat behind us awoke with a start when the dog put his nose next to hers and hoovered around her face. She only complained about it for a few hours. I wasn't complaining at all. I'd never been treated so well. There were no pot-holes for the whole journey to bounce you awake every few minutes, and to slow you down for hours. We were about to arrive an hour and a half early! This couldn't possibly be happening. I started to panic. I didn't know what to do with myself. I'd never had an early arrival in South America before. We'd only just finished the breakfast that was served up to us on little trays with arches to fit nicely over your thighs (as long as those thighs aren't the size of a hippos). Then we could settle back and watch the cityscape appear right before our eyes. In widescreen.

Brazil and Argentina are very competitive, both vying to be the number one nation of their continent. They compete at football, at financial growth, beef, anything short of war. But as far as the buses go, Brazil - your boys took a hell of a beating! Travelling around Argentina was going to be a doddle if all the journeys were like this. Wasn't it?

Brazil 0-1 Argentina

Understanding Argentina – The Electricity

I’m not quite sure how the electricity works in Argentina, and I don’t think anyone else is either. It all seems totally arbitrary. There are at least three different types of socket for your plugs, so arriving with an adaptor to suit Argentina isn’t necessarily going to work. Some sockets have been adapted to work for all types:- the round 2-pin, the flat v-shape, and the 3 pointed star, but most haven’t. This means that Argentinean houses are full of adaptors. Not only my double whammy of English plug into travel adaptor into Argentinean multi-adaptor (it doesn’t work any other way but this combination, I don’t know why), but also for local electrical items. Sockets seem to have been places in houses by a tall drunk wearing a blindfold and carrying a pin. They appear everywhere – above ovens, out of reach up by the high ceiling, in bathrooms, under toilet seats, you name it, and there will be a socket. Except where you need one, which leads to cables travelling via a chain of adaptors to bedrooms without sockets, and amazing tangles of wires leading to multi-adaptors.

These things are amazing to behold – space for anything up to eight plugs at once, but only only in the correct combination, some with two holes, others three, some round, some square, some flat. It’s like the coordination puzzle for kids that you have to hammer the shaped blocks into the corresponding holes. A hammer would be handy to help the plugs go in sometimes too. They don’t all seem to be of the same size, never mind shape. Popeye on spinach wouldn’t be able to force some in, while others hang limply halfway out like they’re tired of working and just about to have a siesta.

Being Latin plugs, you might also be able to accuse them of acting a tad sensitively. Any small touch of a plug, any minute movement of a cable, can lead to a huge spark that momentarily lights up the house better than last night’s lightning. Sometimes it even happens without any touch at all, which fits in with the analogy perfectly. This can lead to you losing all kinds of work on computers, but sadly not this piece.

The Christmas tree lights flash on and off too, but not at regular intervals. Sometimes they’re on for an hour, sometimes off for half, and sometimes half of them are completely off while the other half flash merrily. I haven’t dared to go near them to investigate. That’s asking for trouble. And besides, I can’t find the plug. It’s lost amongst many in a scrum on the bathroom floor.

Understanding Argentina – Buenos Aires Style

Or stylists. There are other striking things about the style of the porteños. Buenos Aires is renowned for being an almost European capital of style and elegance. While it is true that there are some very stylish people in the city, well-dressed, well-groomed, and well poised, Buenos Aires is also home to some of the worst haircuts on the planet. And so many of them! I haven’t seen such a high percentage of bad mullets since West Germany met Argentina in the 1986 World Cup Final.

They’re not the classic permed-at-the-back mullet favoured by the likes of Rudi Voeller, but usually mullets that make the wearer appear to be harbouring a nest of baby rats in the back of their hair. The tails of these ratitos hang down in wisps around the back of the neck, curling up above collars and around ears. Sometimes there are many rats, sometimes just one, its tail hanging way down the back having been growing for years. And that’s what baffles me most:

Are these haircuts cultivated or not?

Now I can almost forgive – ok, I can never forgive a mullet under any circumstances, not even close – somebody growing up in Smallsville, USA or Kleine Bavaria, Deutschland having a mullet because they’ve never travelled far enough from their farms to know any better. And sometimes it even suits them. But in a metropolis that looks to the European fashion capitals of Milan and Paris for its ideas, where people care about what they wear and how they look, this is totally unforgivable.

I have seen some shocking sights that a man should not have to deal with alone! An unprecedented double mullet, where the victim had a normally obscene mullet supplemented by a huge rat-tail, bouncing like a happy snake on a trampoline as he walked down the street. I had to cover my girlfriend’s eyes in case the shock was too much for her. I have seen a man with normal short, straight hair on top and a mullet made out of one big dreadlock hanging down the back like the mud on the back of a woolly mammoth! A combination of the tow worst hairstyles that a white person can have! Truly the worst haircut on the planet! And worse – I was with somebody who knew him! They actually stopped to talk to him! I pleaded heavy shopping and left. No way could I talk to him without either laughing, asking obnoxious questions, or beating him up.

But did he know? That he had the mullet? Do any of them know? The mullet part of the hair always looks scruffy and unkempt, sometimes in complete contrast to the neatly coiffured top and the contemporary clothes. Obviously I have a theory about this, because theories are all I have. Argentina had a financial crisis a few years ago. Everybody had to make cutbacks. Hairdressers did it by saving on wear and tear of their scissors, and by selling their hand-held mirrors. They never put anything behind the heads of their customers and ask ‘Is sir happy with the back as well?’ They just cut the top and the sides and say ‘Diez pesos por favor’! The mullets are never seen so they are never known about! Everybody with a mullet in Buenos Aires walks around the city laughing at the state of all the other people with mullets and their lack of fashion sense!

Somebody needs to rectify this situation. I think that is why I was called to Buenos Aires. I shall be that hero. Tomorrow, I shall hit the streets on a Mission of Mercy, with a digital camera to show them what they’ve never seen, and a large pair of scissors.

Argentina Places – Buenos Aires, City of the Midnight Sun

It surprised me to find out how late the sun sets in Buenos Aires. Sometimes after midnight, sometimes even later, I haven’t actually seen it go down yet. Like you, I thought only Scandinavia, Canada, Alaska and Siberia could claim this. Wrong! Buenos Aires has it too. Perhaps it is only because we’re approaching the longest day of the year in the southern hemisphere. Maybe in winter, it is dark 24 hours a day.

People have written before me about the strange quality of the light in the city. So strange is it in fact, that to the untrained gringo eye, it appears dark outside after about nine o’clock, with stars and moon showing above. Don’t be fooled. It is still daylight. The locals know. Just look at them, they’re all still wearing sunglasses.

You see people everywhere steadfastly refusing to take them off, even in dark sweaty clubs, deep underground on the metro, or just hiding in dark corners of bars. There could be a number of reasons for this:

1. The pollution. Outside yes, in dark smoky bars maybe, but smoking is banned in bars now. Impossible.
2. Everyone is blind. Unlikely. The few definite blind people I have seen have white sticks (bit of a clue) and walk slowly through the carriages asking people for financial help on the metro. They talk very slowly too, which is great for my Spanish listening skills. Most people in the city sound like machine guns when they talk, so that counts them out of being blind in my book.
3. Everyone is a frustrated rock/pop/film star. Only rock/pop/film stars are allowed to wear sunglasses indoors. It helps them to stay in character and helps them to hide their true introverted insecure nature behind the mask of dark glasses. If everybody wore dark glasses indoors, our stars wouldn’t feel special any more. Their fragile egos would shatter. It is impossible to be cooler than anyone else in Buenos Aires when, sat at a table across from you sits a woman approaching 80, still out and still wearing a huge pair of shades to eat well after midnight. She even looks like Mick Jagger’s mother, which makes you look like a total nobody in comparison. If everyone is a star, being a star is normal which makes it impossible to be a star. So can’t be that.
4. To avoid the effects of autosomal dominant compelling heliophthalmic outburst syndrome? Probably not. Even the doctors don’t know what it is.
5. Expensive sunglasses. Buying your shades from much-vaunted European design houses is an expensive business, hell the logos alone are big enough to cover your cheeks, so people like to wear them 24 hours a day – during the day, at night, while eating, while sleeping, to make sure they get their money’s worth. Well, you never know.
6. Pure misplaced vanity. Hmm.

I tried to fit in. I wore my shades on the metro occasionally, just to look like a porteño. It’s dangerous. I bumped into children and old ladies who were hiding from my field of vision. I couldn’t see properly. I tried to get on the train when the one that I’d heard arriving was on the other platform, the wrong side of the tracks. A blind man grabbed hold of my arm before I fell in the path of the train arriving on our side. I’m not sure if he was saving my life or asking for money. I said ‘Muchos gracias’ and left it at that. I took my shades off before I got on the train. Lesson learnt.

Argentina Journeys - Puerto Iguazu to Buenos Aires

My first long bus journey in Argentina was a revelation, especially after seeing some of the local buses, and after having travelled through much of Brazil and Bolivia by bus. The first shock is the size – double deckers! With only 3 seats across! Despite booking last minute tickets, we bagged the pair of seats at the front upstairs. Fantastic. Settle down, spread out, enjoy the view with your feet up, watch a couple of dodgy films, ah, very civilised. As well as the films, they provide coffee, water, sweets, blankets and a pillow. At the pit-stop, there was a three-course meal and ‘champagne’ laid on, all ready immediately we sat down.

The best surprise was yet to come though. A tray of glasses with ice and a bottle of ‘whisky’ appeared in front of my face. A nice nightcap to help you nod off to sleep, they know how to treat their passengers these people. They even had a dog coming on board to pet for those who needed to de-stress. Admittedly, petting a sniffer dog isn’t the best idea. A friend of mine did it once at an Italian airport and before he knew it, he was being frogmarched away for a strip-search and interrogation. He was just being friendly and thought that the dog was doing the same as it sniffed him. Our dog seemed friendly, unlike the moody police who followed close behind him, checking documents. An old woman in the seat behind us awoke with a start when the dog put his nose next to hers and hoovered around her face. She only complained about it for a few hours.

I wasn’t complaining at all. I’d never been treated so well. There were no pot-holes for the whole journey to bounce you awake every few minutes, and to slow you down for hours. We were about to arrive an hour and a half early! This couldn’t possibly be happening. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’d never had an early arrival in South America before. We’d only just finished the breakfast that was served up to us. Then we could settle back and watch the cityscape appear right before our eyes.

Brazil and Argentina are very competitive, both vying to be the number one nation of their continent. They compete at football, at financial growth, beef, anything short of war. But as far as the buses go, Brazil – your boys took a hell of a beating! Travelling around Argentina was going to be a doddle wasn’t it?