November 22, 2015
La Pampa: Bahia Blanca to route 22, km841.
Leaving Bahia Blanca this morning, I try getting money from one bank, but, the ATMs were empty. No surprizes, after Saturday's spending spree and consequential need for cash to support it. Then Saturday night when more dosh is needed for drink and weed, but cigarettes for some reason are cheap. Seems the government don't care too much about the nation's health, otherwise they'd earn lots of revenue through high taxes on tobacco.
While I sit here in an YPF petrol station café, it is polling day. On the TV screen, outgoing president Christina Fernanda de Kirchner, is seen in a polling station in her home constituency Rio Gallegos, hugging well-wishers.
In the first round of voting in October, the popular left ruling party's, Daniel Scioli got 35.9 percent of the vote, against the right wing's candidate, Mauricio Macri, 35.2 percent, so it all hangs on todays result.
The only thing I know about the out going president's party "Frente Para Victoria", is they tried changing the electoral rules, so a sitting president could stand for a third term and a forth, and so on; effectively be president for life. The other is their foreign policy, to regain sovereignty of "Las Malvinas", or the Falkland Islands. While, the only thing I know about the right's candid, Macri, is he's against Argentina's same sex marriage law. And if you where to believe smear posters with a picture of him and speech bubbles having him say, "Homosexuality is a sickness" and "Gays and lesbians aren't sane", he's very homo phobic.
Anyway, having failed at the first bank, I try a second. The transaction goes as usual, until the shuffle noise of the machine is suppose to happen, when instead, my card is ejected and a message on the screen reads "You cannot use your card in this machine." Whatever happened to "We apologise..." It's like they really mean "How dare you, how dare you try get money from our machine. You piece of shit." That's how it sounds: no common decency in the statement. "How dare you even think you'd get money from us."
My only human interaction today so far was a few minutes ago, here in this café. A young man at the next table using a laptop, having got up to go and having seen me arrive by bike, says hello and insists on speaking English. He is awed when I say I cycled from Buenos Aires. And when I say I'm cycling to Ushuaia, says it's a long way. I know, I reply, it says Bariloche 1028 kilometres, on the sign out there. He then asks where I'll spend Christmas; something I never quite thought about. I answer, perhaps in some lonely place on route 40 in Southern Patagonia. He smiles and says, I'd love to do what you are doing.
Today, having left Bahia Blanca on route 3, southbound, then at a split off, I take route 22 west. The weather sunny with scattering of white cloud and light breeze from north. The countryside lightly populated with cattle pasture, fields of cereal and long groves of eucalyptus trees along the road, up until my stop at the YPF petrol station at the small town of Mendanos, the last place for quite a while.
The road ahead is dead straight with a barely noticeable incline all the way. Sparse rough pasture to the side and I think I only pass three farmhouses in over a hundred kilometres.
After the last town, traffic is light, a few trucks and an odd car, most give a friendly hoot of the horn. Around midday, about half a dozen touring motorbikes with silver box panniers and European Union number plates pass, each raises their right hand in salute. One slows down behind me, passes, then looks back into my face; as if checking I'm not a robot.
As the traffic is light and I'm able to pedal away without much effort, that breeze remaining northerly and light, though at one moment, I think it is going to rise, when a sudden twister of loose scrub bushes blows across the road, just missing me; but it settles and as the far off level horizon remains unchanged all day, I daydream and also plan much of my route ahead.
By late afternoon, the warm sunshine has brewed up a thunder storm with flashes of lightening and rain on the road ahead. And the possibility of camping is grim, as now, to the side is a green desert: a forest of shoulder high thorns off as far as the eye can see on either side. I keep going until near dusk, the rain not reaching me, when I see a green lump on the horizon, which can only be a grove of trees. It takes the good part of half an hour getting as far, where I find a layby by a welcome grove of tall trees, not hidden from the road, but with only a few trucks passing, what does it matter. I find a level spot and pitch camp.
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Today's ride: 168 km (104 miles)
Total: 1,057 km (656 miles)
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