The Flight And Bus Journey: .

March 20, 2005

I flew Air France and pick-up the story from my notes.

Sunday 16 August:

Not having been to Paris Charles de Gaule airport before, I was pleasantly impressed by the relaxing ambience. The superstructure departure area has an oval section interior: soft lines and pleasing to the eye wood clad; and, there was only necessary public announcement distraction. Moreover I came from the short Dublin flight to this final stop before the 2200 departure for Buenos Aires, not having seen any Duty Free. I later found out, it is decreitly tucked away on another level, unlike in your face, which is the Irish-UK airport experience. Seems the French know there is more to life than shopping.

Eventually I did go shopping, as I thought to get rid of ten Euros and bought four squares of chocolate; though I most have lost track of time because when I returned, boarding for my flight was well under way. Indeed the last passengers in a long queue were passing through the departure gate; and the tannoy voice excitedly called boarding in French, Spanish and English.

Sleeping well during the flight, it was dawn when I looked down upon pale green Uruguay; then later after some breakfast, I looked down on rooftops and city-streets, then a long straight highway and huge pasture fields; all the time sloping down until there came a shuttering crash and the sensation of speed while wing flaps turned up vertically in order to slow down. The rough part was over and the plane then taxied to the terminal building.

I took a taxi into the city in which the driver displayed guile in traffic; weaving through three lanes over onto the hard-shoulder and sweezing up the inside of slowing traffic; when past the hold-up, he accellarated back out to the fast-lane alongside the concrete central-barrier until catching the next clogging of traffic. He didn't slow much until cutting off down a slip-road onto a city-street, whereupon, like all the cars around, he was in a slow moving queue from one traffic-light to the next.

I had intended to check-into the same hostel on Bartolome Mitre Street where I stayed on two previous visits to the city, but when we pulled up outside the nice old nineteen century town house on the corner, there was a big sign on the wall stating closed for sanitory reasons or something or other; so, I had to ask the driver to drive to another hostel: The Millhouse on Hipolito Yrigoyen Street.

I had problem with both my cameras. One needed the memory card reformated, which not being knowledgeable on such things, I took to a camera-shop. The other compact, the telephoto-zoom jammed open; and the same shop referred me to a technical repair centre, where, they told me a gain of sand had gotten into the lens and for which they charged me 420 pesos, about seventy pounds to clean and put right.

Most of the first day was spent walking aimlessly around while in and out of shops looking for alcohol to use in my campimg stove. I asked in a few painter and decorater shops, also the Farmacia, for "alcohol para quemar"; but they didn't seem to know what Is on about. In the end, I found it; a clear plastic bottle of clear liquid with "Alcohol Purro 96%" on the label, below alcohol handwashing gells in a Carrefour supermercado.

On Wednesday, my second day, I visited the city cemetery Recoleta: the last resting place of the great and good of Argentine society. Thursday, I went on a Millhouse tour to La Boca, the neighbourhood made famous by the dance Tango. The tour-guide done her work showing our group around, then left us to go off on our own, stating a time and a place to meet-up for lunch. But an Australian and I most of misunderstood something along the way, because we waited on a street-corner from twelve-thirty to one, none of the others having turned up. We had to ask a Maradona lookalike making a living by posing for photos with tourists, where Heidi the tour-guide would be. Reunited, our Millhouse party moved on in the afternoon to a tour of the "Boca Juniors" football stadium. Friday, I collected my camera at the work-shop; then set off to Palermo, the district of bars and restaurants where I came to the conclusion that Argentina has got very expensive since 2006; the last time when I thought nothing of whiling away an afternoon in a Palermo bar. On Saturday I took the bike out for a spin to see all was running well. I cycled north-west from Retiro train-station along the wide Avenida Liberador, past the port with it's cranes and shipping containers stacked high against the cold grey gloom of the winter day; then branched off to a park called Hippodromo; apparently Polo is played therein, but there wasn't any horses happening, except that is for a coach and horses wedding procession in a street nearby. Today I was out on the bike again. I got a photo of myself sitting next my steed in Plaza de Mayo before going on to the Sunday flee-market in San Telmo.

Tuesday 18 August:

Although wintertime here in Buenos Aires, yesterday morning was a day of blue tropical warmth. It was the day to leave and the bus with my seat upstair, at the front so I'd a good view out the windscreem, pulled out of Retiro Terminal de Omnibus on schedule at 1400. It follow the very same road I'd been on on Saturday, with the port on the right; the cranes skeleton structures looming over the docklands; the rusty rectangular blocks, green, pale blue and orange shipping containers stacked high and deep behind chain-link fencing; then the brown expanse of the River Plate; the bus continued onwards through a malaise of urban sprawl. There were monotomous periods of sitting in traffic, barely moving, but for the most part the bus motored along freely on broad highways with overhead signs for highway-options ahead with grand names such as: Autopista General Paz: Avenida Thames: Malvinas Argentinas: Ruta Del Sol: and, Camino Real.

Three hours past, looking out at streets of houses, warehouses, white high-rised blocks and city-parks until the suburts blended into industrial wasteland, scrub and marsh with clumbs of pampa grass; and eventually out to the countryside, where I looked out at passing bare paddocks full of cattle beside long plastic covered clamps of silage from which they fed. Further still there were horsemen wearing broad-brimmmed hats and long ponches herding cows and calves over a broad pasture.

The sun being high in the Northern Hemisphere in August means shorter days here in the south: Spring-like such as today. On the northbound highway the sun shone on my face and at around six o'clock, I'd to pull the curtain across to block it's blinding rays out while southbound cars opposite were dark syloettes with full beam headlights. By six fifteen it had morphed to a molton ball sinking like a stone behind the dark outline of gain-silos. The bus motored on in the fading light and beaming headlights; and presently an overhead sign showed the limit of the Provence of Buenos Aires, passing into northern neighbour, the Provence of Santa Fe. Also on the sign were: Rosario 107: Santa Fe 200: cities only a short distants yet a long bus-journey lay ahead.

I reclined the seat and soon slept; when I awoke, the bus was lurching slowly along. Checking my watch it was 11pm; and pulling back the curtain I looked out at a city-street in evening locomotion: restaurants and people on the prowl. I wondered where.....; then a little further, the bus made a sharp turn through a gateway and pulled up outside a modern glass and steel-curved roof bus-station; thereon in big lit lettering: "Benvenido Terminal de Bus Santa Fe". It was a chance to get off and stretch the legs, get something to eat in the cafeteria; and look at the other buses and the passengers boarding.

Back on the bus and moving again, looking out at countless city-lights and trailing red lights on cars ahead on the highway before sleeping; waking in daylight faraway on a long straight road across parched bush covered country. During the long morning, the bus past through provencial cities, Santiago del Estero, Tucuman, and other less important places. From eleven o'clock, The Andes were in sight, but barely visable in a haze of sweltering sunshine, apart from high shimmering ridges off to the left. The road rolled on; straight up and over small hills in the Provence of Salta. And given that I had been nearly a day on the road, it was good when leaving the town of General Guemes to see a sign: Salta 45km. The remaining kilometres meandered on a divided highway along a valley with brown bush clad hills either side and high mountains ahead; before turning a corner and descending to the city of Salta spread wide over the Lerma Valley.

After a Milanese lunch in the bus terminal restaurant, I cycled to Backpackers hostel. Mariana remembered me from when I stayed in 2006 and came from behind the hostel reception desk and gave me a warm embrace. More reunions followed with others from the last time. I share a dorm-room with three chicos from Quilmes, a suburt of Buenos Aires, which will be company to go with to bar and nightclub street Balcarce. They checked in later in the afternoon, having arrived from mountain village Iruya, where I will cycle to first, but not till after the weekend; meanwhile I will have a relaxing few days before setting off.

The Conquistador that found the city in the 16th century. The Spanish orriginally called it "Santa Maria de La Buen Aire".

Me with the Presidential Palace (the seat of goverment) in the background.

The Obelish, built in the early 1930s, to mark the spot where the blue and white national flag was raised in the capital for the first time over a century earlier.

A billboard advertising the Provence of Salta as a get away-break destination.

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