When our average spend on two nights camping in northern Argentina will only buy you one small coffee in Bariloche, you start to understand why we had been warned that this place is expensive. Still, everybody tells you that you just have to go there, it’s so beautiful.

Our first encounter with San $ de Bariloche was in the bus terminal. We were reconstructing our cycles; wheels and pedals reattached, handlebars realigned, when we are approached by a tout for one of the accommodations. He tells me he works for one of an hospedaje, I explain that we’re camping, he says that it’s going to rain, I say we have a good tent, he says that it’s only $300, I say no, and think: ‘Jesus!’. Further north that would buy us three nights in a good hotel. Could this be the value added premium that we can expect, that we had been warned about, a combination of tourist town and long distance, Bariloche and Patagonia. A three times markup, that could send us on our way quicker than we might have intended. It’s a pity as we’ve been forced through to many towns and cities where we’ve been prepared to dally, so we’re determined to give this one a go. The first night’s camping was cheaper than the hospidaje quote, one toilet, one shower and basin shared by a community who dare to travel without the aid, the crutch of the motor car. The walk in hikers, the backpack in fishers, the cycle in bikers. We move further out from town for the subsequent two days, it’s a slight relief on the pocket, but are shoe horned into a sloping site. We defend our pitch by the judicious placement of bikes and guy lines. All to little avail.

The guide book recommends a ‘circuito chico’, that may offer an, at times , arduous, introduction to the Argentine Lake District. Our inability to second guess a tourist office’s drawing, and our inability to pay attention, means we have a small adventure exploring Cathedral ski centre and the small sand tracks between the various lakes. It’s a classic, serendipitous route, the moment we leave the guided itinerary we are on our own, in a world of wild roses, astrolmerias and tall flowering thistles. Sudden views of bottle green lakes, far below, sliding down boulder and sand strewn tracks unencumbered by luggage or ascending pick-ups.

Lunching on mayonnaise and peach sandwiches, beside a southern beech enfolded lake. Maybe SC de Bariloche has something going for it. Then just as suddenly as we escaped the crowds, we’re back in town.

In the spirit of fairness to the town we go for some retail therapy: search out a bank that might have some cash in it. Three attempts so far have been abortive, there’s a shortage; no surprise there, I know that the notes are disappearing an increasing rate out of our pockets. To search out an ice cream shop, to continue the field work and to sit in the plazza and people watch. We sit under the most frequently reproduced bronze casting, that is after the busts of San Martin, Sarmiento, Guimes and the other super heroes of Argentine history, under a she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus. It stands just across from the Cathedral, a neat juxtapositioning of religious iconography. A professional photographer has positioned himself on the plaza with his two St. Bernard dogs, traditional wooden barrels under their chins, sitting appealingly, waiting to be the vital props in a photo opportunity. Trade is slow. Everybody is on the move, transient, passing through..

Therein lies this town’s summer time position. It’s not the place, the destination, but more the stepping of point, a hub to move out from.

Our tentative thoughts when buying our bus tickets, had been to head south, down the Chilean Carretera Austral, down to the true south. The view from the bus and the sight of so much water has caused a re-evaluation: we’ll head north and explore some more of this lake district. Terra del Fuego and the far south will have to wait for another day, another journey to add to a growing, expanding list

We eventually get our mapping skills together and head off on the, ’arduous ‘little circuit‘, ’may require some bus assistance’, leaving early to avoid the traffic, take it at a leisurely pace and are back at the beginning just as the other neighbouring campers are rousing themselves. Twenty five k of no panniers and bottles of water seems to have an effect. Another classic route that only confirms our new intensions to head north, stay in the sierras and the volcanoes for a little longer.

Yet it’s hard to see a place for what it would like to be seen as, when your hand is spraying pesos, broadcasting dollars, like seedcorn. When every stakeholder needs to make his yearly income in a very short summer season, then take a breather and repeat the procedure when the winter season starts. It’s only later when we pass through another winter wonder land ski resort clad in it’s summer mantle, that you realise what San Carlos de Bariloche has. It’s a winter resort that has successfully added on a summer programme. The park grass is clipped and the Av. San Martin completed, the pavements are level and the piles of bricks are tidied away. It’s not in a perpetual of reconstruction and renovation, it has to work hard after the snow has melted.

I thought I knew what flat was. Up until now it had been Ruta 7, our bus trip into the Capital Federal. That I had taken to be flat, but nothing can compare with the flat we woke up to this morning. There’s flat and there’s
FLA__________________________________________________________T

Part two of our adventure starts in Retiro bus station. A near full bus going to Bariloche, twenty-two hours away. The Navigator has gone native. We explained that we had two cycles when making the booking, they suggest that they may need to be bagged. We’ve purchased plastic sheets and fancy coloured duct tape; purple, to match The Navigator’s bike, fashioned covers, and so are prepared for the fray. There’s the usual teeth-sucking from the bus crew. So The Navigator breaks down her bike right at the loading point, right outside the bus, right in the way. It’s the local way, it’s the native way, it’s the only way. We assert our place in the queue. It’s every woman for herself, there’s no place for the reticent, no standing on ceremony. Sharp elbows and a brass neck, stubbornness and tenaciousness a necessity. The bikes go on last; it means they’re on to top of the pile, it will be interesting to see if they remain that way to journey’s end.

At 22 hours some part of our trip has to be in the dark. We’ve opted to go lux, purchased a ‘cama’ recumbent seat, one grade down from a fully horizontal, executive bed, so avoiding the potential sufferfest of nether numbness. The company’s web site extolled the virtues of this class; the comfort and leg room, the champagne reception, the three meals served with a choice of alcoholic beverages, The space, the blanket, the pillow were all there, so to were the three plastic baled, Styrofoam tray meals. The alcoholic beverages transpired into a plastic cup of Cola, a small coffee and a shot of Sprite. I guess we got the Alcoholics Anonymous ticket. Oh, and there were the two non-alcoholic boiled sweets. Our dark time section was the run out from BsAs, part of which we had seen in daylight two weeks earlier on the trip from San Juan. Good planning or plain luck, it’s hard to say. It does mean we will be crossing the southern desert in the early morning.

That early morning transpires to be a blanket, monochromatic ashen grey sky, a low scrub desert, viewed through a rain streaked, tinted, double glazed window. The first rain of any consequence we’ve witnessed since Embarcacion, oodles of weeks ago. I don’t keep a diary, as a consequence we lose and acquire days at will. A calendar might be useful, but that requires a degree of diligence and discipline, skills that diminish on a journey. The Kindles have already thrown a wobbly by misquoting a date; maybe they picked up a signal from over the date line. In places there’s been confusion of clock times, given the various time zones around the ‘three frontier’ region. So they’re not an infallible source of information. Frankly, it’s not an issue, we don’t have to be anywhere or any place in particular.

From one dislocation in time to another dislocation in ideas. Jungles wet, deserts dry; simple geographical fact. Wet in the desert, it has to happen otherwise there would be no vegetation, yet the rain and the blanket sky only accentuate, concentrate the overriding feature of this landscape. It’s utter flatness. From our elevated vantage on the upper deck, the horizon shows not one single variation, not one single dent, bump or pimple. Not one single tree, house or spire, conspires to break the edge. The only variance of view are the scurrying rain drops, braiding and entwining across the windowpane; nothing changes for mile upon mile. The condensation dries quicker than the view changes. It’s still
FLA ________________________________________T.

Then suddenly the bus comes to a junction, we change direction, change topography, change climatology. Coincidence maybe, but as we drop down into a valley, the road starts to roll and the rain stops, The blanket detaches from the horizon, rumpling, to allow a vague hope of light to filter in to the changed landscape. Down to a river that is flushing red, bleeding a sediment akin to a the colour of a Glasgow west-end tenement. A rio that could only be named Colorado.

This too clever machine has determined that I am a less than adequate speller and will correct, automatically, some but not all of my standard mistakes. This may be an advantage, but as with all over-eager entities it has a habit of misinterpreting my intentions. The latest being: ‘over knighted’ when I wanted ‘overnighted’.

Christmas and New Year are over, we’ve overnighted on a cama bus, capital to capital; Montvideo to Buenos Aires. Collected up our bikes, cleaned and serviced them, purchased tickets, there’s 248 booths to choose from in the central bus station at Retiro and are now heading for San Carlo de Bariloche

We’re on the prowl, raking through an Aladdin’s cave a household goods store that name’s itself ‘Bazar Plastico‘. The merchandise stacked to the ceiling, the shelves crammed full, the aisles size medium knickers wide. We know that we need to replace our beakers, the old ones are condemned, the cracks a petri dish of penicillin bacilli, and anyway, one of them leaks. However the problem with these types of emporia is that they offer up a whole new range of ideas, things you never knew you needed. A plastic box to keep the oats in? There’s a choice of too many colours and sizes. A plasticated tablecloth, could double as a extra ground sheet for the tent, a selection that ranges from fancy to ritzy, classy to glossy but all in flowery motifs. Buy by the metre straight from the roll. Need a replacement screw stopper for your thermos flask? This one comes with a light to aid you in filling your yerba mate by night. Umpteen choices for chopping and skinning, peeling and mashing, fruit and vegetables, meat and dear knows what. Peeling?- Yes… a tattie peeler, the perfect present to add to the loo rolls, for sending the ‘gap year’ travellers on their way. Sewing kits and egg baskets, china plates and butter scoops, wine glasses and chalk crayons, if it’s small, plastic and stackable you’ll find it in here.

I love the eclectic nature of these types of shops. Across the road we stumble on another that falls into this range: the papeleria. A shop that sells all things paper and paper related items. Crepe paper and cartridge paper, paper napkins and paper plates, photocopying paper by the ream. Parcel tape and duct tape, braids and ribbons, ball-points and fountain nibs, inks and paints, string in every colour, strength and length. However we’re on the hunt for writing paper. I need to perform an archaic, antiquated act: hand write, in ink on paper, a letter, enclose it in an envelope, then attach an adhesive stamp. Occasionally I need to reaffirm my iconoclastic, luddite credibility. I can have a jotter in spiral back, cloth back or hard back, ruled, squared or plain, any colour any size, but no, they don’t have any Basildon Bond.. An envelope for the same? Yes, we have plastic, padded and cardboard, but sorry, no paper ordinary. It’s an interesting commentary on just how far society has progressed along the communications expressway. One can only wonder what the great letter writers and essayists of the 18^th century Enlightenment would have made of the speed with which the pen and paper has been abandoned.. Lost to posterity are any hard copies that might be of use to future biographers, historians or anthropologists. If you doubt this, consider the fact that the Domesday Book of 1096 still exists, whilst it’s equivalent of 1996 is 80% unreadable, or lost in the ether. Therein lies this strange dichotomy; all this paper yet no one writes letters. This shop is not unique, far from it; we’ve found them everywhere, even in the smallest of towns, places that struggled to serve up provisions for an evening meal. You might wonder how they survive, but any we’ve passed, all appear to be thriving, always with customers coming and going.

So now we are armed with two plastic cups, a tattie peeler and three new retail experiences. Later, we were to return for the tablecloth so as to satisfy the bus company’s baggage requirements. An interesting interlude for a morning. A whole morning.

If lost ballpoint pens and missing farm knives go to a parallel universe, only to return as plastic road cones and wire coat hangers, where do the lost gears and transmissions of Uruguayan lorries end up? On the evidence of today, embedded, rear-ended in a concrete ditch, half way down a steep hill. Lost gear, lost brake, ergo lost load.

Arcor: Industria Argentina.

They mill the oats for our breakfast, the granola biscuits that resuscitate at ‘onces‘, they bake the sesame crackers for lunch and the occasional warm weather treats of multi-flavoured ice creams later in the day. Not only do they construct the contents, they also manufacture the packaging and your change.

The messages, your shopping, are priced right down to centavos (0.165p), fuel is priced down to one tenth of a centavo – you do the conversion math, I can’t see the point. It only perpetuates that wondrous misconception beloved of the global petrochemical industry: that they’re giving you a special deal. Rumour has it that the smallest coin is a five centavo piece, but as the local bus services take coinage only, there’s a distinct dearth of coins, and that expands the problem to a two peso paper note chasm. That sink hole can be filled with an apple-change: the healthy option . Or more usually by a selection of fruit flavoured Arcor-caramelas-change: the company store option. On a number of occasions the proffered change is stored in the cash drawer, which leads me to a novel thought; what would be the reaction if I offered to pay for a small item in candy sweets?

An overture to two capitals, both viewed through glazed, tinted windows. Only this time it’s capital to capital, Buenos Aires to Montevideo.

Once again we’re held in a clinically, environmentally, climatically controlled space, only this time it’s a high speed catamaran ferry. We’re in lock down, severed from the outside by a sealed storm proof door and a prohibition on fresh air, reduced to viewing one receding capital through grubby, salt encrusted double glazing.

The ferry sails slowly out past the breakwater and accelerates into the river, rising onto the near calm surface. The sailing time is scheduled for around three hours, yet the distance is great enough to mean both coasts of the river will recede below the horizon, lost to the global curvature. There’s going to be no backyard views, no net curtain peeps, no fleeting moments in time. It will be a slow boredom and a sluggish wander around the attractions of the styrofoamed coffee café, the duty free joke shop, and the ever popular WiFi connection. The coffee is commentless, the link is free and the gin can be had for less in town. Yet sailing into a city has it’s attractions, especially if the alternative is a cycle attack. The relaxed approach, the slow revelation of coastal secrets, the novelty of a sudden transfer from water to land. So Montevideo now joins this expanding list that includes Wellington and Edinburgh, Zeebrugge and Aukland, Victoria and Brodick, Isle of Arran.

The lack of an open deck is a pity. I miss the opportunity to lean over the rail, feel the wind and all the knots of thrust and power that we are moving at. The only indication of speed comes from the rapid passage of wavelets and the sudden escape of diving ducks beating a retreat out from under the multiple bows. I suspect a nautical engineer would argue that these open spaces are dead spaces, not frequented by the standard passenger. However, where do you go when the Plata gets angry and they start to hand the barf bags around?

Just a few of the 248 ticket booths at Retiro

It’s a slow approach, our flung wake reduced to grumbling burble as our catamaran finds it’s way into dock, past the quiet container port. Some of the crane jibs raised in surrender others genuflecting in homage to a loading coastal steamer, sailing past the tethered naval mine layers and down canyonlands of steel containers. Approaching a berth where an articulated tube is waiting to suck a cargo of holiday passengers out of our ferry and into the marbled arrivals hall. Out of a chilled cabinet and back into the reality of a humid warm evening and another capital city.

Argentina’s long distance bus service is world class, world renowned, and rightly so. We’ve opted to end act one of our “southern cone” adventure in San Juan and take a bus to Buenos Aires. A bus might give the wrong impression; no hard backed sticky vinyl seats, grumpy Greyhound drivers, overflowing toilets or low life downtown bus stations here.

It all starts with the ticket purchase. Sure, you can go online at a locutorio and process your own purchase, but it’s quicker and more interesting to do it in the bus station. Bus station? Images of early morning drunks, wandering vagrants, begging hobos, swirling litter and taxi touts all come to mind. Wrong again. Yes there are the usual street dogs, but the banos attendants look after them. The marble floors are constantly wiped, the concourse constantly swept. The toilets might be old, but they’re cleaned hourly, there’s loo roll, there’s soap. But it’s the orderliness of the ticket purchase that is a surprise, that is fun. There must be at least ten companies operating out of here, going to every major city in Argentina, to all the neighbouring capitals, to Chile, to Bolivia, to Brazil, to Paraguay . Now these ten companies will each have at least two separate booths, sometimes three. What to do? Too much choice. Yet nobody is pressuring, hustling, you to travel with them. The bean counter enters the ring, closes her eyes, spins around, picks out the first and heads in. She emerges moments later. I mean moments later, so quick that I thought there was a problem; they’re fully booked, they can’t take the bikes. It’s a pessimism born of a British public transport experience. Only she’s brandishing two tickets for a semi cama bus for tonight.

A 15 hour journey, for the price of eight return journeys from Haddington-Edinbugh. And you get your dinner and breakfast thrown as well. Our bikes go free.

It’s newly dark as the bus reverses out of its stance. We’ve watched our bikes loaded, our eight panniers ticketed and stowed. It’s seven more than anybody else and leaves us a tad embarrassed by our encumbrances. We’ve settled into our seats, found the all important reclining lever, approved the leg supports, the freedom of space, set the air con fan , set out all the paraphernalia for an overnight bus journey. In short, we’ve colonised our private space.

The bus wends its way through the extended environs of town, a series of pueblos that, through time have bloated, coalescing, blending into a city. It’s the usual mix of street food vendors and ‘gomeria’ tyre repairs, disgorging transports and post-siesta activity. The fruit and veg stalls an explosion of colour in the gloomth of the low street lighting.

The conductor cum cabin steward hands around moulded knee trays and a pre-packaged airline style meal. The hot, non optional, non vegetarian, foil tray comes later. Could Argentina be the only nation to produce beef so tender that it’s carveable with a plastic knife? Or conversely, are they the only country to develop a white plastic knife able to cut a steak? Either way the carne comes on a bed of mash, a side of ham and two rounds of quality vino tinto, all topped off by a sugar-enriched postre and a slab of membrillo. As transport fare goes, it’s more than sufficient, but I am glad we’ve become acclimatised to a non faddy carnivores diet, even if on occasions the gut flora takes a bit of a hammering. When asked what cyclists eat on the road , the answer is always: “a lot”. By my reckoning, today’s score stands at two breakfasts, a couple of lunches, crackers and fruit for tea, complemented by a busline dinner. Two and a half thousand odd calories and a small kilo of red meat. Just a normal, ‘a lot‘, day.

The curtains are drawn, the lights dimmed, an English language, anodyne dubbed film plays to a disinterested , apathetic bus . I fall asleep, or what passes for that state, where a film sound track intrudes into a half consciousness, mingling with the dead numbness of abused hip pin bones and where fidgeting, wriggling and squirming offer no relief. We’re awoken in San Luis, sometime well after midnight. We’ve stopped to collect the last few remaining passengers and are on our way soon after. Wide awake now, I gaze through the gap in the curtains. All the shops are closed, their eruptions of fodder and produce stowed inside, their gray shutters drawn down, metal grilles locked up, returning them to an anonymity of nameless, faceless edifices. Only the petrol service stations are identifiable pools of white flooded light, islands out of time; a place for the dislocated, lost souls of the dark. Then they too drift away, leaving me with my reflection in a black mirror, and the rhythmic, soporific beat of tyres on the broken asphalt surface, drifting slowly into a broken slumber.



Sweet dreams…

I must have slept for some part of the night, despite my subconscious arguing to the contrary. The couchette style reclining chairs are as comfortable as can be expected given the duration my pin bones have been in contact with a bovine’s skin. A post-natal rubber maternity ring is the only thing that might improve my demeanour and my humour, by relieving my nether numbness. Must have slept despite the old lady groping her way back to her seat, who mistook my head for the back rest. I must be totally into traveller relaxed mode, no startled, adrenalin infused jump. Had I been dreaming of yesterday’s encounter with a hairy tarantula, things might have been different. I must have slept as it’s dawn, a Pampa dawn.

So charged with caffeine and the curtain drawn back we settle to a slowly evolving picture scrolling by outside our window. We’re on the upper deck, which extends our horizons, an elevated position that lets us see over a hedgeless flatscape. A primordial sea grave of snail shells and fish bones, planed level at the bottom of a shallow ocean. It’s flat, flat, flat, with a ruler ruled horizon pinioned in place by a monstrous dome, a sky that occupies the greatest proportion, the land the merest fraction of any available space. Level and flat as a feature and a thought will recur over the next four hundred kilometres that we spend bussing across the Pampa. Plain level but never plain boring.

It starts with a pastel washed dawn and a novelty of clouds; the first we’ve seen for several weeks. Clouds in a soft water wash of ashen greys, slowly moulding into pinks and then to oranges, into which an enlarged sun arises . Shrinking to normal, teasing , untangling, and dissolving the cloud cover, all before it’s a foot above the horizon, leaving a hard, vacant, steel blue sky. A promise of another hot day.

It’s beef, soya and corn country, occasionally changing to soya, beef and corn country and then to corn, soya and beef. Which ever combination you create, what doesn’t change is the pan of green and gold on the level flats. The unripe green irrigated circles of monogenic corn, surrounded by the gold of napped, suede like, shaved stubbles. The chopping and tailings of the newly absent combine harvesters. Red cattle and black cattle, some with, some without white Hereford faces, are dotted across the landscape, standing up to their oxters, belly deep in a silver dun of seeding grasses.

Slow gyrating blades of wind driven water pumps, atop a lattice of skeletal pylons, stand guard over tanks of irrigation water, another is motionless, it’s blades turned to idle. Now comes a lagoon, an expanse of open shallow water, enveloped by a halo of evaporated salts and the clockwork motion of darting, probing waders. Above, skeins of cormorants are arrowing in on the lake; a flight of disturbed duck suddenly erupt from the coastal rushes, flying low, fast for the safety of the middle of the lake, landing in a silvered spray of low light sun. The rhythmic occurrence of evenly spaced kilometre posts, might be a countdown to the capital federal, but they are also a reminder of the distance to the sea. A thought that’s at variance with all this evidence, for a northern traveller, of an avian sea coastal life. I can’t feel, but I can see the stiff sou’westerly breeze, streamers of spume spun over the short chopped, corrugated surface. Being blown and moulded into a lathered froth of spume.

Senor Daniel Scioli is standing for gubernatorial; he tells me so every half kilometre. I know, because he’s attached his name on polyprop banners to the fences. At a rough calculation he’s going to ram home his message over eight hundred times before we escape from this bus. The anticipated happy electoral event is in the future; unfortunately his name is already in the past. His banners are shredded by barbed wire, his name lacerated, becoming streamers in the wind, promises all tattered and torn. Augmenting the detritus of soda pop bottles and wind inflated carrier bags that are shrouds around pillars and posts.

Somehow we have lucked out again. Our seats are on the shaded side of the coach, the POSH, “port out” side; a fact emphasised as we negotiate a half circular town’s by-pass at El Vedin. The sun streams in our window, blinding those across the isle and washing the colour out of our views. We will be able to reopen the curtain when the bus swings back to it’s original bearing and it’s direct, flat, laser levelled course to the terminal.

We have the visuals, a single sense, but are deprived of the other four, cocooned in our environmentally controlled charabanc. Even then, the optics are coloured, tinged by tinted windows, that might be adding a vibrancy to the intense colour of the verdant maize circles. Deprived of four-fifths of our sensory inputs, the one- fifth expands to fill this vacuum. The rocking tussock grasses, the wavelets and spindrift on the lagoons suggest a gusty, inevitable, but at present irrelevant, head wind. The floating, suspended islands of trees on the horizon, the low, heavily shuttered steadings lost in deep shade, hint at heat. The wet, glistening rutted wheel tracks, the islands of puddles in a yard indicate recent rain. Yet I can’t be sure, I’m not on my sensory saturated cycle, but smelling cigarette smoke and listening to a hacking morning cough; held at a constant 21 degrees.

The shredded polyprop politicals now have to compete within this real world, the megacorps of agridom, the Dows and the Du Ponts, the Bayers and the Cargills. Pronouncements that you need Pioneer seeds for profit, broadcasts that recommend “Fertilizerazul”, draped on fences, hung on bill boards. This agricultural supply chain now augmented by the reds of Massey Ferguson, the greens of John Deere and the blues of New Holland.

Slowly our fellow travellers are roused , the overhead illuminated clock reverts to a regular announcement that the banos are ocupado and our cabin host distributes the breakfast trays. We speculate on the likely offering, based on previous experience. We know that our staple oat based banoffee porridge will be absent, but reckon on at least a couple of medialunas and fruit juice to complement and acidify the sugar saturated coffee. Wrong again. Styrofoam tray, a cache of three small packages, a plastic spoon, and a nameless sachet, all baled up in cling film. Dry crackers, sweet biscuits and a candied alfajore. The spoon to agitate the anonymous white powdered milk like substance into the near caramelised coffee. A product called “Vita”, that is singularly unable to counter either the sugar or to revitalise the beverage. Oddly I seem to have drunk four more cups before my heart rate escalates, reverberates from vibrato to tremolo. It’s that Presbyterian Scot’s upbringing again, raising it’s parsimonious head; ostensibly it’s free, or at least it’s included in the fare, ergo I’ve paid for it, so must gain best use. Better have another cup just in case the dispenser runs out. The capital claims a thriving coffee culture, they even have a Starbucks that once offered a ‘mate latte’; an assault on the yerba tea tradition and an, as yet unconfirmed sighting. That culture has yet to reach his bus.

With our elevated position, the bendless, cornerless linear route, the rumbling of the tyres over the uniform, evenly spaced expansion joints in the asphalt surface, all combine to give the impression of train travel. The blending of the rhythmic bumps and the mesmeric, repetitive flow of telegraph cables, rising and falling , a swell that lulls you into a half world, part way between roused and oblivion. Your eyes droop, and your head lurches between backrest and windowpane, yet still you can’t find comfort. The novelty of a first time visit, the prospect of a new scene and the effects of the polysaccharided caffeine combine to keep you awake.

A distant, slowly resolving lance, like a permanent exclamation mark, evolves into a barber poled red and white communication tower. The town, low down, sucked in, held by the immensity of sky, yet still it needs the pole to pinion it in place. A stake to pin down a town. It’s later joined on the approaching skyline by a tracery of elevators, the scaffolds of gantries and bins that make up a granary store, and only then, by the twin towers of the Virgen de Lujan’s basilica. At one time it would claim the ascendancy, a primacy of the skyline, only challenged by a stand of columnar poplar trees. Now it appears to be losing out to Mammon 2:1.

Yet, still this sensation of train travel prevails. We pass a petrol station and instinctively you look for the access road – how did that lorry get there if there’s no road in? The answer comes just as immediately as the question. You’re on the road. It’s a strange, near confusing sensation. The long straight drive, the constant unvarying speed, the lack of stop-starts, the rhythmic cadence of tyre noise all keep repeating, keep returning to the railway impression.

Then at Lujan things start to change. The asphalt doubles up to dual, the tollbooths triple to a dozen, the kilometre post are down into the tens, coastal maritime clouds accumulate off to the south-east, indicators that we can’t be far from our destination. It’s Sunday morning: there’s a parade of buses parked up in a field being augmented by more arriving along the now busy Ruta 7. A pilgrimage to honour the Virgen de Lujan is forming up at the Basilica, Her many images being carried in glass pyramids on wooden stretchers through the milling mayhem of an unregulated bus park. A slow, but irreversible metamorphosis is under way, the landscape is mutating from campo to city, from agri-culture to urban-culture, from food production to food consumption. An adjustment exemplified by the peloton of gaudy, paunch-stretched, lycra-clad cyclists. The accumulated height gain, around and between any of these sequential towns will be zero, the lay of the land is still flat. Yet these helmeted gents – it’s exclusively a male preserve – are on full suspension mountain bikes. On a ride where the only hill will be the access ramp to a four lane flyover or caged-in walkway. It’s a fashion, a vogue that you feel the campo would ridicule and mock, yet it’s mainstream, mainstreet, apparel in town.

The houses enlarge and the traffic multiplies exponentially, fields are smaller and less numerous, an irrevocable, irreversible absorption and digestion of the campo is under way. Gone are the herds of shiny horses, of the sleek cattle, the silver green sheen of low light seeding grasses; gone the post top hawk and the antisocial storks. Replaced by a plaza of 28 tollbooths and an autopista of eight lanes, supplanted by auto sales and gasoline alleys, superseded by superstores and hypermarkets. The pampa commuted to commuters. The city swallowing, consuming the campo, engorging and sprawling in ever increasing increments out over the level flats. An unregulated bloat, a swollen girth, undisciplined and disorderly, mushrooming uncontrollably. Could that be why there are more road lanes and tollbooths into town, than allow for an escape from it? City eats more than it excretes.

The bus plunges into this metropolis, Ruta 7 now a roller coaster of multiple laned flyovers and canyonlands of underpasses. The canvassing politicos have clambered off their fences and climbed up onto the highrise bill boards. Sr. Scioli now recruits the heavyweights of federal government to his campaign, adding a face to the name and enlisting the kudos of the presidentia’s office.

The scrolling screen, the slow motion cinemascope, motion picture, picture show that has been on offer over the last few hours of Pampa, now gives way to a rapid, flickering, stuttering video of short attention span images, an ADHD of accelerated impressions. We’re not moving any faster, it just appears that way. The drive now wends it’s way between slab sided accommodations, characterless extrusions of concrete expelled, evicted from tiny square plots. Where the only out is up, to reach out for a patch of sunlight. Square blocked pegs of ash gray peeling facades, stacked on a grid, like children’s wooden toy bricks. This roller coaster throws us up into the air and then plunges down, a crocheted web of concrete all stacked up on spindly cement legs. Only to be spun into a centrifuge of merry-go-rounds of side streets and inter-sections, of clover-leafs and roundabouts, of rotondas and junctions. Then suddenly we’re turning in to the bus station, to be held in a holding pattern whilst being allocated our docking platform.

The Capital has swallowed us up, subsumed us into it’s hot humid world, reduced us from a colour pallet of exuberant growth, of green on gold to the nether tones of decayed concrete and cracked asphalt. Yet, on leaving the air conditioned arrivals hall I’m assaulted by new senses. It’s the same sun that we left only yesterday in the west, but it has an entirely different touch to it. Gone is the menacing intensity, gone the desiccating threat, gone the thin, enervated air of altitude. Replaced by a pleasurable, enveloping, rich, fat fug, turgid with humidity and the succulent odours carried by the great river systems out of the north. An amalgam of heady smells and heavy air, of jungle decay and car exhaust, of asadoed carne and curdled humanity.

Once again we have collected two new ‘moments in time’, two new photages: montages of randomised images, held on a cerebral hard drive, infused with non visual senses, a synthesis and a marinade of smells and touches, noises and voices, moods and tempers. Both depictions are diametrically opposed to each other, yet intrinsically connected, wired into a whole and linked in my mind by a long distance semi-cama bus.

A fast, ultra efficient commuter train ride completes thirty-six hours in transit and now I know that it is we who are the curled humanity.
　

My sister’s family are foregathering at the family holiday house in Uruguay. A global convergence: arrivals coming in from Miami and New York, from Scotland and India, from Los Andes and Misiones. The dispersal will be just as great a scattering. We’ve reached San Juan and decided to have a break, join the gathering, and sit on the beach. It’s a bus to BsAs, a ferry to Montevideo, then a further bus to Maldonado.