Another Wichi, indigenous town that grew from it’s position on the railway line. The old prosperous buildings now housing the new wealth: the agricultural suppliers, the banks and the mobile telecoms, are congregated around where the station once stood. We’re sitting in the plaza under a few substantial shade trees, our first prospect for accommodation having drawn a blank. We’d cycled up and down the obvious streets looking for an obvious sign. We then start asking around. Yes there is a hospedaje, its two blocks along on the corner. We search, but no obvious establishment appears. Ask again: it’s obvious that it exists, everybody is sending us into the same area. Slowly we are narrowing it down. After five attempts we’re taken by the hand to an anonymous gate, incidentally not on the corner, but in the same block everybody kept pointing out. Like the shops, everyone knows where everything is, so there’s no need for a name board or an indication on a wall. Yes, they do have a room available. Another perfect refuge, just when it was required.
Author Archives: The Chronicler
Moments in Chaco Time: Leaving Town
The sun has just broken through the horizon, fast rising straight up into a clear sky. It’s going to be hot again. The noise of our wheels are muffled by the carpets of soft dust and the drifts of sand, but not quiet enough, as the first dog wakes up and starts to bark. This sets of a chain reaction, that multiplies and magnifies, intensifying the further we progress along the street. It’s not as if we can pedal hard to escape the blame or the source. One mistake on this surface and one of us will be on our ribs.Moments in Chaco Time: Place Names
These varying parts to the trans Chaco all have one underlying problem: poverty. The soil has potential, it’s high phosphate country, it could grow cotton, soya and corn, but it suffers from a six month dry, and a large area of saline aquifers. The names of pueblos and town, estancias and farms, tell a tale of hard work and high expectations, and sometimes the simple reality of the Chaco: Aguas Muertas and Vaca Muerta; the killing water that finished off the cattle, Rio Muerto and Aguas Verdas; the pessimistic reality of dead green waters. Yet there seems to have been a degree of optimism, a “heavy hope “, or more likely: strong hopes at Fuerte Esperanca.
Moments in Chaco Time: Saturday Evening
Where Saturday afternoon it had been a virtual ghost town, Saturday evening everything and everybody comes back to life. The municipal water tanker vainly attempts to dampen down the sand and dust, market stall holders splash buckets of water across the road and then set out plastic tables and chairs.s An alfresco eatery appears as if by magic outside a private house. Corrugated tin sheets are swung up and out of the way, to reveal dark caverns of mixed merchandise. Chinese cottons and watermelons, cycle pumps and crash hats. All mixed together. Need a new wooden balustrade? Try over between the washing powder and the lemons.
We need to forage for supplies for tomorrow. Bread might be useful, maybe something to go on it, something with a bit of flavour or just some interest. We’re well used to the autoservicios, we know that we won’t get everything that we need in one shop, yet we enter more in hope than in expectation. There will be no illumination, there will be a shelf of yerba mate often with the chemical cleaning products stacked right on top. Around the corner might be pasta right beside the toothpaste. A chiller fridge will have six brands of beer, yet the cheese and yogurt shelves will be empty. We emerge with a packet of dried pasta and a tin of tomato puree. It’s a start, a very slow start. Now for the optimistically names super carniceria, only there’s no meat today – it’s open but there’s nothing for sale. Next the fruit and veg. We find the shop a few blocks away. One part filled box of cosmetically challenged oranges and a pyramid of four watermelons, the sum total of supplies. Not a lot of calorific value in here. We try the next autoservicio we find, and it’s a carbon copy of the last. It does have 20kg bags of refined white flour, and the soap powder is now stacked on the porridge oats.
The one constant in all these places will be a young member of the household feather dusting what little that is available. We are starting to get desperate – we haven’t achieved our objectives, so it’s off to find the panaderia. One look through the door – no we can’t window shop, there are no windows – confirms that we’re back into dry white rusk country. True, there are a selection of shapes from one bit balls to fancy round rings, but it’s same ingredients in them all: super refined white flour, such that when you break one open they explode in a cloud of fine white dust. Useful as a substrate for dipping in dulce de leche, but so would cardboard or cottonwool. Sustenance rating: low.
Eventually we manage to put together the semblance of some road food; we’re near certain that there won’t be another re-supply tomorrow. It takes time, a lot of time to shop and this is a small town where all the shops are reasonably close together, even if it’s difficult to tell shop from a private home, and what exactly are they selling. The vet’s surgery in Dragones that sells bread, the farmacia in Mollinos that would sell you a bedside lamp.
The forager has developed a policy of trying to glean some information before entering: is it meat, vegetables or a chemists? That way you can prepare an exit excuse for when what is on offer is so sub-par, you can leave the deserted place without offence. Asking for bananas in the fruiteria when you can see that there’s none, a tin of tuna – we can always use a spare one, or claim vegetarian status in the carniceria.
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| Bread – but not as we know it |
Having achieved our objective, we can reward ourselves with a visit to the heladeria, the ice-cream shop. Every town has at least one, the problem is that the towns are at least 100kms apart.
We’re having a rest day in Embarcacion, an agricultural supply town on the main highway between Bolivia and Argentina. I’m using the foyer for the WiFi, the sports channel is on, but nobody is watching , but the ads. are informative. Images of organized, supermarket aisles, stacked with produce. One advert is for low cholesterol cheese, another for the seductive power of one bite pizza tartlets, neither, I can guarantee will ever be available in any of the Chaco towns.
Whilst the accommodation is very reasonable , a result of a strong exchange rate, we found the food expensive. If it’s like that for us, I find it difficult to understand how the locals afford it. Although the 20kg bags of flour and the vast bulk bags of pasta should give me the start of an answer.
Moments in Chaco Time: Plagues or Rabbles
The first indicators are the green mesh nets pinned to the front of the oncoming pick-ups and lorries. We’ve seen this before in northern Queensland: prelude to a swarm, a plague of locusts. Now comes a few vehicles with bug spattered windscreens, we suspect that they can’t be very far off. A few large, very large grasshoppers are crouched at the side of the road, possibly the scouts for an avenging foraging army? It’s only then that a few small butterflies start to drift in the wind, out from the bush alongside our road. What starts as a few, soon multiplies into thousands. Not a swarm or a plague but a rabble or a kaleidescope of butterflies. As the occasional passing truck ploughs through them, they are scattered in the swirling slipstream, many are left tattered and torn, in the wake of the behemoth , others end up in the radiator grille, like they are pinned in a lepidopterist’s display drawer. Slowly they drift to the side of the road like albinoed autumnal leaves. We encounter this same phenomenon on consecutive day, always around the same time, so I guess that it‘s a temperature dependent occurrence. As for the grasshoppers, they don‘t evolve from swarm to plague, neither do they hang around to be photographed, they can jump faster than my camera‘s top shutter rating, which is a pity as they have exquisitely patterned fishnet tights on their legs.
Moments in Chaco Time: Me and My Shadow
I think of him as masculine, inflated with ego, ecological superiority as he can annoyingly be. Yet gregarious, and genial company, never arguing or answering back. Early in the morning, he is an elongated stick-like mortal with piston like lower appendages, who’s glorying in the cool light breeze. Yet his nemesis is also his creator, which bifurcates his personality, forcing it into a symbiotic relationship, which out on these level lands, is repeated Ground Hog day after Ground Hog day. A rerun of the same scenario, reiterated as long as he and his omnipotent opponent Sol have has a visual on the land.
Our shadows shrink in inverse proportion to the thermometer’s expansion. Our shadows are laid out before us, two exaggerated leaders that merge and jumble only to be extricated, disentangled a few moments further down the road. Now as Sol climbs, near vertically into his climax, so our followers hide, taking refuge between our wheels, under the pedal cranks. Shrunken and shrivelled specimens of their morning selves. Yet Sol’s scrutiny wavers, as it does everyday, the celestials attention drawn to the western horizon where he’s required for a new noonday on his spiralling track along an invisible Capricornian line. So shadow, like a whipped cur, creeps back out from his imagined sanctuary, tail between his legs, beaten and frazzled by the infernal heat hammering down and the radiating glare pulsing in waves back out of the road.
Moments in Chaco time: Post Meridian Options
A thermograph taken thought the year shows a low daytime average of 17 degrees in September, rising to a peak in late November of 32 degrees. We’ve managed to arrive and to travel across the Chaco at it’s warmest time of year, an area that regularly records Argentina’s peak temperatures. The trouble with averages and statistics are that they don’t give a true picture. We would happily trade down to 32 degrees. Each afternoon we’ve had readings up to 45 degrees. An afternoon sitting in a mozzie burqa at El Espinilla means we’ve made a habit of searching out a fan or even an AC unit. At first we felt (actually the mean Chronicler felt) a tad guilty; an opt out from the proscribed, pre-scripted adventure, like searching out a shower every night. The thin edge of the wedge that leads eventually to credit card touring. So we take an hotel or a Hospedaje room; that turns out to be cheaper than any hostel, less than any European campsite. Heck, we’ve paid more for an hour of internet in an US hotel. We mollify our consciences by still setting up the petrol stove to brew up water for coffee and porridge. To be able to rest up in a refuge, away from the glare, blast furnace hot wind and the voracious mosquitoes has morphed from a luxury to a necessity.The road atlas suggests that the town of Laguna Yema has population of up to 5000, which, from experience suggests that it could have some form of accommodation. The roadside petrol station certainly holds out no chance of a place to pitch a tent; there’s no showers, there’s no shade, there’s no safety rocks or bollards to protect you from any reversing lorries. So we ask after the possibility of accommodation and are pointed of to the side of the yard. A “gas station forecourt “ might suggest a paved area, some landscaped flower borders a degree of organization and order. Here it’s a reality of swirling dust devils and two foraging pigs, an vast expanse of baked earth and drifting sand. It’s siesta and the whole scene is one of desolation. What we’re directed to is a windowless, brick built, flat roofed concrete block house, the only ornamentation a row of six padlocked, ill fitting wooden doors. All rather unprepossessing; we aren’t terribly inspired, but “any port in a storm……” is still a port.
We rouse El Patron from his siesta and once he has hurriedly donned a shirt (when he realises that The Navigator is a feminine), he shows us one of his habitations. First glance shows a selection of three single beds, so its not one of those types of establishments. Second glance, and we realise that the place is immaculate and brand new, and phase two is partially under construction. This impression of constant destruction and construction is one that we see in all these towns on the trans Chaco. It’s to do with the heap of wind-blown sand that accumulates in every bielded corner, the piles of porous bricks left over and not cleared away from the last extension, that will inevitably be required for the next building project. The owner even offers us a separate room for our bikes and when we graciously refuse, insists in covering them in rugs.
Yet again we praise the God of Cyclists who seems to come to our rescue. It is also a timely reminder not to judge a book by its cover.
Moments in Chaco Time: Tanning and the Brickworks
Highway maintenance is partially underway, the potholes temporarily filled with clay. In the dry they are dusty, in the wet they instantly turn to a skid pan. I try to avoid a series of these by way of the hard, now very soft, shoulder. Mistake, a very big mistake, as I accumulate a ballast of gloop. The sun comes out and as everybody knew, it dries as quickly as it got wet. Which is what I tell my bike, the trick is knowing when to start cleaning. Too soon, and it smears every surface, working it’s way into the chain and the bearings, forming an efficient grinding paste; too late, and you might as well build a house with the bricks of baked clay that cling to the stays the frame and my panniers. Cars and the motos have the same problem: their solution is to run their wheels along the flooded gutters. Which has the interesting consequences of various transports competing for space, and my rear wheel covering The Navigator in a warm wash of tan enhancing fluids. A bad case of fake bake.Moments in Chaco Time: The Tomorrow Storm
We’re under a rolling blanket of black and blue storm clouds, the humidity already at saturation point, then it intensifies still further. You can almost feel the static in the air. Strong, gusting wind blows up, opposing the easterly prevailing wind. Next comes a prelude of lightning, which is as good a signal as any, to stop and extricate the waterproofs, get the boots and socks off and into sandals. The first drops are big dollops of warm water, that spatter on the road, releasing pent up smells of baked earth, dry grass and old tea chests. It’s not long before the torrent hits and rivers are running down the side of the road. The motos are still on the road, moving more cautiously as visibility diminishes and rain cascades down their faces. For the Formosan is as rainwear averse as any Scottish fashionista. That or they’re into wet teeshirts and shrunk denim, certainly the poncho-less gaucho who rids past didn’t seem concerned. He knows, just as the motoistas do, that the sun will come out in a few hours and dry everything up again. Moments in Chaco Time: Laguna Blanca
Collecting imaginative and near unique campings is rather easy these days. Commercial sites are a rarity, paying for the privilege uncommon. We’re in the National Park at Laguna Blanca. You could pay thousands to achieve this aspect in Bali or some Melanesian island. By walking down a wooden boardwalk, through the indigenous forest, amongst pond and wetland marginals, suddenly you come out onto a lagoon of mirror calm water. The boards take you out into this vast reflection of intense silver light. An area of water bordered by a low horizon, punctuated by a few date palms, held in place by a vast blue sky. It’s a picture that could come from any expensive southeastern or Conde Nast travel brochure. For this the park service charge 80 pence, ($AR 5) per person and then only on Sundays and holidays. 
The following day we find ourselves on a Reserva at El Espiilla. This time the mosquitoes are waiting in ambush, encouraged by 41 degrees and a humidity that pomises a thunder storm tomorrow. The site is dry. A dry water play park, surrounded by date palms, royal palms and sawgrass. Initially it has the feel of a failed venture, somebody’s attempt at a tourist business. It turns that it is ourselves who have failed as tourists, by touring right out of season. The reserva comes to life, the water is pumped in, the thatch applied to the umbrellas in September.