Argentina.9: First Blood

Sunday dawned clear and warmer. I woke early to take care of my travel plans, and managed to book a flight to Buenos Aires on LAN, the Chilean airline.

I arranged to meet Jessie Tuesday evening back at her apartment and said goodbye to Chris, our new good friend. He was staying in Salta for another day before pressing on into Bolivia as part of a South American tour that was to end up in Colombia. We exchanged email addresses and I told him I would drop him a line if I ever wound up taking my long-desired Southern road trip and he wound up at the University of Mississippi for law school.

I walked to the bus station and tried to figure out where my bus would come. There was no handy overhead board as there had been in Buenos Aires, so I stood along the edge of the platforms and waited. I noticed a number of foreign-looking backpackers and listened carefully to see if any might be speaking English.

I finally decided the couple closest to me must be speaking English, so I inquired carefully. "You guys speak English?"

"Yeah," the guy replied.

"Waiting for the bus to Iguazu, I suppose?"

"Yeah, trying to find out where it's going to come." Good, now I had partners in confusion.

It turned out to be no problem, as the Flecha Bus marked "Tucaman" pulled up right in front of us. We loaded, and it turned out that my English-speaking companions were sitting right across from me. They were from London, it turned out, on their way south after several months of travel starting in Brazil.

A scruffy-looking man boarded and turned to me. "Is that your seat?" he inquired in English.

"Yeah, let me get my stuff out of your way." It turned out I was surrounded on all sides by Londoners in the midst of mega-backpacking vacations. My two weeks' of travel here paled in comparison to my seatmate, who was nearing the end of seven months.

As the bus coursed its way out of Salta and through the foothills, the Londoners discussed their homeland in a rapid-fire conversation that involved a lot of -bridges and -shires. The guy from the couple, Elliot and Abby as it turned out, related with delight the story of a particular village fair where "you've got these three grannies lined up. And at the same time they reach down and pick up a piece of fruit, and if all three hold up the same piece of fruit, you win a prize."

"It's a granny slot machine?" I laughed.

As the ride continued, my British friends were treated to some of the finest cinema my homeland had to offer. Actually, it was a parade of reasons why I was a bit embarassed for my country.

We started off with Failure to Launch, a Matthew McConaughay-Sarah Jessica Parker romantic comedy about a woman hired by parents who want their thirty-something children to move out already. The movie selection was ironic, given that a large number of Argentines live with their parents until they get married -- the peso crash makes it difficult to afford a place by yourself as a young person.

"Do they really have services like that in the US?" Abby asked me.

The next movie started promptly, and we groaned in unison as Wesley Snipes' name flashed on the screen. It was The Detonator, another Hollywood mistake.

We changed buses in Tucaman, and the movie parade continued. This time it was First Blood, Sylvester Stallone's emotional portrayal of the difficulties an ex-Green Beret Vietnam Vet has dealing with civilian life. Things come to a head when he is taken in by an unnecessarily hostile small-town sherriff. Stallone's only real words of the movie come at the end, when he breaks down and babbles incoherenly. Touching.

Night fell, and I turned to reading my book. Outside, things seemed a bit surreal as the bus turned up a strip of pavement wide enough for one car but used in both directions. Cars repeatedly had to pull onto the dirt on the side, kicking up huge clouds of dust that obscured our vision and created an odd brown nighttime fog. I finally pulled my hat over my head and fell asleep.

I woke the next day to a netherworld of broad, fog-covered plains. The mist was so thick that at one point the police were standing in the middle of the road, waving at people to slow down. We finally pulled into the first big stop on our journey, the town of Posadas. I stepped off the bus into a chilly fog, glad to stretch my legs for the first time in more than 20 hours.

Back on the bus, we watched Al Pacino in 88 Minutes, which was at least a good movie if a bit disturbing. As the film ended, I chatted with Abby and Elliot about finding a hostel -- I had already reserved a dorm bed at Timbo Posada, just down the street from the bus station.

The conversation turned to a discussion of how foreign tourists were treated in South America. "All over Ecuador and Bolivia, all the locals would walk down the street, shouting, gringo, gringo!" Elliot said.

"I haven't heard that yet here," I replied, "but I did see graffiti in Salta that said 'Yankees go home.'"

"Don't take it personally," Elliot laughed.

"I don't. Really, they hate you guys a lot more than me."

"I know. We were warned not to mention --" he lowered his voice "-- the Falklands."

The Falkland Islands War is effectively Argentina's only international military conflict since their independence. In 1982, the military government here, seeking to bolster their popularity with an increasingly discontented public, invaded the Falkland Islands (Argentines call them the Malvinas), which were under British control.

These rather uninteresting pieces of rock east of Tierra del Fuego became the site of nearly three months of battle as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher responded with force, repelling the poorly-equipped Argentines in short order. The embarassing defeat was effectively the end of the military junta.

"Well, when we're asked, we're just going to say we're Aussies," Abby said.

"Yeah, and I'm Canadian," I replied. "Anyone want a Molson, eh?"

We pulled into the town of Puerto Iguazu, where the weather was nearly perfect -- about 70 degrees and sunny. Abby and Elliot tagged along with me to my hostel, but said their goodbyes when they realized there were no private rooms available.

I used my awful Spanish to get settled into my bunk, then set out to satisfy an unfulfilled quest -- to eat choripan, a common sausage sandwich. Half an hour of fruitless searching later, I wound up at a restaurant without a written menu. Oops.

Again, my Spanish did not help me much, and after ordering I wound up with a hamburger topped with cheese, egg, and ham (come on, people!) and a beer that was far too big for lunch. I finished quickly, though, and set off to find the post office to send some postcards.

The post office was closed for siesta, so I wandered down to the river. A sign there indicated various activities in Spanish and English, including some spectacular Engrish. "Deportive Fishing," the sign read. Shit, one lousy fishing trip and you find yourself kicked out of the country.