Solitude and the River Plate

Since returning from Patagonia, I've been exploring Buenos Aires, as well as nearby Uruguay, before heading northwards towards Brazil. I'm currently in Resistencia, an obscure city that doesn't offer much except for a good place to break up the journey.

Perhaps I've configured my itinerary badly, as I find myself too often sitting around waiting a full day in a dead-end town for a bus. I don't like the idea of super-long bus journeys as I have real trouble sleeping, but is the answer to travel this slowly? I was telling some Resistencia locals on a long distance bus that the reason I was going to visit their town was to break up my journey; they then told me they were on day three of a 60 hour bus trip from the far south to the far north of Argentina. I can't fathom that. Seasoned travellers (you know the type: smelly, shirtless, bearded) will tell you 60 hours is easy. I don't really care though - I prefer to sleep in a bed when I'm on holiday.

I haven't had a meaningful conversation in English for a week. I've spoken lots of Spanish, but it's not the same. Try going a week without being able to really express yourself to another person whom you know fully understands what you are saying. The solitude can be great, but sometimes it does my head in. I always made a big deal about being an introvert, but I think that I really desire human contact, and in a mutually fluent language, too.

I have met people though - a number of Spanish-speaking travellers, as well as being stuck seated in the middle of a big family with lots of young kids on yesterday's 12-hour bus. I didn't really speak to them until I saw the little boy trying to open a packet of mayonnaise - I said to the girl next to me, "I don't think that's such a good idea," as I was closest to the kid. She took it off him, and he burst into tears, and stayed that way for fifteen minutes. But I knew I had done the right thing. I got to talk to the family after that, and they were fascinated to hear where I was from.

The obsession in this part of Argentina and Uruguay is a green tea called mate. Locals drink it from a gourd of mashed up leaves through a straw, and refill water from a thermos. You see them carrying thermoses under their arms everywhere - seems like a bit of a burden just for a drink, to lug this thing around all day. But it's huge here, and a guy offered me some, and it was nothing special, but there's obviously something I'm missing, because they love it.

Montevideo, Uruguay's capital, was cool. It was like Havana in Cuba - crumbling facades, Art Deco buildings and a long sea wall. And a big peach fair. Just heaps and heaps of peaches, plus peach jam, peach juice, displays on peaches and their relevance to the Uruguayan economy, etc.

Buenos Aires is a big city, and hard to get one's head around. There are superrich neighbourhoods (I visited a luxury homewares mall where they sell designer toilet seats) but the poverty is so visible, even without straying into the poor neighbourhoods. Mothers and children hunt through garbage bags on major pedestrian streets as the rich walk by; little girls are selling stickers and tissues on the metro to anyone who will have pity.

At the same time, some sights are marvellous. The city has a big obelisk in the middle of a 8-lane-each-way road, and to just watch the city buzzing here at dusk is unbelievable. So many people, cars, billboards, everything. No one bothers you because everyone is too busy getting on with their own life. In contrast, the tourist-oriented Caminito section of the Boca neighbourhood is a nightmare. It's over-exploited by people out to make money out of tourists (and who can blame them?) but it feels so tacky, so manufactured, and the tourist is the centre of attention there, and can't escape the constant hassling.

I didn't really get to meet any local people unfortunately, but I got a mixed view. The bus terminal is full of people unwilling to help you navigate its terrible design, while in the rain you can expect to be dodging umbrella prongs and to be forced to step into puddles to make way for everyone. But at the same time I saw generosity - amidst the bustle of the metro, a young man intercepted a blind man from walking into a wall, put his arm around him, and asked him where he wanted to go, ready to guide him in any direction.

That's enough for now, I think.