First of all, Lonely Panet is a travesty that should be avoided at all expense. I thought maybe it was just lousy because it's South America and things change moment by moment but they are actually just useless. I knew it from Cafayate, where they pass through for half a day just asking where they should mention - and then put the best restaurant as the one that has open sewers and roaches the size of auntie's bunions in the kitchen and everyone gets Montezuma. No one who lives there would ever eat there. I travelled 1000 miles across the country and back using a year old LP and of course the prices were hysterical - everything is at least double now but what really yanks my chain is that they are always wrong. The hotels they recommended in Cordoba were hideous, the restaurants in Tucuman all have the wrong hours so after driving ten hours, I walked to a restaurant that would open two and a half hours later than LP claimed - SHODDY. At least in NOA you have North West Nomad News (Renamed The Grapevine for the next issue) where the editor runs around checking everything at great personal expense so that the visitor is not Nixie Noxed. Apparently my mate the editor at Time Out Buenos Aires does the same. OTHERWISE HOW CAN YOU BE A GUIDE?
Driving in the car across endless fields of soya and peanuts and maize then sugar, it was weird remembering how people claim there is not enough world for everyone. They haven't been to Argentina. It is so endless. It's just endless. Just when you think you are nearly there, you look at the odometer and realise that you are barely a third of the way there. It goes on and on, flat, green, birds taking off and smashing into the windscreen, desperately looking for a hotel, not seen one for the last 500 kilometres but must find one before night totally falls and I am blinded by oncoming lunatic truck drivers. Red-flagged shrines lining the road. Cheeky peajes demanding tolls for pot-holed one-lane highways. You need to look for a hotel in Argentina about four hours before you might need one - There are not convenient Travelodges nimotels route 66 style-y. A Relais Routiers would be divine. Man I love France.
Somewhere in Cordoba province (about 700 km from Cordoba city) I tuned in to a tango radio station in the car. Between tangos the presenter gave a diatribe about the Malvinas/Falklands. He was beyond incensed. His arms were wangling around through the speaker. Los ingleses son malditos. The English are crap. We are the only race in the world you can publicly insult - everyone else gets to scream racism and bigotry - the English just hang their heads in shame for controlling the world. The Americans don't know about shame yet.
Finally I reach SMde Tucuman Ciudad. Drive in through the villa suburbs, kids chucking rocks at my new auto. (A villa is a favela, a shanytown, not a sun-soaked white house on the beach). Pitch up at the hotel and negotiate a discount off the silly prices for the 50 degree summer exodus. It's raining. Did I mention it's been raining forever? In Buenos Aires streets were flooded, we had no electricity in Palermo for five days and people were surf-boarding down Santa Fe Avenue. The men were the same as ever though. Breaking out into cold sweats that you are in their face and then begging and pleading that you return as soon as you leave. (They used to do this in NY too so maybe it's a big city thing - so many chicas, so little time - an excuse for F-wits)
Why is 'I need you' a favoured message of the Argentine male? Does a woman really give a damn what you need after you have treated here with insufficient respect or is 'I Need You' designed to make us feel exceptional.
Oh how I love France too!
But here we are.
Posted by: Cherie | February 25, 2010 at 11:03 PM