A Week in the Life of Sr. Gringo

Well, it is more like a half of a week in my life. This info was written prior to the posting below and and i should have posted it but I am a busy guy. So, some of this post will be a repeat of the post directly below. Although, since I am posting this one minutes after the one below, there is a good chance you have not read the first post. Good. Read this first.


My week, Monday, March 17 to Thursday, March 20:

I left Iguazu at 23:59 on monday and arrived in Posadas at 0600 or so - without much sleep. I talked to a few people and they told me not to stay in Posadas, so bought the ticket to Salta. It seemed like a place where I could get outdoors and see some beautiful sites. Thes Salta bus left at 13:00 and there was a change of bus at 18:30. I walked around town for a few hours waiting for my 13:00 bus. I was tired and hot as I walked along the river in Posadas. Looking across the river, one sees Paraguay. It looked okay. I thought ´shall I go over and give that country a second chance?`.

I did not.

I caught my 13:00 bus, as planned, and headed west. My 18:30 bus showed up at 20:30. 2 hours waiting in small bus station was not fun. And when the bus finally arrived, it was not as good a bus. I have had great buses with the company Via Bariloche but not this time. The seats seemed smaller than most semi-camas and it seemed a bit on the dirty side.

We were due to arrive in Salta around 0700 Wednesday (my second straight night on a bus) but that would not happend because the bus was late to arrive.

In the middle of the night, the bus was stopped moving. We were in the middle of nowhere. I did not think about it too much as buses often stop - for what appears to be no reason. After sitting there for a bit, without announcements, of course, I recognized that we seemed to be stopped for a longer period of time than normal. As the door to the outside was open and as some people had gone outside, i decided to take a look to see why we were stopped. I got out of the bus and looked up the road to see a fire burning in middle of the road and a number of vehicles spread across the two lanes of traffic.

I was sure we had come upon a horrible accident. Aside from the fire, the scene was eerily dark. The moon was out and the stars looked beautiful on the quiet highway road. The quiet was what struck me. With such an accident (it appeared to be 5 or more vehicles), why were there no emergency workers. Were all the victims taken to the hospital and tow trucks would come later? I asked someone where were the police. He told me they were there but then they left.

As a typical human, I decided to walk up the wrecks to get a closer look at this multi-vehicle pile-up. As I approached, I could see that a pick-up towing a farm machine had jacknifed and then other vehicles seemed to have gone into it. There were some cars, undamaged, off the shoulder. I assumed that they tried to get around the accident but got stuck in the sand-like earth off the shoulder.

As I drew closer, a man came around the farm truck and said `hola` and maybe some other words.

It was at that point that I realized the scene was not an accident at all, rather, it was a protest/blockade by farm workers. They were blocked the main roads throughout the area in which I was travelling. (I do not know if it was country-wide or not.) I then remember someone mentioning that the 18:30 bus was late due to protests.

But who protests at 2:00 a.m. on a two-lane country road? Although it is only two lanes, it is the main road to Salta. If this one is blocked, you`re taking the long road to Salta.

I chatted, as best I could with the protester. I tried to get a bit of his story. More importantly, I tried to find out when they would be moving the blockade. My Spanish is not great, and I missed some of his words, but I did hear the words `martes`. Ouch. `Martes` is Spanish for `Tuesday`. I knew we weren`t going to be sitting there for a week but I was thinking we might be until well into Wednesday morning.

If the blockade would be there for hours, i could not figure out why we were not trying to get around it, one way or another. When I walked back to the bus, I saw that we were in the soft shoulder. It looked like the driver tried to do a K-turn and was worried about getting stuck. A big bus and a two-lane road do not add up to an easy K-turn.

At some point, a pick-up truck comes from our direction, pulls in front of the bus and 4 guys jump out and talk with the driver. It appears they are here to help but I do not know how. I look at their truck and I look at our bus and I think `It looks like a big truck but it is not going to pull that bus.`

After a short discussion, two of the guys slide under the bus and beging working on something. Somehow during the stop something happened to the bus and we were not able to drive. An announcement from the driver may have been nice but that did not happen.

I am not the best mechanic but I think the driver lost the ability to shift gears. If I had known that was the problem, I would have slipped under the bus, put the two rods back togther and tied them down with a little chicken wire. I did the same thing with a Dodge Omni in 1981. No hay problema.

In short order, the guys in the pick-up got back in the truck and the driver started the engine.

After 2-3 hours, we were back on the road. Well, mostly back on the road. It took about 20 minutes to back up and to drive the bus, in reverse, down a dirt road so that we could then go forward on another dirt road for a distance to swing around the blockade.

During all these hours, the bus company gave us a small meal of ham (which I do not eat) and cheese and a cup of soda.. I had some cookies and some water, so I was able to survive. Never get on an Argentine bus without some food, water and toilet paper.

During the morning, when we were about 100km from Salta, we ran into another protest/roadblock. There was no going backwards here as there were 30+ cars behind us within minutes of stopping. At some point, the news came that the protesters would move the blockade at 10:30 a.m. And, good to their word, trafric moved shortly after 10:30. I think we were there for a bit less than 1 hour.

we finally arrived in Salta at 12:30, 5+ hours behind schedule.

I was exhausted after spending most of the previous 36 hours on buses.

On the last bus, I met a Portuguese guy and a Cape Verde guy (travelling together). Since we went through that bus ride together, we decided to find a hostel together. we moved to the hostel but then i went to check out another one that some people with whom I spoke in the Salta bus station recommended. In that second hostel, I met some people from my Spanish school in Guatemala. We had taken lessons at the same time. I had not seen them since December and I had no idea they were in Argentina.

On Wednesday night, depsite the lack of sleep, the 2 guys, the Guate people, and people from their hostel and I went out (after i had dinner at their hostel - best $2 meal i have had in ages). We went out after 1:00. The Guates and some others went home around 2:30+. I decided to continue the night at a disco with 10 or so from our group.

We closed the disco and at 6:30 in the morning (this morning), we made it back to the hostel and to bed. I had to get up before 10 to check out of the first hostel and move to my Guate friends´ hostel. The Portuguese guy had set an alarm for 8:30, don´t know why, so I did wake up in time. Although the alarm sounded every minute for 30 minutes, he did not wake up. I shook his bed but there was no movement - only snores. Not my problem. I let him be.

After the two night buses and the 6:30 a.m. disco evening, I decided to take it a bit easier. However, I do not think I made it to bed before 4:00 during my time and I never slept past 9:00, except today when I woke at 11:00.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

bjm 03.23.08