Man Down In Buenos Aires

I remember the feeling as I started the engine at 5.30 in the morning and headed north to Zambia, it was a feeling of vastness, a slight emptiness in my stomach. I am scared. Not scary scared, just a tad nervous!

It is the way that Khaia looks at you when you pat her and tell her not to worry as we will be coming back, and a little gremlin at the back of your mind says “God willing”. The gate clicks shut behind you, a tear or two is supressed and I say to myself “Come on now, let’s do this thing!” It is silly really as we don’t have to do it, we could have carried on sleeping until seven then gone for our usual walk on Muizenburg beach, but we have chosen otherwise. Now as we fly due West at 900 km/ hour the reason for why we (Ewa & I) have chosen to leave our little nest and venture on a motorbike into the unknown becomes apparent! We are flying Malaysia Air. It is 8.45 in the morning and we have been offered a beer or wine with our breakfast, now how good is that? I think it is the first time that I have turned down either of these refreshments in favour of coffee! I will never learn Spanish if I start the day with a glass of Chardonnay or a Pilsner and I doubt it will do much for the concentration needed to keep the motorbike upright. But now I am excited.

Mugg (and Bean) shot leaving

We are surrounded by an incredible cross section of humanity, all shapes (some I might add are rather pleasing shapes) sizes, colours and languages. I deduce that garam is Malaysian for salt, I would never have thought of having Peppermint Crisp ice cream with my breakfast. I am excited by the variety and excited by the challenges ahead. Some things don’t change; Ewa will do a cross-word puzzle come what may. We all have our choices!

I am excited about something else that has absolutely nothing to do with our travels. Having watched that movie about Marc Zuckerberg and Facebook and read about him in Time, then chatted to Justin about Wikileak, I am suddenly a little bit more aware of the power of these social networks. Then I read in the paper about how Mohamed Bouizazi set himself alight as the governing authorities of Tunisia would not listen to his cries for help. Censorship tried to supressed such news, but now a massive protest arranged on Facebook forced the local Governor to resign and spurred the President to investigate. Imagine if the social networks grew to the extent where the world was united, so the politicians, institutions and governing bodies of the world become accountable to the voice of the people they are meant to serve? We were astounded by the proliferation of cell phones in Africa, but maybe this phenomena will be used to enforce political accountability in the future? No more CIA arranged coups. It is interesting to see in which countries Facebook is banned. Most of the countries where civil rights are lacking. I don’t believe governments will be able to suppress freedom of information for long. Zuckerberg for President!

BA from the Air

Cape Town to Buenos Aires is 7004 km. You leave at 8.30am and arrive at 12.30 pm in time for lunch, better try and get fifty winks

The Argentinian economy collapsed in 2002. You may wonder why this is the very first thing that I mention on arriving? The answer is: Because the guide books do not mention that a collapse in the economy of a country means that ATM’s are not that common place due to the fact that they need to be filled with money. Now if there is no money there is little point in installing machines that dispense this somewhat rare commodity. It is not something that you just print, unless of course your name is Bob Mugabe. Bob-a-job. I could add a few more people to this list!

The effect of this shortage means that people hold on to cash and don’t give it to the banks because they don’t trust them. It also means that you can not get on to the local busses as they only take coins, because if you gave the bus driver larger denominations of folding notes they would have to dispense change which is not available. So you need coins of the right denomination to get on the bus. I am also told that the exchange rate for coins is higher than notes, so maybe the bus companies are propagating the system!

We arrived at Izeiza International airport, which is situated about38 kms outside Buenos Aires. There are three ways to get to downtown BA. Local bus which costs US $0.50 and takes 1.35 hours. There is an intermediate smaller bus that kinks to a subway system that takes 1 hour and costs US$ 12; then there is the taxi option that takes 50 mins and costs US$ 30.

Three guesses which option we take! The first option. Picture the scene. We change a $50 note into local currency at the exchange booth in the arrivals hall. We are warned not to change much as the rate of exchange should be 4:1 but at the airport we would only get 3.5:1, but we need local currency for the bus. With Peso’s in hand we think we are now in a position to commence our journey.

As you may be aware my wife has signs of Osteoporosis, now one of the treatments for this condition is weight bearing exercises. So to help her to diminish the effects of this condition I am forced to load her up like a pack horse. She is a good sport and does not complain as she knows that my only concern is her good health. I put one rucksack on her back, another on her front and the two helmets in either hand. The walk to the bus terminal is only about half a km, but it is only about 38 degrees C so very doable!

LOADED PACK-HORSE

  

We make the terminal no problem and wait for the number 84 bus which has been changed to an 8 bus. You could see who had been reading Lonely Planet. All the people who didn’t get on to the No. 8 bus! It arrives and I assist the pack horse onto the bus with a firm push from behind. My hands were free as all I had was a small purse containing large denominations of US$ and a Sudoku puzzle. My wife had the local currency. She tenders a 50 Pesos note,  “ machos xxxxxxdes” which simply translated meant “get off the bus and come back with coins”. The Pack Horse had not learnt to reverse and my hands were free so I helped her off the bus backwards. She should not have worried as there were many people waiting to enter the bus so if she fells backwards it would have been a soft landing and the pack on her back would certainly have cushioned the fall. I was a little concerned as she looked as though she was over heating, and we wouldn’t want that at this early stage of our travels, so I went and bought myself a Coke. There was method in my madness as I was thirsty and we needed change to get on the bus. Not knowing how to ask for change in Spanish I thought I would buy a Coke from a vending machine by placing a reasonably large note in the machine and waiting for the change. You got it! The machine dispensed the Coke but kept the change! I am now standing next to a vending machine that said it owed me money, my wife was loyally waiting and overheating with said load at the bus stop. I now had no change, I couldn’t leave my position as there was enough change to buy refreshments for most of the arrival hall, and if I did not know the Spanish for change I certainly did not know the Spanish for “Please could someone call the fellow who operates this machine in order that I could get the money due to me and if possible please tell that OAP by the bus stop that I will be coming in due course!”

That is what can happen if the economy of a country collapses .I managed to get my money back, get some change, but sadly this took so long that I finished the Coke!

The start of the route for the No. 8 bus is at the airport, so we managed to take up the whole of the four rear seats. Once unloaded Ewa’s colour changed back to normal which was pleasing.

Taking the bus was the right option as not only was it cheap, the route took us all through the outlying areas of Buenos Aires.

MAN DOWN BIKE IN HAMBURG!

I wanted to complete this blog four days ago. Doff, slap, pap, all wonderfully descriptive Afrikaans words. Right now I am all of the above. I have Maleria. When the Doc says you must carry on, taking the prophylactic for four week after you leave the infected area, they know what they are talking about! I have so much to write about, but I really am too pap to do so, so I hope to start writing again on Tuesday and tell you about this very interesting city and its delightful people. As for the bike? It would appear that Rholig Grinrod do not know how to connect the dots. The bike is still in Hamburg waiting for documentation that I had to tell them how to fill in. Can you beat it, their business is shipping and they cannot get a container from Cape Town to Buenos Aires!

Need to get horizontal, the medication is worse than the disease!