Rio Turbio


Alone is no distant horizon.

'Charmless' is how the book describes this Argentine coal mining town. In the last 250 miles, spread over three and a bit days, there has been precisely one hotel, one cafe - 'View of the Divine Light' - and a garage. My principal activities, apart from the obvious, have been waiting for sheep, scraping clay from the bike and trying to outrun the Nandus (little emus). I've only taken a handful of photos and one of those was a roadkilled armadillo. Arriving here last night, the town held considerable charms. Kind of Pontefract without whippets.

At the garage, at Tapi Aike, I got talking with Enrique who was the ageing owner of the local Estancia. The plains here are so infertile each sheep requires the equivalent of three football pitches for the farm to be productive. He has 20,000 sheep. ¨The young men aren't interested anymore, they want the towns, they want television, they want electricity¨. The stark emptiness of the last three days may well come to define the latter part of the trip. What beauty in flamingoes feeding from a pool, against a backdrop of nothingness.

A couple of words are proving very useful; 'entonces' and 'claro'. The first is an opener, kind of like 'So..' and I find I can spin it out for at least 5 seconds whilst I come up with the words for the rest of the sentence. 'Claro' is an agreeing word along the lines of 'clearly' and I use it a lot when I haven't a clue what's being said. It makes me feel part of the conversation. ¨Claro, claro,¨ whilst nodding the head. Thankfully I didn't use it on the Rio Turbio miners. ¨So, do you think my wife is ugly?¨ ¨Claro, claro.¨ Goodnight Vienna.

Degrees South: 51.5

Miles cycled: 894