San Antonio de Arecco

We stayed a second night at 35 pesos, to recover. We felt it important to get our confidence back after the first aborted attempt at getting out of Buenos Aires. However, Capilla Del Senor was not much better. No signposts, no road numbers. We had three goes at getting out. We stopped to ask a goucho. He was very nice but I did have difficulty understanding all that Spanish. He told us to avoid the Ruta 8 for its terrible traffic and sent us to another road back at the town.
We couldn;'t find that road so cycled back to the campsite to ask the man there. He directed us via the train station, which we found.

a different goucho we met in Amaicha

Cycling through th town itself we kept running into small packs of dogs. One pack was made up of about 7 or so, who were lepaing after us. I splashed one with water from my water bottle, which shocked him into backing off. The others were now not so keen to chase us.

(nmp)

We carried on to the road and found it was a dirt track that had become sticky mud, thanks to last night's heavy rain. Definitely no good on bicycle tyres, so we turned around. The dogs had completely changed their tune. I waved my water bottle around and their body language became "no trouble, no trouble" as they cowered under a parked truck.

The road was hot, it was the long way around to avoid that 'tierra' road and the goucho had been right: Ruta 8 was a nightmare. A long, straight road with no shoulder and cars/trucks skimming past at over 100km/h. Never have I been overtaken so closely at such speeds. Hair raising.

We got into San Antonio de Arecco, soaked through. We found a tourist information office and the lady there was great. She spoke clearly and slowly so I understood her Spanish and she gave us a lot of her time. She suggested we take the Ruta 9, saying it's not like a European Autopista. It has a big shoulder where buses stop to pick up passengers. We were still a bit sceptical as to how viable Ruta 9 will be. The small town had a WiFi cafe where we googled information on Ruta 9. Licuado Banana is my new favourite drink.

campsite at San Antonio de Arecco

Very talkative neighbour

We stayed the night at Capilla Del Senor. A very talkative Argentinian chap in the next tent (pitched too close to ours). The guy won't bloody shut up. When his girlfriend starts to speak, he just talks louder over her.
There were some spectacular storms in the night but our tent held up pretty well.
We had a sort through our equipment and Al can hardly move his bike, so we threw out a few heavy items. We threw out my fleece (too big and not necessary in the heat here), a bottom bracket (it weighs a ton) and some other bits and bobs we deemed not necessary.

Capilla Del Senor

We tried to cycle out of Buenos Aires but got lost too many times. The signs for the road just disappeared in San Martin. We stopped at a petrol station to ask directions. The chap there tried to arrange for us to get a lift in an ambulance that was filling up at the pump, but got a no. He kept telling us here was peligroso (dangerous). Did he mean by traffic or crime? We weren't sure.
Unnerved, we headed back to central Buenos Aires and asked for directions to Retiro station. From there we caught the train to Capilla Del Senor. This involved a long stop at a station called Victoria.
Argentinian trains are super cheap (75p for a long journey) but the trains reflect that. They're pretty basic and rickety, but we had loads of room for us and our bikes, as seats were somewhat lacking.
The train we caught after Victoria has seats but no indications as to which station you were now at. The second train was busier than the first, with pople getting at one station to loudly sell ice creams to passengers shouting "hay hela-helados, hay hela-helados!" and getting off a few stops down the line. Presumably he does the same on the train heading back.

We got to Capilla del Senor and guessed where to find the campsite.

It was a pretty basic place. The showers had no locking doors and didn't seem to be separated men's from ladies'. The loo block looked like someone had just fly-tipped, as junk was piled all over the place. Still, it had running water and flushing loos and safe spot for the tent. That's all we need.

Buenos Aires

The Hotel Raco is lovely and the staff are friendly. We had lunch at Cafe de Violetas, a beautifully art nouveau style cafe. We ordered foods we didn't recognise and enjoyed. Finally a meal. It was 4pm and I was beginning to get the shakes from low blood sugar.

Dinner we had meat: ojo de bife for me (a large lump of steak with a prune sauce) and Alan had pork. The salad we ordered never arrrived, but we were stuffed in any case.

We went to explore the nearby busy street and sourced cash machines and kerosene. We're also looking for a book called the 'guia de acampante' which lists all the campsites in Argentina. We've already discovered that the 'best map' available in Argentina is not much cop and doesn't show campsites. We looked all over the plae, in every bookshop and finally we gave up.  As it happened, we found one at a roadside magazine stall as we neared our hotel.

We took the underground train into town, called the Subte. The trains are still the old wooden ones, with wooden seats, floors, panels. The doors sliding doors that you just pull open when people want to get off, whether the train is still moving or not.

Flying BA to BA

Check-in was hassle free and the staff even waived us having to pay anything extra for the bikes. Marvellous.
One thing that strikes me is how everything has just fallen into place for this trip:
Al's redundancy within a month of my OU finishing.
Finding tenants one wek before we go and who only WANT the place for 12-14 months

bikes all boxed up, ready to fly

All the parts have been going well, no hitches (except for a dead phone) with all arrangements just all going to plan.

Our 'Louis Vuiton' luggage.