Losing our Memory

Awright, so we changed scene completely from the idyllic lakes of northern Patagonia for the sunny spring vibe of Rosario, which is a few hours west of Buenos Aires. This only took 26 hours of bus travel, the longest haul of our trip. What I should clear up now is that there are no photos of Rosario as we foolishly left the memory card at the hostel when we left! Rubbish eh?

Anyway, I´ll try and describe it as best I can and maybe you´ll be able to picture it. We happened to arrive on the national "Day of the Student", and being a beautifully sunny Sunday afternoon, the riverfront park area, which stretched for miles along the length of the city, was packed with around 20,000 students sipping maté, shooting the breeze and just generally hanging out and enjoying the weather. This seemed like a pretty good idea to us so we pulled up a patch of grass and soaked up the vibe. We spent the next few days exploring the city on bikes, heading to the sandy river beaches, and shopping for some low-crotch, alladin-type, babucha/hammer pants for Tessa.

Another overnight bus only just brought us to Resistencia in the north (we very almost missed our stop!). We found ourselves in the poorest place we had yet visited in Argentina, (the bus terminal was located next to a sprawling shanty town) and also certainly the least touristy. The folk at the tourist office seemed to think it a real treat to actually get to talk to some tourists and people were constantly asking us where we were from. One kid of about 17 stopped us in the street to try and sell us something or get us to sign up to something; the conversation went a little like this:

Kid: Where are you from?
Us: New Zealand
(Kids eyes get real big and a look of sheer confusion crosses his face)
Kid: What?
Us: New Zealand. It´s a country in the southern hemisphere, near Australia.
Kid: What?
Us: New Zealand. Like the All Blacks and rugby (this often works in these sorts of situations in Argentina)
Kid: I... I don´t understand.
Us: New Zealand. Its a country.
Kid: I don´t... I don´t understand. (He´s getting a little panicky at this stage)
Us: Maybe you can look it up on a map. (And we left it at that)

So Resistencia decided one day that it would be the sculpture capital of Argentina. Its not as though there is a thriving community of sculpturers and artists in Resistencia, they had to get them in from other parts of the country, but its pretty cool all the same. Of the 530 sculptures dotted around the city on every street corner, park, and median strip, we managed to see around 100 of them. They range from tiny wee brass figures on podiums nestled behind trees on the footpath to giant monstrosities that are lit up at night. It definately added some interest to an otherwise fairly quiet town.

From Resistencia we went for a short trip over the river to its twin city, Corrientes. We were a little curious to see what the town was like after reading a particularly unprofessional outburst in the lonely planet guide book that went something along the lines of "F*ck Corrientes!" It was actually a really nice town with a great waterfront area along the river which was busy with people sipping maté, walking dogs and enjoying the sunshine. We arrived at the bridge just in time to catch the very pretty sunset.

We walked into town for some dinner and found out why Resistencia was such a sleepy town. All the young people go to Corrientes and on a Friday night they invade the centre of town. It was a madhouse, we had to try and push our way through hoardes of teenagers loitering about and filling all the restaurant tables to drink soft drinks. After pushing and shoving our way around for an hour, we hadn´t found a single decent place to eat so we gave up on the madness and settled for the quiet life of Resistencia.