The hardest thing about this journey is leaving the
people we meet and come quickly to love. Fortunately,
Guillermo and Erika were coming with us! We were
planning to meet them in Buenos Aires but got lost and
never found the meeting place. (It really is a huge
city.)
We had previously decided that we would spend the
night in Sierra de la Ventana, a beautiful mountain
town and that, perhaps, we could wait for them where
Highway 76 meets Highway 72, which would take us to
Sierra de la Ventana. Finally, at noon, we decided to
get on the highway and we'd follow that plan and find
them on the road. We left Buenos Aires and headed out
through the Pampas. We were in a pretty big hurry to
get to Ushuaia by this time. We were hungry, though,
and decided to pull off in a restaurant in the middle
of nowhere, hoping that Guillermo and Erika would see
the vans there. Still no Green Westy but we had
wonderful steaks for lunch. We told the owner how
much we were enjoying the beef and he said, �See that
man at the next table? He's the rancher.� The beef
is fed only grass but what grass it is! The pastures
go on for hundreds of miles and the grass is a really
beautiful golden color. It obviously is the high
quality of the grass that creates such wonderful beef.
Alas, time to move on and still no Guillermo and
Erika. We took Highway 3 south, found Highway 76 then
Highway 72. All the roads were beautiful asphalt and
we made very good time. Sierra de la Ventana is a
very small town so we drove down to the end, scoped
out campgrounds, went to the grocery store and to the
Locutorio (phone center) and called Erika's house.
Her mom was there and told us they'd waited until 1 pm
for us and then decided, as we had, to hit the road.
That meant they were only an hour behind us. We sped
back to the crossroads to wait for them. Sure enough,
within minutes, we were all settled down in the
campground for the night. The next day we got a
fairly early start and headed south on Highway 33 to
Bahia Blanca where we picked up Highway 3 again and
soon crossed into Patagonia.
Jeanne
