Breezing Through the Pampas
31 december 2000
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, ìSee that man at the next table? He's the rancher.î 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
