Vacation: Pt. 3 - Bodacious Cowboys, Such as Your Friend, Will Never Be Welcome Here.

Farewell wires, silicon chips, and internal combustion. Goodbye concrete, asphalt, and liquid refreshments; onward to the pampas, onto the plains with the sound of oiled leather.

And with that, we were on the move across Argentina, to the south, past the sprawling suburbs of Buenos Aires, the edges of the great delta, and the first invasions of open grassland. I would have seen them all, but on a night bus to Santa Rosa, with only the occasional streetlight flashing though the dark of the cabin, I had to content myself to a Hollywood throw-away and fitfull sleeping.

Dawn sharpened over Santa Rosa, capital of La Pampa, and the only city of any significance for several hundred miles. The city, pleasant as it is, has little to offer besides low houses, faded paint, and cheap sandwiches; I munched on a fine pollo milanesa watching Dadok bargain for our rental car. I was doing nothing, nothing but wait for morning to turn to midday.

"I can mash potato. I can do the twist. Now tell me baby: do you like it like this?" A supermarket compilation of overplayed 50s classics is the only soundtrack to our southbound truck; the radio draws a blank. We're pushing across the continent to an isolated ridge of red rocks rusting in the chrome-bright sun. With unkicked tires rolling along, a hundred kilometers clicks by in converted units. But, every thirty minutes, do the highways love me?

We turn off the highway onto a gravel road when the sign tells us to; even in the wilderness, signs hold some power. Parque Nacional Lihue Calel, as the cheerful ranger tells us, is empty: "You can check out the museum building, but remember to close the door when you're done." Thousands of acres of Argentine land, ours to claim.
Though beautiful, the park is - at best - starkly beautiful; that is, by the time I left, I had the suspicion that the boundary fence seemed to lean inward, as if whatever desert emanated from Lihue Calel needed to be contained more than protected. Nevertheless, our campground was in the shadow of an intimidating mountain of jagged boulders, over which lay....nothing, the most beautiful nothing in the world.
We climbed about 600 meters in twenty minutes to see the sunset into the pampas, and it didn't disappoint. If only it could have lingered more, the sun melting so, until only the saffron glow lit the way down. Later, I slept in the pickup bed, under thousands of unknown stars, seen between the passing clouds for what felt like the first time.
Two days beneath the sun and the stars, two days with buzzing and creeping interlocutors, two days with iodine water. On our final afternoon, the sky filled with clouds rolling in from the north. Then from the south. Then from the west, a swirling torrent of rain, rain driven horizontal, came to wash away two days worth of footprints.
"They said you was high class; well, that was just a lie." The Toyota Hilux once again rolled through the Argentine version of Baker, Barstow, and Berdoo back to Santa Rosa. There we were met by a cheery, rambling man with a black idling truck, ready to take us two hours north to his estancia. Dadok had been insistent that we spend a night at an estancia, even if it was by far the most expensive part of the trip. Not wanting much of fight I had acquiesced. To be fair, after two days in the desert, the possibility of a fluffy bed, hot food, and showers was enough to tempt me.

The man must be in his seventies - he said he finished at Bowdoin in 1958 - and has lived a colorful life as Eastern European immigrant, ranch baron, and hotelier. He owns vast swaths of the pampas, knows the names of the grasses, and clearly loves his life. His wife, a homely chain-smoking Argentinian woman, is very warm. They have it figured out, boy howdy.

Immediately upon arrival, it's time for lunch. (To explain our subsequent hunger, I should mention that Jeff Warren and Alex White - two former FOOT leaders - led us on POW rations while camping. We ran out of food, which led us to buy disappointing breakfasts at a gas station. I made off the best on that deal: mmm, mini-muffins filled with dulce de leche.) First course was some sort of rolled dough (cornmeal, actually) filled with tuna, served cold. Very strange, even more so when the frosting on top of my portion turned out to be mayonnaise. Then it was time for veal milanesa, dozens of them. I had eight, plus mashed potatoes. Zoltan (a fine European name) kept egging us on, like he was our relative. Then dessert.

Not surprisingly, I took a nap for most of the day. Jeff and Alex White rode horses, I think, while Zoltan took the other two around in his truck. We all gathered before sundown, piled in the truck, and headed out west to the highest hill to watch the sunset over the prairie. Very romantic. A few small cows lowed in the background.
The man himself had turned on the 50s classics, perhaps more appropriately. "Blue moon, you saw me standing alone." We zipped by fence posts in the twilight. "Without a dream in my heart." Dust clouds billow as we turn a corner. "Without a love of my own." The wind resonates across the windowpane.

And then dinner, out, under the stars. This was just pure asada, with nary a vegetable in sight. Cow after cow crossed our plates; tender, juicy, steamy, flame-kissed cows. Behind me, the Platters' pleas rolled across the lawn, "I count the moments, darling, until you're here with me, at last, at twilight time."
The next morning we rushed for the bus out of Santa Rosa, back to Buenos Aires and one last day in the city. Over nine hours I saw the last hints of grasslands, the first trickles of the great delta, and slowly, certainly, the long stretches of urban eternity. An unremarkable day later, LAN takes me home to Lima. Ciao, Argentina, ciao.

Home to Lima. I've been here barely four months but Lima - hectic, sooty, divided, loud, delicious Lima - is my home. To celebrate, we sang a song of worn-in shoes in a worn-out cafe.