From Foz I said a reluctant goodbye to Brazil where I'd really respected the guys on the street who had given me a nod and casual “ola” simply out of civil bonhomie, plus the oh-so natural smiles and joie de vivre of the women, as well as the evident struggle to survive for so many in the jungle (wood or concrete) with its abundance of dangerous animals. Not forgetting the coconuts or sucos or Becky.
So from there I headed to the border, then across a bridge into north-eastern Argentina on a local exhaust spewing bus I'd hopped on early morning, about 75 metres from the hotel doors. By 9am we were pulling into Puerto Iguacu from where the bottom of the waterfalls can be viewed.
A friendly guy in a kiosk sold me smokes and changed $100 at the Argentinian non-official rate, so I walked away with $150 worth of pesos. I've never made so much money travelling. Second stop was for coffee and croissants which I found at the bottom of a Sunday-empty small town main drag. Outside the cafe was a supremely fit and tanned Swiss Miss dragging coolly on a cigarette.
“Hi,” she said when I'd stuffed the grub down, going on to tell me that she'd just qualified as a teacher in Basel - seeming not at all happy about the prospect of classrooms and kids - and was doing this four month venture solo around the entire South American continent before the world of work begins. Hats off to her, and alongside perfect English and Spanish she certainly had the confidence and wit to survive. She wanted to talk though, and talk she did. After about an hour of this my lapsing attention was perked up by the mention of Bariloche, a resort town in the Andes about 2,225km distant, a place I was umming and ahhing about going to.
“Really touristy, tacky and way overpriced,” Swiss Miss told me with such no-nonsense distaste that as a result I ditched the idea to see the mountains – pretty much brown rock all the way along, desert in places – because nothing can better the Himal Massif, and it would be four or five days on a bus through an unchanging landscape, so instead I chose to explore inland Uruguay (the land of good old Pepe Mujica) via Santa Fe, which is still in the Argentine.
Contrary to what I'd read on an online timetable, the bus left at 9pm rather than 1..30pm, and so I had all day to kick around town, hindered by a blazing sun.
Swiss Miss gave me a cute kiss, picked up her laundry and set off north in the opposite direction, and after whiling away the afternoon in the shade of a hostel garden where the drunken receptionist kept yelling, “They stole our spoons!” by early evening I sat eating a beefburger at a table on the pavement and watched a pretty little girl, maybe 10 years old, watch out from a step over a sheet covered in friendship bracelets, wooden parrots and toucans. There was no hard sell or pestering of passers by, just a gentle smile and educated patience. Business not being brisk, for sure she was hungry.
Argentinian burgers are BIG – 8 inches square - and I ate half then wrapped the remainder in a napkin, got up and paid. On the way out I handed the burger to the girl and for some reason told her what it was. She replied with the sweetest “gracias senor” I'll ever hear. I gave her a bottle of water too and she smiled shyly and took it with tiny, grubby hands.
As everyone knows, I'm far from sainthood, but I had felt unbelievably selfish stuffing my face, pockets full of pesos, while kids went hungry nearby.
The walk was uphill to catch a night bus to Santa Fe, on which I struggled to sleep with the image of that girl's innocence playing on my mind.
Troubled sleep did eventually come and I woke, still sad, in sun-kissed arable land, cows galore, near the town of Corrientes. Then I became angry thinking of recent news from my 75 year old mother about a family member who had been harassing her, letting her know exactly how much he expects to inherit when she dies. Nice, huh? But don't worry, because when I'm next in the UK, I'll show the scrounging slob exactly what he's going to get.
At some point, out on the flat fertile prairie dotted with trees, covered in cows, we were stopped by police who boarded, checked out every face and ID card before pulling off two skinny young Chinese backpackers.
While the cops questioned them on a grass verge it soon became obvious that this would drag on and so passengers not in trouble with the law began getting off too, ostensibly to smoke or stretch legs. I chatted with a student from Rosario and told him I was Dutch, then word came that the Chinese tourists were from Hong Kong, couldn't speak English or Spanish, and had failed to get stamped entry visas in their passports. As we stood around in the audience, field of horses behind, two plainclothes guys, guns in holsters, handsome and muscled enough for the movies, interrogated them.
One cop spoke English and shouted at the girl cowering on a plastic seat that had been offered her by the driver's mate. “Why no visa? Why! Where enter Argentina?” Non comprendo, so I volunteered my services as a speaker of rusty Mandarin, which they couldn't understand either as they only spoke Cantonese.
Must have been a pretty strange trip not speaking or comprehending one single word, and I imagined them cuddling desperately, whispering to each other up and down the continent, peeking out from under brims of baseball hats, scuttling from place to place in abject fear.
After two hours on the grass, followed by a trip to the nearest cop shop where phone calls were repeatedly made, the Hong Kongers were finally given a stamp and we went on our way, the girl curled up on a seat, whimpering on the road to Santa Fe.