Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Overnight saw the second of three overnight bus trips in a bit over a week. I'd been wondering for the last couple of days whether I'd been scammed, as when I went to buy my ticket out when I arrived in Asuncion, I was told that the one I'd asked for "wasn't running" on Friday, but that they could sell me a ticket at a similar time with another company on a better standard of bus with less money. I was wondering whether I'd arrive at the bus station to discover a non-existent bus (or the long-distance equivalent of the antiques running Asuncion's urban services), but in fact they delivered everything they promised and the only minor annoyance was that the luggage handler unloading things at the border made it known he wasn't impressed at the size of the tip I offered him (although later passengers confirmed that 10 pesos was indeed the going rate).

The far north of Argentina is a lot emptier than adjacent parts of Paraguay, probably because it's at the better end of the available land in the latter but the worse end in the former. Reminds me a bit of latitudinally-roughly-similar areas around, say, Walgett in a wet year. Like the Walgett area, it also has a large indigenous population - obviously they end up with the land no-one else wants here as well. (It's also an area that storm-chasers occasionally salivate over because it can throw up some truly spectacular storms on satellite imagery, but the Argentine Chaco is presumably referred to as "El Impenetrable" for a reason). Can't tell you much about anything further south because I slept through most of it; somewhat to my surprise, we reached Buenos Aires on time.

Spent the middle of the day looking around central Buenos Aires in the company of a friend from the Argentine meteorological service (we've worked together on WMO stuff). In the central city and on the redeveloped waterfront you don't exactly get an image of an economic basket case, though the whatever-the-Spanish-is-for-a-favela on the other side of the tracks (literally) coming into the bus station was a reminder that not all is roses here. There are a lot of grand monumental buildings, streets and squares in this city. One of the latter, the Plaza de Mayo, is the traditional home of protest here and there were two separate crowds there today, a gay-pride festival and a more permanent encampment of Falklands War veterans, although it was not immediately obvious what the latter wanted (other than the islands).

(On crossing the border, after the "Welcome to Argentina" sign and one which said how many hundred kilometres it was to anywhere of consequence, the next one proclaimed "Las Malvinas son Argentinas" (the Falklands are Argentine). There's a Museo Malvinas Argentinas in Rio Gallegos which is definitely on my to-do list if it's open when I'm there).

I delayed the run as long as I could because of one of the major talking points of our lunchtime discussion - Buenos Aires's unexpected run at its November record high temperature. (36.7 is the magic number but I think it ended up about 35). It turned out that there was a seabreeze boundary about 500 metres east of where I was staying and for most of it it was mid-20s (though very humid), so the run was nowhere near as challenging as expected, and proved to be a situation normal day. I'll probably get another shot at serious heat in Mendoza on Tuesday. A toe blister caused me some grief walking on Friday but no issues running.