Day 30 - 04 Jan.2012 - Las Grutas

Exactly one month ago we were still in Aberdeen packing for the trip. It is hard to believe that one third of our holiday has almost passed by. They say that time flies but we can ensure you once you leave Buenos Aires and drive further south it slows down and stretches just like this endless Pampas over here. All is relative.
Soon after we left Bahia Blanca we had to go through a sanitary control. The regulations over here do not allow crossing into the southern region with certain fruits and meat. They let us keep the banana but confiscated our lovely Brazilian salamis. Well we were given an option to consume it then and there at the border if we wished to do so. Then they disinfected the underside of our car. Probably the border control dogs got a nice snack after we had left.
The roads are good and generally very straight disappearing behind the horizon way ahead of us. Apart from a few other cars, the yellow gas pipeline next to the road and us there is virtually nothing else. It is a very plain, flat landscape, filled with grass and low shrubs with this endless road in the middle. Our Tom Tom keeps quiet as well as the nearest ‘turn left’ is in over 200km!
We arrived in Las Grutas in the afternoon and it was still boiling hot. It was like if somebody forgot o switch off the hairdryer. But as we were close to the sea, we thought that in the evening it should cool down and decided to camp nonetheless. It furthermore kept our budget within limits. Since we left Brazil we have been constantly blowing our daily allowances significantly. From what people told us Argentina should be cheaper than Brazil but so far we can only confirm the opposite. Diesel is more expensive and so is food. The hotel in Bahia Blanca, recommended by the Lonely Planet was twice as much as stated in the guide and more expensive than what we would have paid for hotels in Brazil with tiny rooms and a really poor breakfast. From now on we decided not to consult the Lonely Planet guide anymore. It seems to be a victim of its own success and people rising their prices with all the foreign tourists pouring in.
We paid for the campsite £17 for the night – we still have the impression that we are constantly paying “Gringo prices”. It did cool down in the evening indeed but about midnight the wind must have changed bringing the hot air from inland. We were sitting in our tent being steamed in our own juice – it’s all part of the experience.