Adventures of YB125 in Argentina. Part 1

I continue the story of traveling with my wife in South America on Yamaha YB125 named "Friend". In this story, we begin the trip through Argentina. As usual, a lot of stories and photos. Let’s start!
Let me remind you that for the first time we crossed the border with Argentina, leaving Chile after an epic with a poor-quality tire, because of which we had to change and repair the camera 13 times on the primers of the Chilean Patagonia. In a small town in the post office, a new tire and two cameras to it were waiting for us.

The Chilean mountains have not melted yet on the horizon, and as soon as you turn your back on them, facing the endless plane, your heart becomes heavy. It is comforting that Argentine Chalten will still be ahead. In the meantime, we get used to it. To new money, prices, the sound of the language, the smell of smoke-filled rooms, the singing and whistling of songs of passers-by, the lack of food to which we are accustomed, the sounds of football from every window, every refueling, store, etc. There is even a new payment system for camping! The price is summed up from individual parts: per person, vehicle, tent. Argentinaaaa...

Of the campgrounds, there is only one - municipal (there is no Internet in it, the Internet is at the gas station), this municipality creates the impression that we put a tent in the city park. The streets are empty, shops are almost always closed, poplars turn yellow, stray dogs busily scurry about their business (there are few of them, and friendly ones are even less). Yearning…
There are no entertainments here. Delicious food is an inaccessible and doubtful entertainment. Well, for example, in a cheap diner a plate of lentils costs 150 Argentine pesos ($7), some "tacos" (as they call it) with an incomprehensible filling of "everything" costs 250 Argentine pesos ($12). The stores are also almost empty. We have our own lentils, that's why we entertain ourselves with the torment of employees of the tourist information center, employees of the administration of the Patagonia National Park.
All people are scary polite, but do not really know anything - it tires a bit. Everything opens at 11 a.m., and after 12 p.m. they go to lunch and have an afternoon nap, apparently (they do not eat until 4-5 pm). In general, we flirt with stray dogs and wander through empty squares. Forced to wait for news from the store of motor parts.

This friend also feels bored in Los Antiguos. For three days we met it in different places of the town, and it began with the fact that it went to sleep at the campsite, picked a patch of grass near our tent and spent the whole night snarling.

Right from the gate of paradise we fell out onto the sinful land. Look at this "beauty"!

But we completely changed our views for a few months. Follow our stories, and you will see how in three months we will fall in love with Argentina, sincerely.

Mate
Step one – Mate. Someone gives mate esoteric features and turns drinking almost into a ceremony, someone on the contrary is so disdainful that washes the grass before drinking cold water. In fact, in all this there is no esoteric, of course, but there are certain rituals, breaking which, you can’t catch the present.

Mate - a drink from the leaves and stems of the holly Paraguayan - from time immemorial it is customary to brew water that does not reach the boiling point (ideal temperature is 80 degrees). It was this fact that despised the conquistadors. The Spaniards mistakenly considered it a dirty Indian potion, a breeding ground for all diseases, and therefore not only did not welcome its drinking, but also forbade it.

The leaves and stems of the holly Paraguayan are an unimaginable set of vitamins, microelements, antioxidants, more than ten amino acids and soft caffeine, which is somewhat different from the caffeine contained in coffee and tea, and even recently it was isolated by scientists as a separate alkaloid matein.
Today, scientists recognized the fact that all this set of utilities works only when brewing mate water, not brought to a boil. Too hot water not only makes the drink almost useless, but also can make it harmful. Correctly brewed mate is much safer than the usual black tea, tk. does not burn mucous surfaces. And as you know, the systematic reception of hot drinks or food (more precisely, systematic burns of the mucosa) can increase the risk of cancer. It's amazing how the tradition of mate is accurate in its details.

The further from Chile, the less rabbits on the roads and the more ... Armadillos! It's some kind of aliens, not animals! As if created by drawing! Absolutely defenseless pacifists. The whole self-defense of the armadillo boils down to three actions: to escape, to dig into the ground, to obfuscate. That's why they are eaten by everything here. Not only by pumas, but also by humans.

We don’t imagine how it is possible to eat armadillos. A meek, defenseless and incredibly beautiful creature, with warm skin, fleshy heels and incomparable, completely not unpleasant odor (like hay). It turned out that the older the armadillo, the more hairy it is. This is apparently already an ancient grandfather:

In Argentine Patagonia, pumas are at the top of the food pyramid. Or mountain lions. They are not audible and can be seen only if they do not mind. We stare into the plains and canyons, hoping to see it from afar, and puma, perhaps, right now at this moment looks after us very close.

Sierras Blancas
Sierras Blancas is a special place! Today, work is going on (slow) to make it a tourist park. Despite the name, it's still a white canyon, more precisely a branched chain of canyons stretching for several tens of kilometers. And if, for sure, almost everyone in Pico Truncado can point to the direction of Sierras Blancas, only a few can show approaches to the most interesting. Eksekel - the best :) @ exequiel.elias Who will be here, look for this guy to see another Patagonia.

There are still a lot of fossilized trees in these areas.
Argentina is a country in which it is almost useless to rely on dates and to take into account the agreements. There is nothing here that could not be postponed until tomorrow. We are still surprised by the fact that somehow important and not very events are going on in the country (from presidential elections to football matches and rock concerts). Our departure for a long time depended simply on when the moto shop finally opened, in order to buy spare cameras for insurance.
It turned out that along with a good tire, inappropriate cameras were sent by mail! One was smaller than the diameter, and the other was twice as wide. In order not to send back to the online store and not wait another two weeks, we decided to exchange it at a local moto-stall for cameras of our size.

To be continued...