Dry land, full of dust
Trip Start
Dec 30, 2006
1
16
20
Trip End
Jan 19, 2007
Charata, Chaco, Argentina
Sunday, January 14, 2007
I was brought by a man who left me at the roundabout to enter Resistencia. But I didn’t want to go to Resistencia. I wanted to visit Charata, a place in the middle of the Chaco, with nothing really interesting, where some friends lived. I hitch-hiked again in the roundabout and as I wasn’t picked up by anyone, I decided to make a banner, with the name of the first town (I forgot the name of the town) because I thought that I would have more chances to be picked up if the driver saw that I went to a close place.
I didn’t know if that was because of my banner, but the first car stopped. I got on the car and we started the trip. I told the driver that I was actually going to Charata, so I asked him to bring me somewhere else if he went closer to that city. I was lucky because that guy was going to Charata as well, so he brought me all the way.
The weather was too hot, and the car had a problem with the weather, so he asked me to help him throwing water to the motor, to get it colder a couple of times on the road.
At one point he stopped in a petrol station, and told me to wait in the car, or if I wanted, to go to the toilet. He came back with a sandwich and a soft drink for me. He was very nice!!!
In Charata I met my friend Alina and her family and I haven’t done anything really interesting to be told. Charata is a town where there’s nothing interesting to see, only gigantic bugs and dust in the air, but it is such an interesting experience to know how people lives there "from inside"
Everything relevant happens in Güemes Street, where there’s an interesting night life. It’s funny to me to watch how people meet each other just to watch the others and gossip about them.
People told me that I was lucky with the weather, because I arrived with and intolerable heat, but after a couple of hours it started to rain. After that the weather was much nicer.
The most interesting place I visited was a small museum where I saw some fragments of aeroliths (fallen close to that place, in a sector called “Campo del Cielo”), and received an explanation of a very interesting man, who spent his life studying aeroliths.
What I did most there was sleeping and drinking tereré. In Argentina, it is prepared with artificial juice instead of water.
It was also funny to see the people seeing me, as it was not a touristic place, and everyone knows each other, everyone looked me surprised and wondering who I was.
The last night I stayed there, I went to a discotheque, with Alina and her friends. The disco was very nice, but it had a strange atmosphere. Most people were more worried about what the others were doing than on having fun. And of course, everyone was looking at me.
Trays of 5 liters of fernet with coke were sold there. Of course they are not individual drinks. They are collective drinks, with straws.
After the discotheque I woke up early to take my bus back to Resistencia. Alina went with me to the bus station. I slept during the whole trip until the driver woke me up in Resistencia.
There I went to the main square and have a quick view of the capital of Chaco province, but there was nothing really interesting. I was a bit hurried because I had a reservation in Colonia Carlos Pellegrini. That’s why I left Resistencia quickly and took the bus to Corrientes.
