Comment by throw240623
3 years ago
Haha oh man I laughed hard at your story, especially the test drive/just taking your car thing, sorry.
Indeed, in some ways this place is crazy and in others its reasonably livable. I have many anecdotes like those but my English is not so good to make them funny.
Río negro native here. If you come to visit again, and go to San antonio oeste or las grutas hit me up and I'll invite you a beer
I love Las Grutas! It's a hidden gem. We spent part of a summer there when the peatonal was still being built (around 2007 - soon after when Ginóbili made his big investment). I love the weird arabesque architecture of the old hotels, and the rock pools. It feels like a magical place. It was so much chiller than the beach towns in Buenos Aires province. I hope it doesn't become overdeveloped. I would love to visit again someday.
This brings back so many crazy stories from Río Negro. We got stuck for two weeks in General Roca. The car broke down on RN22 and we were towed into town by a farmer on a tractor. We left the car with our luggage inside on the street and walked to find a hotel. When we came back in the evening, five or six old men had surrounded the car and were looking inside, thinking that someone had been killed, or it was drugs, because who is crazy enough to just leave a car full of suitcases? Some Paraguayans towed us to the river and fed us lunch at their trailer, but couldn't fix the car. Then it was New Years and at midnight we sat in the empty street with a bottle of wine, surrounded by a dozen frightened dogs while the fireworks went off in people's yards. After a week we were able to find out where the farmer lived, who was a really wonderful guy named Javier. He introduced us to his family, and we had lunch under their grape vines. He knew how to fix tractors, and he was able to fix our car's electrical wiring at his house. No one ever asked us for money to help. The people were incredibly kind.
Getting to Las Grutas was a different story... we took a "taxi" which was not a real taxi, just some guy waiting at the Viedma airport who turned out to be extremely high on cocaine. At one point in the middle of the desert he just stopped the car, got out and went to the trunk. We got very worried. When he came back, he talked rapidly on and on about why guns should be easier to buy, because if he wanted to kill people he could just as well kill them with a knife, or even a pen. To demonstrate this he was jabbing a pen around wildly like he was going to stab me. My girlfriend said the whole time she was in the back seat with a towel ready to throw it around his neck and strangle him, even if we crashed.
Ahhhh. Well, enough stories ;) likewise, if you're ever in Portland, Oregon, look me up!