By now we left Buenos Aires and Cordoba behind us to satisfy our needs for more adventerous roads. We did spend a week in Buenos Aires – the first “real” city to our standards on this trip. After riding straight across the continent from Mendoza to the capitol of Argentina, the city greeted us with 8-lane highways and its big avenues that go straight through the center. We settled in a beautiful apartment for a week with nearly 5m ceiling height in the commercial part of town. Great place to explore the city and more important – meeting up with old friend (for Siri) and making new one (for me) – Ludmila! Siri and Ludmila studied together in Vancouver 15 years ago. First of all she is of course an amazing friend(now to both of us) but also gave us great insides of the day to day life and the political situation in the country. Together we visited La Boca, Siri and I even tried a few steps of Tango but decided to leave it to the pros – for obvious reasons.
upper left: Ludmila, upper middle: the Pros, lower left: us with Matias, Don Pedro and Alma
After a rather lazy week in Buenos Aires we turned north west again and the next stop on our route was Cordoba. As we walked around Corboba – looking for a place to have lunch – we bumped into Franco. Franco is mostly a carpenter but also owns a small cafe in the center of Cordoba. He asked us how we travel around and when we replied by motorbike, he insisted to sit down with him so that he can draw up a map for us of sites we have to visit on the way up north. Needless to say that he rides a bike as well. We are traveling by his map now! The friendliness, helpfulness and openess of the people in South America is really unique. We met Franco a few more times while we stayed in Cordoba and will for sure visit him again the next time we are in South America.
Matias is another friend who Siri studied with in Vancouver 15 years ago and obviously we had to visit! Matias is by now married to Roxy and they have a beautiful boy who I like to call “Don Pedro”. Don might be a bit much since he is just 4 years old but it just sounds cool. Matias has a heart of gold and is a family man through and through. His BMW GS1200 is parked inside the house (next to the kitchen) and he insisted that the Penguin has to park next to it. What I didn’t realise is that next to the bikes is their huge and build into the wall “asado” set up. Asado is the Argentinian version of bbq – just bigger and all conducted on wood – no gas. Argentinian beef is second to none – I have no idea what they do with the beef but it is some of the most tender beef I ever had (ok – maybe Kobi beef from Japan is similar). I learned that any man in Argentina aged 21 to 55 has approx. 2 kilos of undigested meat in their bellies – according to that I must have turned Argentinian after what Matias fed us over our 4-day stay with them. He is a brilliant host and really made us feel home in his home. Needless to say – saying good bye was emotional and we can’t wait to come back. But the road called and we needed to follow. Just 2 days out of Cordoba we reunited with Gaby and her Fox - now it is off to new adventures so stay tuned :)
