Junin – Gateway to Argentina

Oh, what a beautiful day!

Today I left Buenos Aires after seven days and took a bus to Junin in La Pampa (a Quechua Indian name meaning “plain”); La Pampa is both a province and the name an area that include the Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos and Córdoba, Chubut, most of Uruguay.

This area of la Pampa is virtually flat and mostly devoid of trees; boundless fields of grain and corn and grasslands – beauty of a different sort.  I was struck with how few cities there were; we seemed to drive for miles without seeing even ranch house. Its fall here and the fields are mostly yet to be harvested; although there was evidence of a few small ranches, I was surprised at how few.

My original plan was to purchase a ticket for Mendoza (the wine) region and then, perhaps, proceed on to Santiago, Chile; but, I only purchased a ticket to Junin (mostly out a romanticized idea I might find a, sort of “dude ranch” of gauchos and cowboy-up).

If a dude ranch of gauchos exists in Junin, I never found it, and almost became stranded in Junin. It seems that Easter in Argentina begins on Thursday and ends on Tuesday. As a result the tickets for Junin to Mendoza were sold out. As it has turned out, it’s kind of neat thing; Junin is centrally located to be the perfect starting point to north, south, east or west (which was another reason to stop in Junin in the first place).

Forced to look at other options, I chose Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego province (the southern most city in the world).

It’s a thirty six hour bus trip from Junin to Rio Gallegos (as close as I could to Ushuaia from Junin) and doesn’t leave until 3:00 PM tomorrow. In the meantime, Junin (with a population of 120,000) is clean, very pleasant and relaxing place to be “stranded” – kind of a mini-Paris with all of its sidewalk cafes.