Everywhere, big cities and small towns, was a giant hairball of one way streets. Double decker buses, trucks, cars, scooters, bicycles, pedestrians and horses pulling sulkies all vying for limited amounts of space.
Driving in urban areas was hair-raising. Not only do streets change names every few blocks, street signs are occasionally missing. City streets are narrow, one-way affairs, frequently with a cobbled surface. Most secondary intersections have no lights or stop signs. Drivers are extremely aggressive running red, passing on the right on two lane streets, etc. Enforcement is lax to non-existent. Pedestrians jaywalk and it never looks like they're going to stop. Stopping for a pedestrian in the middle of the street is not done.
On top of that circus, trying to navigate is made worse because the sun is in the Northern sky, not the Southern. When you feel intuitively certain that you are traveling West due to the shadows and sun, in fact you are going East. Fortunately we carried a compass.
There are lots of older cars in Argentina. They never throw anything away. Here are some examples.
90% of the cars are small. There are trucks too for the agriculture. We can count on one hand the number of big gas guzzlers we saw the whole time we were there.
With the plethora of moving targets on the streets and highways, there are Lots of shrines along the roadways. This one is particularly ornate.
People leave flowers, candles, food and bottles of water. The bottles of water are still a mystery. Art thinks it's to water the plants around the shrines...
1 comment:
Hi Alinda,
It's interesting that we have the same driving "rules" (more like nonexistent rules) in the Philippines.
Ally
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