I went, on a dreary Sunday, (Argentina seems to shut down on a Sunday - not just shops but restaurants too) to a small cafe to have lunch. On the table in the small pot with its sachets of mustard, mayonaise and ketchup was a tiny pair of orange handled scissors, with which to cut open the sachets. I couldn't believe it and burst out laughing, looking madder than ever.
Argentina is the most organised country I think I've ever been to. It's the Switzerland of South America, the Germany of the southern Hemisphere, the United States of Efficiency. No wonder the Nazis loved it.
Ok so it's expensive in Ushuaia. But everything works - the hotels are comfortable, warm and they all have WIFI, the streets are clean, buses leave on time, the taxis are properly metered (that's a first for me in Latin America - in most other countries the 'meter' ticks over to its own tune), correct directions are given by people in the street (another first - I can't tell you the amount of times in LA I've gone on a wild goose chase simply because locals don't want to offend a foreigner by saying "I don't know" and instead make routes up). I got my flight back to Buenos Aires changed without a problem - the airline office has a queuing system like the butchers' counter in a supermarket - and wandered through the city by day and night without being bothered by anyone.
t's not even noisy like other parts of South America. No blaring tvs or constant radio, no neighbours shrieking nor the cries of street vendors. One lovely evening the sounds of tango seeped under the door of a dancehall and in the backlight there was the shadow of a teacher stretching up his arms and flicking out his feet. Several times at dawn I was woken by the low resonant boom of a ship's hron as it sailed out of the harbour - but what better noise than that?
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