Argentina con Cristina

No, Cristina is not a friend visiting. She is the President of Argentina. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has been leading Argentina since 2007, and was reelected in 2011. The previous President was her late husband, Nestor Kirchner, who did not run for a second-term in 2007. He died of a heart attack in 2010. According to the constitution, Cristina will not be able to run for a third-term in 2015. Even though she was reelected by a comfortable margin, some Argentinians seem to have seen enough of her. I read somewhere that there are daily protests by the Presidential Palace in Buenos Aires, people chanting “Argentina sin Cristina” (Argentina without Cristina) right under her windows. Soon they will start banging on pots. Being head of state is not easy every day… If we go to Buenos Aires, I definitely want to watch this, it must be hilarious.

Interestingly, the southern cone of South America is run by women: Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina. Who said South Americans were machos? Let’s see if the US are ready for Hillary in 2016! 

Protests might be going on, but for the time being, it is still Argentina con Cristina. We have seen very little of it so far, we only crossed the border two days ago. We are currently in San Carlos de Bariloche, a ski resort, by a beautiful lake. There is no skiing in summer, and we are in summer, although it is still freezing at night. The area is very upscale, with beautiful mansions overlooking the lake, I reckon it does not reflect the entire country as such, we will see.

There were about twenty campers mainly from Germany, Austria and Switzerland in the campsite when we arrived on Saturday evening. They are part of an organised tour, driving throughout South America over a period of six months. Luckily, the campsite was big enough and there was still space for us. It was weird to be surrounded by so many campers, we are not used to this anymore. By the time we got up on Sunday, they had all vanished and we were again mostly alone, only a few tents here and there and a French couple on a camper. We had already met them in Peru and Bolivia, and will probably meet them again as they are also going towards Fireland. This is where we are heading to tomorrow, it is still far, about 2’000 kilometres through the pampas; if everything goes according to plan, we should be there by Christmas.