Matey was more than right...

This wasn’t supposed to be a blog entry as the ride, although pleasant, wasn’t anything special. Upon splitting with BJ yesterday I experienced a wild swing of emotions. They were mostly controlled by my trance music that I was listening too on the ride in and they ranged from an enormous sense of freedom & ecstasy right down to extreme worry & sadness. Today though there was no music, just plenty of time to contemplate. I’m sure I now know why BJ headed off alone, having now started to experience solo motorcycle travel. I’m more than happy to ride alone (as I proved for 80% of my RTW09) but it was always with some sort of support, either personal or mechanical. As for BJ, I now think that I missed the point. This wasn’t ‘our trip’ and it never should have been. The sense of freedom whilst riding totally alone and having to fend for yourself is absolutely incredible. In the thirty hours since we bid our goodbyes my knowledge of Spanish has skyrocketed as I’ve only met ONE person that speaks English! I’ve also met several people that I doubt that I would have had I’ve been one half of a pair and being right on the edge makes me feel so alive. I’ll openly admit that before riding solo I was pretty much just ‘along for the ride,’ too relaxed and dependant on others. Forced into this new situation I spent the morning shopping for items that I didn’t have (including a much needed English/Spanish dictionary) and would’ve easily borrowed from BJ as well as sending some of my items back home by post. Trips like these require a routine. You need to know exactly where everything is, it needs to be accessible in order of importance, the absolute minimum of it and a general route plan needs to be made daily with an early departure time and much more. I’m still not sure about the whole “table for one please” thing but actually there is more than enough routines to do of an evening to keep me occupied and it’s not a problem.
So then, Toscada. It took a while to get into the centre due to its size and once in, a fairly basic hotel was found on the main square. A typical ‘Italian’ meal was then bought and eaten but (pero) to be honest I wasn’t all that impressed with the place. Until...on the way back across the square I investigated what all the noise and crowd was about. A stage in front of a historic building was all set up and a live dance/ballet show was in progress. Now I’ve seen ballet many times and I’m not all that keen really but it suddenly hit me... Looking around the environment at the people, the smiles, the cleanliness and much much more it made me think back to home life. I was constantly complaining to BJ about England which may have been a factor in him clearing off and I won’t do it here but all I’ll say is that several years ago I met a guy who was well travelled and when asked he said his favourite country was Argentina. He was right by a country mile, or 1.6km as they have here. One observation is that everyone here is Argentinean which appears to make everyone proud of their country. It also seems to have resulted in no other ‘cultures’ being taken up and/or copied as well as no religious issues. Nobody is trying to be something that they aren’t and neither are they sticking two fingers up at the country where they’ve moved to that gives them far more opportunities than their own. So all in all it’s a wonderful country to be in and one that I hope to return to sooner rather than later...