Virtual Railfan Tour of Argentina 1994 - Bariloche to Buenos Aires then Home

 

We had all day Sunday at Bariloche to take a look around before returning to Buenos Aires. At the station the overnight train from Buenos Aires had arrived and was doing a little switching.


Notice the tablet catcher (dropper!) by the cab window.

After lunch there was time to take in the fall colors of this lakes region


This was an intriguing arid valley in this mountainous area 






We had a good flight back to Buenos Aires and Monday morning was spent as a wrap up with the Ministry.
However, there was another surprise in store for me. The Deputy Minister took me to lunch and asked me if I would be prepared to come down to Argentina and run their railway safety program. This was completely unexpected and I was in turmoil on the flight back to Ottawa.  Mary and I discussed this and decided it was something we wanted to do.  We started Spanish lessons and put the apartment up for sale.  In the end we had to turn down this wonderful opportunity.  I was only a couple of years away from being able to take retirement and we could not afford to lose much of my government superannuation.  Looking at my retirement since 1997 it was the right decision but if the offer had come a couple of years later we would certainly had moved south.

Mary and I subsequently made two excellent trips to Argentina to ride the Patagonian narrow gauge in 1994 and 2004.  These were organized tours which I will describe in my next blogs. 





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