Thats my dogs

Deciding to go back to Buenos Aires via the more scenic route, Derek and I found ourselves in Carmelo. The name sounded so good (cravings for Cadbury Caramello) but it lived up to its reputation of being sleepy.

We paid an exhorbitant price for a double room in a shitty hotel that came complete with a television that hummed annoyingly and a breakfast of stale toast, raro and coffee to rival the sewerage-like qualities of Nescafe. Seeing as we were the only people in the hotel, you think they could have done a little better. Oh well. This was Carmelo.

Under a concrete sky (yet again), Derek and I decided to make our way to the beach. We acquired a stray dog early on in the journey. A gorgeous caramel coloured male hound, he had half of his front paw missing and did this little skipping motion while he ran beside us. We crowned him 'hop-along'. Boy did he seem happy to be with us. He often cast his eyes endearingly over Derek and whimpered whenever the two of us walked more than three metres apart.

But in true South American style, we acquired two more hounds when we reached the beach, two hooligans out looking for trouble. They barked at everything that moved - bicycles, people, cars - only to lose interest once their target had moved on.

They attracted three more dogs and the pack became agitated with the introduction of a bitch that was clearly on heat. By this stage I was more on the panicky side of scared. The pack started fighting, knocking over a parked motorcycle in the process.
There was nowhere to go and nothing to offer protection from these dogs (no fences to jump over for those who remember the dog attack story of 2006).

Still, once they had sorted out who had first priority to smell the female dog´s arse, they calmed down. Hop-along left us (he was top of the smell list), and Derek and I made our way back to town. Unfortunately we couldn´t shake off the two hooligans. We tried to lose them but they were adament they were going to protect us from all moving objects and other stationary ones.

We arrived at the bridge at the edge of town and the dogs took off down the slope into the river. Sensing this could be our chance, we walked faster over the bridge .... only to be overtaken by the shaggy wet pooches half way across. Clearly they have a protocol to have a wash before entering the city. It wasn´t until five blocks later when they spotted another dog and went up to investigate. Derek grabbed me by the arm, and we slipped back around the corner we had just come from and ran to put as much distance between the hooligans and us.

We never saw them again, although it wouldn´t have surprised me if we had bumped into them around a corner. They would have welcomed us with wagging tails, flapping tongues and been ready to accompany us on any adventure Carmelo might throw at us.

Fortunately for us we left Carmelo before we died of boredom.