Santa Elena​ (Entre Rios Providence, Argentina)

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Santa Elena, the closest town to Laguna Blanca, is the place we are refering to when we say, "We're going to town." It is located 19.5 km or 12 miles north, one way, from the farm; a rough, curving, road with just a couple turns. Functional, but not optimal. Lot's of rocks, lot's of bumbs and divets, and parts of it impassible during and after rain. All part of the fun though. It's about a 25 minute ride on motorcycle, less by truck, more by collectivo (bus). The population is about 19,000. This is where most of the farm workers live. They call it, "el pueblo", meaning town or village.The tallest building has three floors, maybe four. There is a downtown plaza and park with the majority of the commercial area surrounding it. The town lies right against the Rio Parana and therefore has several lovely parks with excellent vistas where locals enjoy sitting and having mate. We plan to frequent these areas more during the spring/summer months. The town has the usuals, such as grocery stores and clothing stores. There are many small "mom and pop" type shops that line the streets and many of the stores are quite specialized, for example, a different place for buying produce, a different place for buying meat and so on. Choices in the stores are much more limited as compared to the United States. We laugh about having been told and found out for ourselves that there really was only one model of wheelbarrow in the whole town! We haven't been to town much, so we look forward to exploring it more and finding it's treasures, but it seems like a cool enough place.