“It’s a nightmare,” Alicia said, as she walked into the room. She had just heard the news that the government had conceded the election.

Argentina is going through a big financial crisis with inflation at 130-plus% and has just voted in a general election which many expected to be won by ultra-right-wing outsider, Javier Milei.

Many roads in Argentina are unpaved, or as we say in the UK, unmetalled. In the summer, great dust clouds rise up above the busiest routes near to where I’m living at the moment, in Patagonia.