The final push to Buenos Aires

We had breakfast at 6am and were on the road by 7. Edward had unceremoniously moved into the seat I have occupied for the last few days and was actually sitting on my hat when I got on the truck! He was totally unapologetic and flatly refused to move. He then had the nerve to ask Mark to fill his water bottle! He didn't even say please! I am definitely ready for a break from the truck!!

So, today, we had 570 kilometres to go to reach Buenos Aires. Ritchie set off at a hell of a pace - we were being thrown around all over the place in the back of the truck!

The landscape was still flat, but it was now filled with fields of sunflowers - slightly more interesting than what we've been used to!

We had a lunch stop by some rough ground where we could put our tents up to dry. It took no time at all in the sunshine. Before we set off again, Nikki told us that the truck is no longer going into the garage, so we are back to plan A - a long drive day to Colonia when we leave BA!

At around 5pm, we reached the outskirts of BA. We had a final toilet stop. The temperature was touching 40 degrees, so most of us bought ice creams!

Our first impressions of BA were of a clean, modern city with lots of skyscrapers and very little traffic - well, it was Sunday afternoon! There were also a lot of buildings with huge murals of Diego Maradona on them! As we got into the city centre, we saw a lot of colonial buildings, many of them with French architecture.

We arrived at our hostel at about 5.45pm. Some others from the group who had flown up from Ushuaia were there to meet us. A member of staff from the hostel got us all together to explain everything and then invited us to go to reception to check in. We had upgraded to a private room (which turned out to have two sets of bunk beds in it), so we had to pay our bill. It was an extra US$184! We also had to be tagged for security reasons. This proved to be a futile exercise!

While we were checking in, we had all left our bags in the bar area. When we went to retrieve ours to go to our room, we found that my day pack was missing! At first, I thought one of our group must have picked it up by mistake, but after asking everyone I saw and putting a message on the group chat, I realised someone had taken it! It's turning into a trip of losses! It's so annoying! It was the new backpack I bought in Cusco and it had our overnight camping stuff in it - a change of clothes, a towel, basic toiletries, sun cream, insect repellent, my waterproof jacket, my fleece, my flip-flops, and our power pack! Of course, the hostel's CCTV didn't cover the place where my bag disappeared from!

Ritchie couldn't believe it had been stolen from such a safe hostel and thought I must have left it on the truck. I hadn't! As I write this three days later as we are leaving BA, it never did turn up. What's more, two other members of the group had items taken - a pair of shoes and a mobile phone. I suppose it could have been worse - if the thief had picked up Mark's pack instead of mine, he or she would have got the big camera and my laptop!

Having put our other bags in our room, I went next door to a Carrefour Express to replace our toothbrushes, toothpaste, and deodorant. Later, we went to a restaurant on the corner and shared a small pizza and a portion of fries. With a drink each, the bill was US$50!!Leer más