Back to Argentina

We had breakfast at 6.45am this morning and were on the road by 7.30.  We were crossing into Argentina for the final time.  The border was just 30 kilometres away and we were there by 8.30.  Here, the border between Uruguay and Argentina is marked by a river.  The two countries have jointly built a hydroelectric plant to harness the power of the river to generate electricity for both countries.

Unfortunately, it took over two hours to get through the border.  Bizarrely, an immigration officer came to the truck instead of us having to go in the office.  We had to line up against the truck.  He called us forward one at a time to match our faces to our passports!  We were processed electronically, so we didn't get stamped out of Uruguay or in to Argentina.

Once we had crossed the border, we stopped in the nearby town of Concordia to go to a massive Carrefour. Nikki did the cook group shop for the next three days while the rest of us bought stuff for lunch today and anything else we needed.

We got back on the road by just after 12 noon.  We still had over 400 kilometres to go to reach Esteros del Iberia and our campsite for the next three nights.

We stopped again for toilets at just before 3pm.  Unbelievably, people wanted to shop again!  So, with 260 kilometres still to drive, a 10-minute loo stop turned into 40 minutes!  It was very frustrating!

With 70 kilometres to go, we ran out of tarmac.  The dirt track we were now on really slowed us down.  The only upside was that we were now on the fringes of the wetlands.  There were lots of birds to look at, and we also spotted a capybara and a caiman.  Unfortunately, we didn't see any more after I got the big camera out!

We were now making extremely slow progress!  We watched the sunset as we trundled along at a snail's pace.  Darkness soon fell.  There was lots of wildlife about after dark, but it was impossible to photograph.  We saw countless capybara, several owls, a group of crab-eating raccoons, and loads of other birds.  We had two or three more roadside toilet stops.  Inevitably, certain people started drinking on the truck and there was some unacceptable behaviour, though nothing like as bad as we've had in the past!

We eventually pulled into our campsite at just before 11pm!!  We were all very tired after 16 hours on the truck!  We were allocated pitches which were an inexplicably long way from the only toilet facilities on site.  We put our tents up in the pitch black and struggled to find our way to and from the shower block.  Nikki made scrambled eggs for those who wanted them (Mark's cook group dinner is postponed until tomorrow), but we just went straight to bed.  It was still very hot and sticky, but we fell asleep anyway.Read more