South American Adventure

After two largely glorious days in Buenos Aires, yesterday it hammered it down all day!  We went out in the morning to drop off some laundry and do some food shopping.  I spent the rest of the day working on my laptop and chatting to people while Mark prepared food for last night and for a meal for later today.  I didn't get caught up, but I made some progress!  There was a lot more to see and do in Buenos Aires, but time and the weather were against us and, at this stage of the trip, we are both too tired to be dashing about all the time!

This morning, we had to be up at 5am for a 6am departure.  Many of the group had opted to take the 90-minute ferry across to Colonia in Uruguay rather than make the all-day truck journey.  It meant that there was only 17 of us on the truck, so we had plenty of room to spread out.  We had a new passenger joining the trip today - a 70-year old American guy - as well as the new driver, Tim, who is taking over from Ritchie in Rio.

We left BA and headed 270 kilometres north to the border with Uruguay.  We drove across miles and miles of flat countryside, albeit greener and much more lush than the land south of the capital.  Nikki provided a truck breakfast of a croissant and a nectarine each.  We were all craving coffee by the time we stopped at a service station over three hours into the journey!

We crossed the border close to the town of Fray Bentos of corned beef and tinned pie fame.  We were under the impression that we would stop in the town for our lunch break, but in the event, we bypassed it.

The border was straightforward although we did have to wait a while to get the truck paperwork processed to enter Uruguay.  Our passports weren't scanned out of Argentina as they have been on every other occasion.  We will have to see what happens when we enter the country for the last time in about a week!  We were stamped into Uruguay, though.  That's country number 68 for me, I think.

Nine kilometres into Uruguay, we stopped for what turned out to be a lengthy lunch break.  We stopped at a roadside restaurant where the service was very slow and payments were even slower!  We didn't eat as we had picked up some empanadas in BA yesterday.  I did change some money, though.  We're now using Uruguayan pesos!  Uruguay is as expensive as Argentina, unfortunately!  Two ice creams and a bottle of flavoured water cost more than £10!

Back on the road, we now headed south towards Colonia a further 230 kilometres away.  The countryside we were driving through was undulating and verdant with fields of crops and sheep grazing.  It was very reminiscent of summer in England or France, apart from the odd palm tree, that is!

The towns we passed through, like Rosario, looked prosperous.  There were plenty of well-maintained houses with beautifully-kept gardens and manicured lawns.  Again, everything was very green.

We arrived in Colonia at around 6.45pm.  As we drove through the streets to get to our hostel, we could see the place is really pretty.  We look forward to exploring properly tomorrow.

We had booked the only private room available through Booking.com. Everyone else had to have a dorm room.  Unfortunately, we soon discovered that the kitchen advertised on the website didn't actually exist.  We had already cooked a Bolognese sauce, so we had no choice but to eat it cold without pasta!Читать далее