Backpacking South America

Next on our destinations-wishlist were the Iguazu Falls. To get there we had quite some travel ahead of us: Back from Punta del Diablo to Montevideo, from Montevideo to the Argentinian border at Salto, cross over to Argentina and go up to the north of the Misiones province where Puerto Iguazu is located.

We made it our goal to hitchhike the first leg of the journey, thinking that lots of vacationers would be travelling back towards Montevideo. And it turned out to be the case!

We jumped onto the back of a truck to get out of the park and shortly after got picked up for a quick ride to the entrance of Punta del Diablo. There it only took five minutes before a lovely couple stopped with their tiny car, where we squeezed one backpack in the trunk and ourselves together with another backpack and their son on their back seats. During the ride to Castillos, they told us that the palm trees at the roadside are protected, and their fruits are used to make local liquor that is sold at the booths next to the road. Sadly we did not manage to try some.

At Castillos, it took again only five minutes until our next ride picked us up. The car was in an interesting state, to say the least. The TÜV would have lost their mind. Doors hanging in their hinges, the speedometer not working and the car clearly only being able to start by shorting some of the gazillion cables hanging out the open panels in the front row. But we had a super friendly driver who took us all the way to Biarritz, in the vicinity of Montevideo!
He told us that road construction jobs in Uruguay were very well paid but in general there is a shortage of technical workers. Apparently also for car repairs, since we had to stop once to close the self-opening bonnet and had to say goodbye to the right-side mirror glass which fell off while driving. This did not faze our driver one bit though. Why would it - he still had the left-side one!

When he dropped us off, it again took us less than five minutes to be picked up by a small construction truck. We made a last short hop to Costa Azul, a sleepy beach town, sitting "open air" on the truck's loading area. In Costa Azul, we enjoyed some Chivito - the national dish of Uruguay - in a nice little beach-side restaurant, spent an hour or two at the beach and then hopped on the local bus to Montevideo, to later catch an overnight bus to Salto at the Argentinian border.

🛣 Distance covered: 300 km
🚗 Hitches hiked: 4
⏳️ Time spent waiting: < 20 min total
🛻 Breezes caught on the back of trucks: 2
🪞 Car mirrors lost: 1
🌴 Palm trees seen: infinite
🥂 Palm schnaps had: 0 😔もっと詳しく