Our hotel was pretty basic and didn’t include breakfast. After porridge in Poki, we set off south. I had hoped there might be some sights of interest in this part of northern Argentina. Sadly, not so. The terrain is dead flat and the road straight, so it’s boring driving.
The morning was all beef and eucalyptus. Miles of scrubby pasture with grazing beef cattle, or hectares of eucalyptus forest. There are very few townships to break the monotony. The occasional fuel station and that’s about it.
Nearing Our Journey’s End
Tomorrow we will be back in Uraguay, so we are almost at the end of our journey. What a journey it has been too.
Eight countries, 8 capital cities and some fantastic sights. Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca Salar de Uyuni, Patagonia with its lakes, glaciers and mountains, to mention a few. We added the bucket list destinations of the Galapagos and Antarctica, which were just amazing. We are very fortunate.
We were incredibly lucky with the weather for most of the trip. Only in the last few weeks in Brazil, did it become too hot to sleep in Poki. We were able to find reasonably priced hotels, so it was not a problem.
We have seen so much, but there is still a lot we have not seen. The whole Amazon district, north eastern Brazil and the four small countries in the very north, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana.
The one thing that has disappointed me is that we have seen so little wildlife. As in Africa it is only in the areas which have been protected and agriculture hasn’t taken over, that you find animals. I had hoped to see a jaguar in the Pantanal, but we didn’t venture quite far enough and a tapir. We met a young English guy, Ross, in Bonito. He was just on a two week holiday but was fortunate enough to be shown a tapir in a field, pointed out by his taxi driver. We have seen a some macaws and toucans, but very few, although there are parakeets everywhere.
This afternoon pasture land was replaced by orange orchards between the eucalyptus forests.
Surprising Shop
We did come across a very surprising shop. Advertising hoardings for miles caught our attention. It is a German owned Emporium, come museum, come cafe full of bric-bric-a-brac, with Um-pah music playing in the background. We stopped and had a look around and bought two types of cheese. It was good to have a break from the road.
Trying to change Shipping Dates
I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to contact our shipping agent to see if we can change to a week earlier sailing, as we can be in Montevideo earlier than we anticipated. It’s difficult to plan how long journeys will take, when you have to cross several borders and we anticipated there would be more to see than there has been recently.
Concordia
Tonight we are in Concordia, and tomorrow will cross the Uruguay river forming the border with Uruguay to the city of Salto, Uruguay’s second largest city. There is another huge hydroelectric dam here, the Salto Grande dam.
Our hotel tonight is supposedly three star, but I’d give it two. It does have breakfast included, though. I’m not optimistic it will be much of a feast.
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