Another day, another country….

We wrote in our last post that we were going to Uruguay. Four days later, we’re back in Argentina, having been to Uruguay, Argentina, and…Paraguay and Argentina again. For the last three days, we crossed a border each day, including entering and leaving Argentina twice. I guess we’re lucky we’re not doing it in the same place as the immigration officers might be getting a bit tired with us But this is a beauty of travelling on an EU passport – no visas needed for South America (unlike Europeans, Americans and Aussies need to pay reciprocal visa fees to enter some countries here). Now, if someone ever asks us ‘Have you been to Argentina?’ we can proudly answer ‘Yes, three times’.

We’re well and truly in our travelling mode now, often sleeping in pretty basic places where only local labourers and seasonal workers seem to sleep, opting for ramshackle comedors and little grocery shops where they sell bread, cheese and wine by the litre, rather than bars or restaurants, and taking local buses. As a results, we’ve hardly seen a tourist in the last few days (apart from each other that is ) although the fact that it’s a low season now probably helps as well. Nobody speaks English here but we somehow managing on our rudimentary Spanish. For us, this is travelling at its best.

On the negative side, the weather’s been quite crap for the last couple of days. A combination of cold (about 10C), rain and wind makes you think of Edinburgh on a bad day… But this has mobilised us to move faster and so we’re just about to reach Puerto Iguazu (we’re writing this while on the bus) and the mighty Iguazu Falls, where we’ll no doubt be firmly on the tourist trail again.

But before we get there, here’s a quick overview of what we’ve been up to in the last couple of days (also see the map to get an idea about the location of these places):

• Colonia del Sacramento: this is where we got off the ferry in Uruguay straight from Buenos Aires. A beautiful town and an old smugglers port, listed as an UNESCO heritage site. An absolutely magical place, particularly at night, which looks like straight out of an old movie, with many historic buildings and old cars that people actually drive around (!).

• Salto in North-Western Uruguay: we ended up spending a night there as we found out on the way that the town is the home to a complex of thermal mineral pools famous in the whole country. What a great decision it was! To be soaking in a 40C water in an outdoors pool, when the outside temperature is about 5C was simply priceless (and brought back nice memories from the Norther Island of New Zealand too!)

 

• Trinidad in Paraguay: having landed in Posadas in northern Argentina, we thought it’s a good idea to check out some ruins of the former Jesuit missions in the neighbouring Paraguay. This was how we ended up in Trinidad, another UNESCO-listed site. The ruins were awesome, even in the rain and Paraguay turned out to be quite different (rougher and perhaps more ‘South-American’) than its Europeanised neighbours…

That’s it for now – the next post is likely to be already from Brasil where we should get in the next couple of days…