Argentina

We had an uneventful border crossing from Salto in Uruguay to Concordia in Argentina yesterday so we are at last on the road.

The biggest hassle was finding the correct customs agent to take and and cancel our Uruguayan Temporary Import Permit (TIP) to make sure they registered GANNET2 had left the country on time, but eventually I found her and she languidly got our vehicle officially out of Uruguay, as you can see above…

We spent our last night in Uruguay free camping on the streets of Mercedes, a place familiar to us from a previous fly by, a quiet safe spot on the river front and a good place to sleep for free. Then it was time to drive four hours north to our chosen border crossing point, Salto, the northernmost bridge over the Uruguay River to Argentina.

The reason we went up the border on the Uruguayan side is three fold. One is the roads are far smoother than the badly maintained lumpy Argentine roads which in our experience are always a trial. Second there are reports on iOverlander of continuous police harassment at checkpoints.  We have all the required safety gear, reflective stripes on the van, a 110 kmh speed limiting sticker, a first aid kit, fire extinguishers, triangles, flares and a high visibility vest but the gendarmes apparently love to try to find a way to fine you on the spot. It sounds slanderous as we’ve yet to meet corrupt cops oddly enough, but we figured why not avoid them as long as possible. And finally Argentina apparently has the gall to extract tolls for these horrible roads from booths that only accept automatic  payments, a system we can’t access as we don’t have an Argentine ID number…so we stuck to the Uruguayan side as long as we could. The black line is the border.  

We picked up a hitchhiker at one point figuring he could use a ride on a cold day. Marcelo was from Florianopolis, the tourist center in southern Brazil familiar to us where he works as a chef but he decided he wanted to see snow so he was hitch hiking to Ushuaia in winter. Then we saw a dude sitting by the side of the road selling empanadas so we bought three and had breakfast on the go.

He was bundled up against the cold but as we drove north we noticed it getting warmer which was surprising as we hadn’t come a huge distance.  The countryside reminded me of north central Florida with scrub palms suddenly dotting the scrubby unkempt fields.

Marcelo told us a bit of his life as I drove and we ate ground beef empanadas and it’s the usual story of one member of the family eager to travel and see the world while his father a factory worker and his younger brother following in Dad’s footsteps in the factory think he’s mad. His mom works as a school lunch lady and out of this family of normal suburban values sprang Marcelo the odd man out. Note the palms: 

By the time we drew level with Paysandú it was time to cut the story telling and find a spot to drop Marcelo off. His plan was to find a truck going west to Cordoba in Argentina and the last we saw of him was among the border crossing trucks at the weigh station. 

We turned back to Uruguay and the final 90 minutes north to the dam at Salto that generates 50 percent of the country’s electricity from the flow of the Uruguay River. “Represa” means dam. 

The two countries have consolidated their frontier controls on the Argentine side of the river so the old Uruguayan border post is closed and abandoned with one wobbly sign pointing to Argentina. 

Then you cross the dam which sends electricity to both countries.

And then after all this high tech excitement come the border controls. The southern countries of South America, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil have formed a trading union called Mercosur (Mercosul in Portuguese) which roughly translates as Southern Market and through this pact they have reduced border controls to try to encourage trade. Consequently when a gringo shows up at the border we tend to gum the works up as they have to write out a Temporary Import Permit for our vehicle instead of just waving us through  like they do the locals. 

You get in line and wait for a green arrow when you arrive at the front. We waited just a few minutes.

We told the lady in the booth we were going to Paraguay so instead of the eight months they often give at this border we got 90 days and we drove into Aduana (customs). “Nice dog!” he said as he reached in to pet Rusty sitting in front of Layne on the floor and that was the last time anyone referred to our dog; his papers sat unseen in our folder. 

After we got the van checked out of Uruguay we were free to go, no inspection of the fridge and no confiscation of fruits and vegetables. We had cleared out most of that stuff but you never know how they will react at these crossings. Paraguay is usually pretty easy going so we won’t worry about them confiscating agricultural products when we cross that border. The first order of business was to buy gas. 

But first we had to say hello to what passes for highways in Argentina, a patchwork quilt of asphalt. The good news is that gas is $5:44 a gallon for regular instead of $8:83 in Uruguay which was why we were running on empty. 

And after that because we had preemptively unloaded the fridge we set our sights on a supermarket in Concordia.

We parked next to a Brazilian RV on the street as the height restriction kept us out of the parking lot where the civilized shoppers park their sedans. Love you Argentina! 

The old boy has come alive traveling again and I’m slightly amazed. He eats like a horse, sleeps soundly and is walking and exploring more than he ever did while we were stationary. Layne went shopping and I took the oversized bunny to explore around the Carrefour shopping center. He wanted to check out the parking lot after we walked around the block and we passed one of my favorite small cars, a long discontinued Ford Ka sold in Europe and South America and I think it’s cute, like an egg on wheels.

And then we met the occupants of the Brazilian RV, the parents of triplets two of whom were on display. They are from a small town in the hills that we visited when we were in the German part of Santa Catarina State so we could talk (in English) with at least a little fluency of their home town. Dad inherited a cigar factory where they hand roll cigars as they used to in Key West and Ybor City, and they were on a weeks vacation driving around. Like Marcelo they wanted to see cold weather possibly snow in the mountains before returning to tropical Brazil where we would go if we hadn’t used up our time in Brazil for this year. 

It was starting to get dark and we had to cut things short as we were all heading to a truck stop with free facilities for motor homes, electricity, potable water, a dump station, laid out for anyone’s use. We love you Argentina. 

We stopped at a roadside stand to check out the local stuff, that is to say Layne went shopping but was very restrained and cane back with a single jar of delicious black Greek olives, a type we haven’t seen in a while. A short hop to the truck stop ended the days journey with an early night and much snoring.

We dined on bread and a particularly spicy Gouda both of which survived the crossing from Uruguay. As expensive as it was I will miss funky orderly Uruguay and its rather shy population of three and a half million. We plan to pay another visit in the fall next year to enjoy the beaches as we start our journey north back to the States.