2619 km Salto

It's been een tough couple of days cycling from Puerto Iguazu to Salto. With the exception of 2 days, It has been raining like mad in Argentina. On top of that I faced side and headwinds as well. Trafic is a lot harder to deal with here as well. Ironically I was warned a lot in Brasil for the truckdrivers, but they turned out to be pretty nice. Mostly overtaking you with plenty of space whenever possible. Unfortunatelly this does not hold true for Argentinian truckers. They are driving like madmen. Routa 12 was a nightmare, without a shoulder I was pushed of the road on many occassions. Yes, the drivers here are complete assholes compared to basicly anywhere in the world I cycled. Only Vietnam and India had worse drivers than I've seen here. I have been cycling every single day since Puerto. I only took half a day of to pay the ruins in San Ignacio a visit. It was interesting to see the ruins and learn a little bit about the history but I don't feel the entrance price was warranted. Unfortunatelly you have to pay more as a foreigner for entry which I feel is a little discriminatory. 

It turned out this was not the last time I faced this practice. When in a hotel asking for the price I was told 1200 pesos for a room, even though a sign behind the counter clearly stated 500. I asked a bystander who stayed in the hotel the price and he confirmed it was 500. The man behind the counter insisted it was 1200 for me, so I gave him the finger and told him to go F himself. As you can read me and Argentina has been no love story sofar.....

Luckily the tide has turned a bit in the last days. Chajari was a nice town to visit. 2 little kids on crossbikes were happy to show this Gringo a hotel. They escorted me through the town and I rewarded them with a roll of cookies from the paniers. In the evening I found a nice pizza place, with an owner who was a walking encyclopedia on football trivia. He even congratulated me on Feyenoord winning the leaugue when he heard I was from Rotterdam. We went through all the history of football and especially the Netherlands vs Argentina matches. I'll never forget the rather epic 'Rensenbrink oi oi oi' he uttered when talking about the '78 final.

From Chajari it was only one more day to Uruguay. I decided to cross the border over the hydro-electric damn instead of by ferry from Concordia. When I showed up on the border it turned out I was not allowed to cross by bike. Arguing did not help, but fortunatelly a friendly pick up driver carried me accross the dam. I'm still wondering why cycling was not allowed since motorbikes crossed without a problem and the dam could fit about 4 trucks side to side on it.... It's the Thai-Loas border at Pakse story all over again.... but we made it accross, so it all worked out in the end.

I am now in Salto enjoying some well deserved rest. I will take a thermal bath which the city is famous for and then I'll be all ready for the trip to Montevideo. I wonder what Uruguay will have in store for me.

Take care all, see you on the next blog