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Our route took us along a very nice new road through the valley heading towards Córdoba. I wanted to go via Villa La Paz which is touted to be the "Las Vegas" of Argentina according to the "Lying Planet" with luxury hotels in the shape of the Pyramids and the Kremlin.
We set a way point on the GPS for the Luxur Hotel but when we got there it was very UN-pyramid-like!! Just a concrete box! We didn't fancy exploring because it was extremely hot compared to the hills (a hike in temperature of around 17 degrees!) and we were stuck in a traffic jam through the centre! If there were any Las Vegas style hotels, we missed them!
We battled through more traffic, through a toll station and finally got into Córdoba where we managed to find the police car park which is listed as a safe place to park in the city centre. It was 32°C and hard to believe that we had our fleece blankets out last night and even had to use our hot water bottles!
Despite the heat we went on a 3.5 hour walk around the city which is known as one of the most beautiful in Argentina. There are certainly a lot of churches here. We went to two on our way in - Iglesia de los Capuchinos with is three coloured façade, and the Cathedral (1577) with its impressive interior.
We checked our emails at the Plaza San Martin where there is free wifi and all the young people gather. Surprisingly there was enough band width for all of us! We spent some time in the market buying fruit and veg which we carried almost 2 miles back to our motor home, stopping at the Jesuit Iglesia de la Campana de Jesus (1645) on the way. The interior looks like an inverted ships hull in gold.
We only stayed one night in the city and then drove through heavy traffic. I had to fight for my road space and constantly had to change lanes and try to avoid all the buses. It took us 30 minutes to do 2 kms (1.6 miles!) After stopping at a Walmart, we drove out of the traffic to a place listed on iOverlander that we thought was a municipal campground.
It turned out to be a factory where motor homes are built that has electrical hook ups and water on a grass area at the side and also has a sewage outlet for toilets. Paulo and his son Ricardo build around 60 customized motor homes a year and have around 12 employees. (See website cinziavehiculos.com)
We were warmly welcomed and stayed for two nights. We were allowed to take a walk around the factory which we found fascinating. They build by order and also build the rear compartments from scratch. It takes between two to three months for a complete interior including shower, kitchen, lounge and bedroom(s).
It was interesting to see the different interior layouts that people had requested. A brand new Peugeot Boxer transporter van, which is exactly the same model as our Fiat Ducato, was being fitted for a customer from Peru. We thought adding an interior shower used up too much space – ours has a shower head attached to a water pump with a fairly long flexible tube that we can pull outside to use. That means no privacy of course, and is an outdoor variation that might not be to everyone's taste. But you can choose your own design which costs around $17,000 US. Not a bad price at all!
Paulo has his own motor home and told us he takes it out most weekends and he has also travelled around the US in a motor home. He is really nice and offered free storage for our motor home! We may well take him up on that!!
Later we tried to use the above mentioned outdoor shower but the tube broke off from the water source so we couldn't use it! Maybe an interior shower isn't a bad idea at all!! We were in the right place for repairs but it just needs to be glued back on which we can do ourselves! Unfortunately we used our extra day to watch HSV – a truly awful match against Wolfsburg that ended 0-0. If it continues like that we will definitely be relegated! The weather outlook didn't cheer us up either – over 37°C everywhere we're heading. Bad planning. It's the wrong time of year to be here!
We headed north, following our plan to go to Paraguay and stopped at the last La Anonima supermarket along the way. There was hardly any traffic on the roads as we went past a laguna that we couldn't really see! It's only a few meters above sea level and very flat. It's also very hot and there are a lot of birds. Unfortunately one flew straight into our windscreen. Ouch! Major headache!
We were lucky to find a municipal campground in Suardi just as it was starting to get dark. The trees would provide shade during the day and we could even plug in. All for free! The shower block was locked but that wasn't a problem. It was 7-45pm by the time we got there so it was slowly beginning to cool down. Not by much of course but at least we could do some exercise. Kirsten went for a run around the campground with its sport field at the rear and some yoga exercises and I went for a 90 minute walk.
The only problem was that it was a Saturday night – we had four different types of very loud music competing around us but it was still too hot to go to bed anyway! We turned Argentinian and didn't eat until almost 11pm!! It was still 28°C at 1am!
The next day we took a zig zag route and did almost 400km along mostly good tarmac roads. We got stopped at the border into the Chaco region at a police check point. The officer obviously wanted money for Christmas but picked the wrong people to try it out on!!
He told us that our bumper guard at the front was not allowed and we have to take it off. We waived him off and said that's part of the vehicles design. We bought it like that. He tried arguing his point but didn't get anywhere. We stuck to our guns and he let us go. He kept looking back towards his colleague who had pulled an Argentinian vehicle over. It seemed that at some point the other officer must have shaken his head so our officer let us go. Who knows, maybe it's because we're two women which makes it easier in this macho country. We were never going to pay a fine anyway so its a moot point.
We drove north through the Chaco, known for its low sea level, fields of sunflowers and lots of birds. Also known for corrupt police and unbearable heat!! We kept getting kamikaze birds that I was trying to avoid and there were also a lot of snakes on the side of the road, both dead and alive! One of the dead ones was a boa that had obviously just had something to eat before it got hit on the road – it had quite a bulge in its body!
We turned onto Highway 16 which is the main road between Salto and Resistencia and hit a great deal more traffic. It was also a toll road where for the first time the fees depended on height and not on the number of tyres. We argued that we should pay the lower toll for vehicles under 2.30 metres. Apparently there's a height sensor but the woman phoned up and we had to wait for the boss. We were so certain that we were under 2.30m that we got out our tape measure ... 2.35m!!! Ooops! Okay, so we paid the extra $1. Why did we bother arguing in the first place? Well it's the principle plus we believed we were right!!! I guess we needed to eat some humble pie!!
We got into Resistencia which is quite a large city and drove through a lot of traffic. Town and city driving is always a real problem because some drivers ignore the give way signs and others don't. Some drivers do the "right before left" give way rule and others don't. It all depends on each individual traffic island or cross section and which town or city!!
In Resistencia, at one of the traffic islands, the signs saying traffic from my right had to give way to me as I was driving around the island, were so big I thought they'd stop! No chance! A truck was coming so fast that I slowed and then had to stop because he came shooting through, horn blaring! Well I had right of way but its meaningless in an accident – foreigners are always at fault!! Particularly when it comes to a British woman driving in Argentina!!
Somehow we managed to get through the city to the sculpture museum where we could park for the night, without getting any bumps! It was already 6-50pm when we parked but we had plenty of light left to walk around the park with all its sculptures. The city is known as the Sculpture City as there are numerous sculptures here. Kirsten took photos and I used the park to join lots of others doing fitness walking.
The next morning I slowly bent down to get some water and was rewarded with extreme pain in my back and down my right leg again. SH..! Another slipped disc or is it the same one? Damn! I was doing so well. I'd had 2 months of doing things slowly, bit by bit getting back into walking, and thought I only had another month to go and I'd be home free. Nope! Now it's far, far worse than it was before and is probably going to take months and months. A huge blow!
Unfortunately we can't just stay here because we have to get Winnietwo out of Argentina – his permit expires on the 14th December and it's the 12th today. So we have no choice but to continue heading north to Paraguay, through Formosa where corrupt police are famous! iOverlander even mentions the name of the worst one "Fernandez".
Obviously he was having a siesta at the time – we'd timed our drive so that we were there at siesta time - because he wasn't there. We got stopped at 6 different check points along the route. Two waived us through, four asked where we were going, no one asked to see our papers, all were very nice and most were female officers. Maybe they'd read iOverlander aswell!!
We were now in the northern most province of Argentina and the last one before the Paraguayan border. We arrived at a petrol station at 5pm and stopped there to try and watch HSV playing. We spent a lot of time trying to get the website to work and had something to eat whilst trying. Eventually we had to give up and just listen to a live radio report. We lost ... again.
It was already 7pm so I suggested we stay here because it was too late to try and get through the border. Great idea but a security guard came at 10pm and said we couldn't stay there and we'd have to drive 4km further into the town where we can park at another YPF petrol station. So we packed up and drove there but we weren't allowed to park there either. They told us about a parking area where we can park for $10 US.
We were being given the run around. We drove to a Shell petrol station a little further on. It was 10-30pm by now. We put in some expensive diesel and were allowed to park on the side. It wasn't a good night because mosquitoes kept us busy. It was 3am when we killed the last one! And it was still 30°C inside!!
We drove 6km to the border and it took only 30 minutes to exit Argentina and enter Paraguay. I think that's a record! We got plagued by money changers which we waived away until we found out that there is a toll station on the way into Asunción, the capital of Paraguay so we'll need local currency. $1 US dollar = 5,300 Guarani. Yikes, we need a calculator for that! We ended up changing our last 200 Argentinian Pesos because we only had 100 US dollar notes and not many of them. Plus we normally get better rates in the banks.
We had 50,000 Guarani (Gua) which sounds like a lot but is less than $10 US but it was enough to pay for the toll bridge into Asunción which cost 5,000 Gua, less than a dollar.
