Another bumper bundle: Punta del Este, Salto and Concordia!

I write this post from a very soggy Concordia bus station. We had the most amazing thunderstorms last night, the thunder went on for hours, but it's left heavy rain today and so when I decided to walk the 1.5km to the bus station partly to kill the 3.25 hours I had until my bus to Resistencia arrived I'm not quite sure what I was thinking! I'd fashioned myself a cover for my small rucksack from a black bag (I do have a cover at home for a small rucksack but as it's way too big for the little one I'm using on this trip I didn't bring it with me), the big one having one inbuilt. I wore my waterproof trousers and rain jacket and carried my umbrella. All good. Well no, because I hadn't considered the road rivers, you know where the water runs down the sides of the roads. Let's just say that my stride length, which is admittedly a little shorter with the rucksacks was usually at least a foot too short to get across them, and at this point whether it's my foot length or 12 inches makes little difference as when your foot goes into a puddle, it inevitably gets wet. 1.5km is 15 blocks so there were anything up to 30 occasions of this! And my shoes can only repel the water for so long...  So, my poor shoes are wet again, so wet I was able to wring my socks out and now I'm in my flip flops. Thank heavens it's warm here or I'd be in the most foul of spirits now rather than just mildly amused/bemused by it all!

I came to Concordia from Salto and prior to that, Punta del Este... So yes, this is a three in one again. I only spent a couple of nights in PDE. It's low season and the guidebooks had said that it would be a ghost town. What they didn't say is that the ghosts would have left too. It was incredible, hundreds of 18-20 storey hotels like this one, all closed up. 

Made the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria where I went with Shalini seem positively buzzing!! So can't say I really did much both days other than go for long walks along the beach 

and around the peninsula. The sea was still quite warm and the air temp was in the 20s so it was lovely to walk barefoot at the edge of the sea. 

The weather was a bit touch and go with rain but I managed to get out for a few hours each day. I even found the Trump Tower that's in the process of being built...

There was also the obligatory visit to the hand sculpture for which PDE is known.

From PDE, I then made my way to Salto. I'd had an option of an overnight bus which wasn't great timing, or going back via Montevideo which was really good connection times, so went for that. My reason for going to Salto was for the thermal pools and I'd booked a hotel at Termas del Dayman, about 8km away from Salto and where the municipal pools were located (which had really good reviews and only cost £2.50 for a day ticket!). I'd realised that my bus was going to go through TDD and so asked the 'host' guy on the bus if the bus could stop there. He was so sweet and every time he came through the bus he would say 'Termas del Dayman' to me, followed by '¿Todo bien?' which on a 7.5 hour bus journey was quite a few times! Then as we were pulling in he said in perfect English 'Where are you from?' and we had a mini chat in English. Kinda like we spoke in Spanish until then though! However limited!

I spent 2 days in TDD, both of which involved getting up, having breakfast, going to the pools...

...for 3 hours, listening (and often singing along) to the 1980s power ballad selection of music that was playing (I figured no one knew me and I'll likely never see them again and wouldn't recognise them if I did and so it didn't matter if I made a fool of myself!), having lunch and heading back to the hotel. the only difference being that on Saturday I had a light lunch so had dinner in the hotel whereas my large lunch on the Sunday negated the need for food in the evening!

I love going to municipal pools, it was the same at Lake Heviz, the thermal lake in Hungary. You see all the 'normal' people with all their wobbly bits and not so 'perfect' bodies and it really does bring home how artificial the magazines are. There must have been 200 women there and not one would have matched a magazine model. Literally not one (don't get me started on the men with the favoured diet here of meat and cheese, meat and cheese...). And yet these bodies are amazing, from the babies in their inflatable jackets who obviously loved being in a big bath, through to the lovely old people who were a bit doddery and who helped each other get in and out so they didn't slip, we were all there for one thing: to enjoy the water and it didn't matter what we looked like, we were just enjoying the soothing water and love handles be damned!

Yesterday was my day to travel to Concordia. From here I go to Resistencia and the bus is scheduled for 1.15pm. I wasn't sure if I could make it over the border (I'm now back in Argentina) so decided to book a hotel for a night here. I had two options for crossing the border (or so I thought) which were getting a bus over the bridge or a ferry across the river. The latter seemed much more fun and despite having real problems finding out the exact times of the departures, there were a number of websites giving details of up to 4 departures a day all around the same ballpark time for each departure. The last one seemed to be around 3pm and I was planning to get a bus that arrived at the port at 10.30am so didn't really foresee any problems with timings. So anyway, yesterday morning I got up, had breakfast, checked out my hotel and got the bus to the port in Salto without any bother. The one thing I hadn't considered in all my preparation is that there would be no ferry at all! The sign at the ticket office said there were departures at 8.45am and 3pm but the 3pm ferry wasn't going that day. I later found out it hadn't run the previous day either and given how sun-bleached the sign had been, I think it likely it's not run for a while. On the bus to the port we'd gone downhill all the way from the bus terminal and I remember thinking I wouldn't have fancied walking up the hill. But of course, that's precisely what I then had to do (all 2.5km of it, with both rucksacks!) to get back to the bus terminal, from where I was able to get a bus, no trouble, to Concordia! Me and my love of all things aqueous will get me into no end of trouble!

And so now I'm back in Argentina, having made my final border (which is somewhere in the middle of this river) crossing back into this country. 

I only spent a couple of weeks in Uruguay in the end, although this is no fault of Uruguay. It's inevitable that on a trip such as this, some places are going to visited in off season and this is really the reason. I have no doubt there is a lot to do here in peak season, but it's just too quiet for a solo traveller at the moment. It is a lovely country though, much cleaner than Argentina, it has great roads, polite drivers, friendly, relaxed people, lovely scenery... The only thing I couldn't get used to was the smell of marijuana, which admittedly was more obvious in Montevideo than elsewhere because of course it's legal in Uruguay (with conditions of course) and with no obvious negative consequences.

Only having the one evening in Concordia, I went for a walk around the town and whilst I think another half day here would have been nice, I got to see quite a lot of the city in that time. There were really great sports facilities along the river where it was lovely to go and walk. 

I also went to the former train station where there were many wagons lined up out back and given the infrastructure for trains that Argentina once had, I do feel that it's a shame that so little remains. 

From there I wandered into town and sat firstly in the square 

and then in the cathedral 

for a while before finally finding a shop that sold leggings! Mine were thrown away during the bed bug clean and I've missed having a pair. These are a shiny material, more like a sports legging but I like them and it will be nice having something other than travel trousers to wear.

After that I had lomo completo al plato, which is kind of the Argentinian version of a chivito on a plate, no bread (there is a bread version) and an incredibly strong Tom Collins! I discovered lomos way back when with the lovely Kira in Mendoza so I always have happy memories when I eat them. The waitress was really nice in the restaurant I went to and we had a little chat about what I was doing and how next year she is planning a trip to Barcelona, Paris, and London; not bad cities to pick I think!

After that, I returned to my hotel, binged on a few episodes of The Crown season 2 before sleeping like a baby until the thunder started. As I said earlier, I'm now in the bus station in Concordia awaiting my bus to Resistencia (although this won't get uploaded until I get to Resistencia). I'll leave you with this final mystery though. Concordia is the 'Capital of Citrus' and there are a lot of orange trees round here attesting to that fact. I wonder why it is then, that instead of orange juice with my breakfast, I got orange squash?