February 15th - 17th
We decided to change our plans to visit Salta in the north of
Argentina when the region flashed up on the news one morning. There had been intense rain fall on February 9th which resulted in a landslide and several thousands of people were evacualted. Going with a tip from
the guy who worked at the hostel in Córdoba, we rerouted east to a town called Mercedes.
My efforts at making myself tired for
the night bus out of Cordoba by eating a huge spaghetti carbonara
must have worked because when the driver asked me where we were going
to, I answered “Para las luces” instead of
“Paso de los libres” (my mind had just taken the first letters of the words and invented a new town name). He must have thought I was quite a loop!
We arrived in Mercedes on a Sunday afternon and the town seemed dead. There was hardly anybody in sight and nowhere open to buy even a bottle of water from. By the evening, however, the place came alive. We had a meal on the terrace of a restaurant on the main square and watched masses of people entering the cathedral whilst a group of lads was running around the square with banners over their heads. Music was being played out of the back of a van, people were dancing on the streets and someone raised a flag up the pole. From what I gathered, Mercedes was starting carnaval early and there was some kind of dancing competition going on. The town was also lively on Monday morning and I felt a great sense of achievement in just buying 4 stamps and withdrawing some money (something which took over an hour, the admin systems in what I've seen of South America so far seem a little crazy).
The great thing about Mercedes is that it doesn't really lie on the typical tourist route. The "gauchos" (like cowboys) that we saw there, sat on the table next to us at the restaurant, walking around the streets, riding their horses, are therefore the real McCoy.
From Mercedes we booked a full day exersion to Esteros de Ibera, the second largest wetlands in the world (after Pantanal in Brazil). The trip was fantastic. We had a boat ride in a lagoon where we saw one of the two Argentine species of alligator, the Yacare Caiman (yacaré negro) (the other being the broad-snouted caiman, yacaré overo), several Capybara (the world's largest rodent) and dozens of different birds. It was all fascinating. We learned that the sex of a Caiman is determined by the temperature of the eggs, Capybaras eat all the time to maintain their weight and wear down their ever-growing teeth and the marsh stag grows an extra chunk of horn for every year of his life. Just as we finished a walk through a forested area where we'd spotted monkeys and a woodpecker, a huge snake slithered over the grass right before our eyes. We were pretty hot and tired by midday so the three course home-cooked lunch was a real treat. After a wee siesta we then went on a two hour horse ride through surrounding meadows, wading through water and herds of cows and admiring magnificent birds which flew over our heads. With the thorn scratches still present from our last horse trek (after which Robbie noted he was never going horse riding again), Robbie and I thought we had got given the plodders of the goup again until we were handed broken off twigs to tap our horses with. Argentinian horses seem to respond to taps on their backsides much more than kicks in their sides!
After the tour, we were driven about two and a half hours to a bus station from where we were told there was a 23:45 bus to Iguazu. It was only after a guide had pulled away that we discovered that this bus wasn't running. We would have to get the 23:00 bus to Posadas, arrive there at 00:15 and then get the 13:30 bus to Iguazu. It was to turn out quite an eventful journey.
