I've been giving some thought to these missives, waffles and diatribes. I’m concerned that they have a tendency to elongate into flights of fancy and streams of consciousness. Sometimes the product of cycling over varying roads in differing sea states. From the near becalmed of southern Uruguay to the heavy 40 metre swells in northern Misiones. We sometimes need to use psychological stimuli, especially at the end of the day to help us over the last few hills, the last few kilometers to the campground. Word games like A to Z batted between us work well, but after you’ve used up Countries, Rivers and South American dictators there’s a need for a change.Creating collective nouns for illrelavencies like parillas and mate bombillas (I’ll return to these at some point, they’re totally synonymous to here). Then there are alliterations- If you have Berwickshire Bends what is the equivalent in the pronince of Misiones? The Navigator’s response was instantaneous: ‘Misiones Mumps’ – it was the end of a long hot day. These communications also squander away your useful megabytes and probably a good part of your employer’s time. So I’ve come up with this novel idea. What if I was to create a special site, where you could access these perambulations at your leisure? I’m not sure what you would call this’ a travel diary, possibly a web log. Which will no doubt, if it were to catch on, be truncated to some inane diminutive? I’ll leave that to others.
We’ve been heading towards the Tres Fronteras, to cross over Paraguay and back into Argentina. If you check a map you will see just how complicated the national borders are in this small area and the logic of our route. We leave the camp ground in Puerto Iguazu around 9 o’clock and moments later collect an exit stamp from Argentina. Check duty free for the vastly over priced electrical goods. Then by 9.30 we’re stamped into Brazil. Fifteen kilometers later and we’re stamped out again. Over the Rio Paraná and we collect stamp number four. It’s only 10.15 am. Others might be able to claim a similar record, what I know is, if we do this too often we’ll need new passports.
Tres Fronteras; where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet, equals a smuggler’s paradise . We’ve heard all the ‘them over there’ stories; trafficking in women, drugs and counterfeit goods.
It’s the last that I think I might have acquired. Pigs are flying tonight. I’ve procured a second piece of electrical wizardry: a netbook that is joining the Kindle, all in one year. A netbook that cost just under a couple of million guaranis; I’ll frame the receipt when we get back, but at somewhat less than the Argentine duty free joke shop.
So I won’t be bombarding your in box, inflicting you with diatribes and waffle, burning useful megabytes of your lives.
The blog site title is : "The Long Commute”, and the address is: http://escapingthewinter.blogspot.com/
Don’t expect any fancy graphics or pretty coloured clever bits. Pictures will be next on the learning curve
Please come and join us there.
