Photo Album: Long Crossing to the East
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Salta is the major town in the Norte Region of Argentina, quite populous. This was another turn point of this journey, this time to head back to eastern Argentina. The next major destination was the spectacular Iguazu Waterfalls, that straddles the borders of Argentina and Brazil, at the northeastern corner of this country.
An early start was on the order sheet today, as we were going to have a long boring drive ( 650 km) eastwards to the town, Presidencia Rogue Saenz Rena ( S. Rena for short). The earliness was also necessary in order to avoid the peak hour city traffic. By the time we were out of town and well on our way on a dual lane freeway, it was just 8 am.
It was expected to be boring, because the maps shows only just a long straight road, with little towns of any size in between….After missing a turn point, added another 45 km to the drive was the biggest excitement of the day.
We crossed into Chaco Province briefly, and then Santiago del Estero Province on highway 16 going south eastern.
Mileage signs in Argentina are notoriously unreliable, for the worse. Often, say, it indicates the distance to a place is 50 Km, by the time reaching that point, there is another sign to say 15 Km to go. If one is short on fuel, this can be very uncomfortable. Today, a sign showed us the distance is X km to S Rena, just 200 meters later, another sign showed us it is X+23 Km….how can you trust them!
And sometime later, we were back in Chaco Province, due to the geometry of the provincial borders.
It was a long boring drive, on a very long and straight road, and hot….and an early day, checked into hotel well before 5 pm. after a nearly 700 Km drive. The traffic was very thin, sometimes I thought we owned the road. As we were driving in the sub-tropics, the vegetation was getting thicker and thicker, and humidity, higher and higher. We were still one or two days away from the mighty Iguazu Falls.
So 10 hours and 700 Km later, we reached the small town of Presidencia Rogue Saenz Pena.
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| An late afternoon flag lowering at the central park |
Day 35- It was an otherwise boring day with another long drive ahead.
Just over two hours after started off from Presidencia Rogue Saenz Pena with a full tank of fuel, we crossed the wide Rio ( River ) Parana into Corriente, a relatively larger town, and seemingly a pleasant riverside holiday resort town.
Another 330 Km later, we crossed the border into the Province of Misiones, where Iguazu Falls is at its extreme northern end, neighboring Brazil and Paraguay.
We picked up some fuel at a highway side YPF service station, and went back to the main road. Nothing seems to be amiss ( as far as I can recall), there was no barrier, no sign to say not to exit from where we did, which is just a perfectly normal looking, well, an EXIT ramp.
About 5 Km down the road, suddenly a car overtook us on a double solid line of the highway, and that’s nothing strange about that in Argentina. Then a police vehicle immediately behind it came into my rear vision mirror, and was speeding right towards our car, I thought they were chasing the other car. No, they just followed me with their warning lights flashing, no sound of siren. After a few hundred meters, I realized that they were really after me. So I stopped onto the gravel side.
Between my perfect English and their presumably perfect Spanish, and a hand drawn diagram, they were saying that I should not have exit the service station from where I did, which I could not understand why….! To cut to the chase, they were starting to give me the thumb-rubbing-index-finger gesture, if you know what I mean. And the word “Dollar” was mentioned with a 500 written on the paper, not Peso, NO… P will not do. On hearing the word “Dollars”, Julia got out of the car, and started filming, they waved her to stop, and I ask her to stop too before it got too out of hand. Then I took out the copy of the police report where we had our luggage stolen in El Chalten, and started to draw pictures on the paper, and explain to them our “dire” situation, luggage stolen, everything’s gone, and absolutely no $$. Only credit card….The two policemen were really confused.
What the f..#@^$ is that, US$500 for a fine, even if I were wrong… for what, a very small misdemeanor for exiting to the main road from a “wrong” exit?!!! @#8$^…, A bunch of crooks they were.
Their body language was kind of sheepish as well, and weren't too aggressive in anyway, almost smiling.
After a few minutes, in the confusion, they thought better of it, and gave me back all the papers, and waved us on…..Well, this is going to be another BIG black mark against tourism in Argentina,… definitely. Two poorer policemen tonight, no food on their family table….sorry to hear that.
What was I to know, this was to be a pattern of police behaviors in this part of Argentina, we found out a couple of days later.
We pushed on for another 3 hours, and settled into a small hotel for the night at El Dorado, just a mere 100Km from Iguazu Falls, and broke the trip's 12,000 Km marker.
And we looked forward to a roaring encounter with the might Iguazu the next day.
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