Thermal Hot Springs

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Just returned back to Santa Fe yesterday after a few relaxing days at Martin´s Family´s holiday appartment in Maria Grande Thermal Baths!

We left Santa Fe on Friday for the 1&1/2 hr drive east through a tunnel under the Parana River, and through the town of Parana in the Province of Entre Rios (translation - Between Rivers - as the Province lies between Parana and Uruguay rivers). Then we passed many sunflower, soja and wheat fields. I´m constantly reminded of Australia - the southern cross, vast plains, eucalypts, jacaranda and even bottle brush trees! Oh, and the heat!

The Maria Grande Hot Spring Resort is quite new, and appartments are still being built. If anyone is coming this way for a holiday, the Defagots are renting one of their cute little appartments for a meagre ~$25 per night! The thermal pools are extremely salty, so you can float like in the dead sea, and they vary in temperature from very hot to tepid. It is gorgeous to lie in the hot pool of an evening and gaze at the stars!

During the day, we stayed indoors out of the heat! The last day the neighbours invited us for a DELICIOUS asado (BBQ) - photos to come, and a few bottles of wine later we had great fun dancing and singing to guitar and mouth organ playing! Lunch, of course, was followed by a siesta!

We also hired some bikes, went for a walk through the small area of bush - which soon turned into a run back when I realised I had a swarm of big fat mosquitos chasing me - and on the Saturday night we went to the Fiesta de la Cerveza (Beer festival), with a German band playing VERY loud music. All festivals here seem to elect a beauty queen -always a gorgeous young girl, the men participate only with their eyes!!

Last night I joined Martin´s mum in a walk along the ´Costanera´- the boardwalk along the river here in Santa Fe. It is always PACKED with people - swimming, drinking mate, playing football on the sand. One beach is where the poor people tend to congregate - children and rubbish abound; another is a little cleaner, and across the river is where the wealthier people swim, his mother explained. Oh, and she couldn´t help but point out all the eyes focused on ME - the tall, foreign-looking stranger!!

Tonight I leave the hospitality of the Defagots (Muchisimas gracias por todo!!!!!) and Martin and I head by bus up to Posadas, on the boarder with Paraguay (where we plan to spend a day), arriving tomorrow morning, 12 hrs later. The buses here even include meals and fully reclining seats - even better than plane travel!!

On 2nd January, I leave Martin and head up north on my own to Iguassu Falls and across to Brazil...

The adventure begins! :-O

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