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Published: April 17th 2013
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We arrived at the Argentinian border town of Concordia early in the morning where, all out of pesos, our first job was to find somewhere to change some money. Having previously spent a couple of weeks in Argentina, we´d changed money into pesos on numerous occasions, however whilst in Uruguay we´d seen that the exchange rate for changing Argentinian Pesos was actually pretty awful, and we´d been trying to figure out why, when someone told us that there was a black market for dollars in the country. Since the peso is so unstable with the nation expecting some kind of immenent economic meltdown, everyone in the country wants to get there hands on some dollars (a stable currency) and get rid of all their pesos. To try and curb this, the president has stopped cash machines in the country from dispensing dollars as currency and so Argentinians actually need to leave the country in order to get dollars out of cashpoints - which explained the long queues at cash points in Uruguay. All of this has led to there being a black market for ultra-valuable US dollars and left us wondering if we could make our money go a bit further.
We made a few enquiries in Concordia and half an hour later, we found ourselves in a non-descript looking kiosk talking to a man through a metal grate and low and behold, having handed over a couple of hundred dollars, we left the kiosk having got a better exchange rate than the official rate for pound sterling. It´s just a shame we didn´t know about it sooner!
Having booked ourselves on the next bus going up to Puerto Iguazú that evening, we had a whole day to kill in Concordia, which proved to be quite a challenge. Sadly the ´Jewish Gaucho´museum was closed since that could have been an interesting trip, but the national museum was open and so we headed there. The best thing about the museum was the building, a beautiful old french-style colonial building, but that was pretty much as good as it got. We spent ten minutes staring vacantly at a few posters inside and admired the cabinet, which among other artefacts contained a wide collection of keys, but that was about it, and we left having not managed to kill much time at all. Fortunately it was a sunny day and there were benches
in plazas and cafes that we ended up spending the day going between before the time finally came for us to get our bus. Unfortunately the bus wasn´t playing ball and turned up two hours late, but we were on it eventually and settled down for the overnight journey to Puerto Iguazú in the far Northeast of Argentina.
Puerto Iguazú is another border town, with rivers separating it from both Brazil and Paraguay. We were a bit tired on arrival but went for a nice walk to the view point, where standing in Argentina, we could look across at the other countries and wave at people in Brazil and Paraguay.
After a run of really good weather, it was a shame that the next day was cloudy, wet and miserable, and when it rains in this part of the world, it´s not just a spot of drizzle. Having driven through sheets of rain, the bus dropped us off at Iguazú National Park, where we spent much of the day walking around in the pouring rain looking at the most amazing giant waterfalls that were all around the park. Somehow, the camera survived the double insult of pouring rain
coupled with bucketloads of spray emitted from the waterfalls. Bob on the other hand was rather sulky and didn´t speak to Emma or Chris for the rest of the day having complained that it was ´worse than having a dip´.
Tourist attrations in Iguazú exhausted, we spent our last pesos on a lovely meal where Chris had ´the best steak ever´ which was apparently perfectly cooked (may or may not have been seared and heated through), before catching the bus for the short hop to the Paraguay border the following day.
Things we have learned during our final stint in Argentina We´re not sure if there´s a whole lot of small change down the back of Argentina´s sofas, but we´ll bet there´s a stack of dollars under those mattresses.
Concordia is unlikely to win any prizes for being a city a culture.
Nikon make very robust cameras.
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