Hmm, it's a sort of big peanuty caramely bar. A bit dry and slightly too sweet, but no bad, and doubtless packed with calories.
Oh, although I nearly forgot myself and only booked for three nights, the draft itinerary did call for four nights in Montevideo already. So I am still running a day (well, maybe 20h since I left the hotel about 2pm Paraguayan time not 10am as I would have if I'd only booked for one night and not had the abortive stuff in the morning) ahead of schedule due to not overnighting in Ciudad del Este.
The draft itinerary therefore had me in Montevideo on Friday night, albeit having to check out the next day, whereas now I don't get that. I could have used the extra day there but I figured Concepcion is supposed to be pretty cool and it would be better to use the extra day to upgrade it to a four day stay. I will get Friday and Saturday night there anyway.
Oh, much as I've found it generally a bit useless, to be fair to the guidebook, it does show the bus terminal is 'off the map' in Ciudad del Este. What I mistook as the terminal is just labelled 'buses to Foz do Iguazo/Puerto Iguazu' or similar. It's arguably slightly confusing but it is right. I still stand by my earlier opinions on its spectacularly unhelpful information on the Argentina-Paraguay crossing in general.
20:35. The guy in the seat in front of me has his feet up on the toilet wall. That makes him a bit of a arrogant bastard to my mind, but watching him periodically change posture and foot position reminds me of the Rab C Nesbitt title sequence.
I am thinking a bit, as I tend to do on these bus trips, and I suppose it is moderately cool that I actually *have* an opinion on Encarnacion, regardless of how biased or unfair or even truthfully negative it might be.
Had a quick look at the guide book to check the visa situation for Uruguay, I have been lulled into a possibly false sense of security as everywhere else has been OK. But it's apparently cool, even Americans only need a valid passport for Uruguay.
We got served a sandwich and a couple of cakey things. I am feeling pretty full actually. I haven't eaten well or even immensely enjoyably today, but I don't think I'm likely to find myself starving later on.
I am getting perhaps a bit undeservedly optimistic that I will be able to get a bus from Concordia direct to Montevideo. Still, we'll see how it goes. I am quite looking forward to Montevideo, rationally or not.
Oh, this bus doesn't have Concordia as its final destination. Which is a bit of a bugger, but it hasn't really stopped anywhere else yet so I might hope it will be clear when we stop round 10pm that we're almost certainly in Concordia. Obviously I will ask as I get off, but they always look at me like I'm a moron when I ask.
Musing over the taxi incident earlier and purely for the sake of argument assuming the guy's intentions were good and it was language difficulties, I am wondering if I should adopt the following 'arsey but safe' strategy when money's on the line (taxi drivers, waiters at the point of payment):
- If I don't understand, I say I don't understand. If they repeat and I don't understand, I tell them again. I will repeat that until they make it clear or get sick of it and we cancel the transaction. I'm not pretending for their convenience or to avoid 'awkwardness'.
- I say as little as is absolutely necessary. I don't justify what I say, I don't try to get fancy. If it appears rude or causes inconvenience, tough shit. I'll be polite and practice my Spanish when it's free. (No 'no offence at me taking my bag' explanation. No 'because I might walk off' fancy Spanish. "I want to take my bag with me. Wait here please.")
- I don't try to be fair. Let them ask if they want something. (No '50k' offer to the cab driver.)
This seems a bit overdone but something to think about. The first point is probably the most unreasonable if taken to excess. The others, I'm not so sure are bad. If I had just said 'I want to take my bag' and then 'wait here please' once I got it to the taxi driver instead of all the stuff I did say, if he was honest we would have had no problems. If he got stroppy when I asked for the bag then I could deal with that then rather than trying to anticipate. And I could just have said something 'I had my bag stolen once'. If it's rude, fuck him. It's not meant to be. I reckon honest people understand you have to take precautions to avoid dishonest ones.
22:00. We just pulled up at some fairly desolate looking bus terminal. I leaped out and asked the guy if we were in Concordia. Apparently not.
Looking at the ticket just to check I do want to go to Concordia, I see it says 'Concordia acc' and the guy who sold me the ticket gabbled something about 'accesso a Concordia' which I just ignored. I have a nasty feeling the bus is merely heading in the right direction and terminates at Retiro which (though I have no idea where it is, and am not getting my guide book out now) may be just 'on the way' to Concordia.
If so, this may suck, or may be no big deal if Retiro or some point en route where they will chuck me off is near the Uruguayan border, as I don't particularly care about going to Concordia.
I think this is an example where rule 1 above would not have been smart. In the limited time available I wanted to get on a bus ASAP to at least head in the right direction and no company nearby seemed to offer anything appropriate. At least I am probably getting closer. And for all I know this speculation is totally incorrect and we are in fact going to Concordia. For what little it might be worth, the guy didn't say much when I asked if we were there now, whereas you might expect him to say 'we are not going there' or exhibit some confusion.
Actually, he just came and spoke to me and he said they would advise me when we were in Concordia and to relax. Which is nice. Although given the general reluctance of bus companies all over the continent to perform this simple and logical service, as whinged about at length before, I am not going to blame myself for trying to take responsibility for getting off in the right place.
I do wonder what time we will get there. I hope it isn't too late, my not-quite-fantasy mental picture includes buses from Concordia/Salto to Montevideo up to about midnight or half past but then not till about 6 or 7am after that. So I just may end up camping out in the terminal or seeking overnight accommodation, neither of which appeals much. Neither is the end of the world (although if the terminal is foul and desolate, both options become much worse) but I'd rather it didn't come to that.
I should say I don't think this bus is slow, whereas I did with the Asuncion-Encarnacion bus. The guide book doesn't say anything about Concordia and I didn't ask when I bought the ticket, so all I had to go on was a quote of 5h from the tout.
Mon 00:00. Still on the bus. I wish, more just for the hell of it, I could remember the draft itinerary's possible route and times I dredged up from the web. I have this idea I might be pretty much following that route and that we will get in at 3am. Which would suck a bit but unless the terminal is terrible at least it would give me just two or three hours to lurk until daylight and hopefully an onward bus.
Well, sunrise is about 7:30 and it starts to get light about 7. So four hours to wait. But I might hope there's a bus to Montevideo around 5 or 6am. And of course the whole 3am arrival is based on partial recollections of the draft itinerary.
Despite the bloke implying he'd wake me up, I am not trying to go to sleep and am sort of trying not to. I will feel shit after sleeping on the bus and especially if I've just been woken up and find myself in some desolate hole of a terminal while half asleep.
I don't feel too tired. Experience suggests (although with the aid of caffeinated drinks and alcohol, which I hope cancel out, since I've had neither today) I will be fine without sleep until about 9am at which point I may start to flag. But I expect to be on a bus by then I guess if the terminal is decent enough for me to not be forced to seek accommodation there will probably be an all night source of coffee or coke.
03:25 (Argentina). Man, I should give myself more credit. I don't lose it as easily as I sometimes suspect I do.
At about 01:15 the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere and as I half feared I was told this was Concordia. As the conductor chap got my bag out (it took a minute or two to find it, and I gave him the wrong receipt at first) I bleated enquiries about if there was a town nearby. I didn't follow him properly but I gathered we were 5km from Concordia. At this point "I am going to die" flitted briefly through my head.
As the bus left I noticed there were a couple of cops under a nearby bridge as some sort of traffic checkpoint. It was also fairly well lit and I managed to retain my cool surprisingly well.
I saw a number of buses go past, including three to Puerto Iguazu, one to Posadas and one to Buenos Aires. Taking stock before speaking to the cops and hoping a taxi would go past (one didn't), I dug the guide book out and had a look. I figured if push came to shove I could probably flag down a BA bus (or preferably one to Rosario or Santa Fe), get on that and go from BA to Montevideo, at the cost of several extra hours and of course more cash.
I had ARS30 left in my wallet after buying the ticket to 'Concordia', or about five quid if memory serves re exchange rate. I dug out my hidden belt where I was sure I had a bit more and after not finding it at first, thank fuck I had about ARS300 in there. So at least I had a backup plan.
Note to self for future trips: do not transit a country or go to a border post without a sizable chunk of cash for at least one of the countries. I had naively been assuming I could get cash at the bus terminal in Concordia, but of course if I'd had no cash in this case I couldn't have got over to the terminal.
Of course I had wodges of other currencies (notably Chilean pesos) but I wouldn't fancy my chances of passing those. Oh, and USD450 of traveller's cheques, but once again I am not sure how widely acceptable they are, least of all on a bus flagged down at 1am.
There was another bloke standing at the side of the road who appeared from somewhere during this taking stock. Maybe another bus dropped him off.
I then lugged my cases over to the cops to ask for advice. They were very helpful and called a cab for me. The area was heaving with flying insects, presumably due to the lights, and the floor moderately well populated with apparently dead or dying beetles about an inch long with surprisingly thin bodies. Vaguely like half a stick of chewing gum on legs. It must be a pretty shitty job standing there all night. There were actually about five cops in total, three sat by some shack off to one side.
I shared the taxi with the other bloke, him in the front with the driver. We set off down some dirt road which was totally unlit in places. I took comfort from the fact the cops had called this taxi and the other passenger was probably not in cahoots with the driver.
After maybe five minutes, during which I wondered if I should clarify I needed to go via the border post and decided I would wait til we got somewhere civilised to discuss it, the bloke was dropped off in the middle of nowhere and paid the driver.
I then explained that I wanted to go to Salto, Uruguay, via border control or if it was easier to go to the bus terminal in Concordia. (The cop had told me both were open 24h and recommended Salto as nearly as cheap and more convenient.) So I agreed on ARS120 to go to Salto.
It occurred to me I was in another taxi-with-suitcase-in-the-boot situation, but I gathered the driver had to clear border control too, plus I suspected (correctly as it turned out) the border posts were united so I had a perfect excuse to take my case with me, apart from the fact the driver was with me anyway and not in the car.
They charged me ARS10 at the Uruguayan desk, I don't know if this is normal (there was a sign on the way in from the Argentine authorities saying there was no charge) but it's not much and (re note to self above) I had the money.
We were the only people there, and so the Urugayan customs guy went through my luggage very thoroughly. He was quite a nice chap for all that and recommended a bus company to go on to Montevideo with and apologised for the inconvenience. What attracted most attention were my eight boxes of disposable contact lenses, he (and some other bloke hanging around) kept coming back to them. He asked me how much they were worth and I said I wasn't sure but about GBP20 for 30 pairs. I didn't get charged anything in the end.
We then drove over some hydroelectric dam the taxi driver pointed out to the bus terminal in Salto. I couldn't give the guy a tip as I had only moved ARS100 from my hidden belt so had the exact amount after the charge at the border. I apologised and he said it was fine. He seemed a pretty decent chap too.
We arrived at the nearly deserted (two other passengers sitting dejectedly on seats and a security guard) bus terminal at 3am. I tried to get some Uruguayan cash out of the machine but no joy. After rooting around unnecessarily through my suitcase I remembered where my other debit card was and tried that. It worked enough to show my balance but still no joy on withdrawal.
The security guard (another helpful chap, I seem to have lucked out in this regard) told me there was a bank across the road. I left my suitcase and withdrew the maximum offered amount of 3000. As soon as I'd finished it switched to saying 'out of order' so I suspect I got the last cash. I hope 3000 is enough for the bus.
There is a bureau de change here but the security guard says it opens at 10am and according to the customs guy there is a bus at 6am which I want to get. The guard doesn't think they take cards either. If push comes to shove I can wait til 10am & change some Chilean notes but I hope I won't have to.
I haven't asked but I think no refreshment facilities are open. I do at least have about a litre of water on me.
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