14 July 2013

argentina: concordia

our walk from our hostel to the bus station in salto, urugay took a lot less time in the morning than it had at night...daylight works wonders for how fast you can walk, especially when you know where you're going...we'd booked tickets the day before...
the bus ride took an hour total, though the distance was not far...it's just a few kilometers, basically just going across the river, to cross the border back into argentina...just like when we took the ferry to uruguay, both emigration and immigration took place on the argentinean side of the border...(emigration and immigration are why the ride is an hour long, for such a short distance)...it's a recent change that americans have to pay the reciprocity fee no matter which way they enter the country (it used to be necessary only when entering by air) so several of the border officers were unfamiliar with what to do with my paper showing i'd paid the fee...several people were called over to watch what to do...good fun:)
the bus got to the bus station in concordia, argentina, and we found out the next bus to posadas didnt leave until 2100...in other words, we had 10 hours to kill in a town that is nothing more than a border town...yippee...
after realizing one street has been renamed (lonely planet had a different name than google maps) we walked to parque san carlos...the 'castle' in this park was originally built (or at least started) as a private residence, but it wasn't lived in for long, and just fell into ruin...lonely planet says you can visit the ruins, but that isn't quite accurate...you can walk all the way around and look in a little, but there is a fence around much of it, and it looks as if some sort of restoration is being done...perhaps someone wants to finish the building as it was originally designed? 
after the 'castle' we walked to the river and the 'beach'...the water was really high, so there was no beach to speak of...of course i loved being near the water...
we walked back to the city centre, and started wondering if there was some sort of running event going on...i didn't see any bib numbers, but there seemed to be a lot of people out running a specific route...at least, they were all running on this one street...
snack ended up being coffee (espresso) for bo, and ice cream for me...i wasn't very impressed with my ice cream:(
there is a museum listed in lonely planet, and we tried to visit...unfortunately, much of it is under renovation right now, so there wasn't much we could see...the exhibit we did enjoy was the set of photos from the 'castle' we'd explored previously...neat to see the people who lived there at one point...there was also an exhibit with old cameras...
concordia has a pedestrian area in the centre, we strolled along there for a while...we walked passed the pedestrian zone, hoping to find something interesting, but that didn't happen...we walked back through the area, and found a supermarket...it's always good to stock up...we also found a bakery that had fresh baked cheese puffs...YUM...
by the time we got back to the bus station, we only had to wait for two hours for our bus to leave:)...i found a plug and charged my iphone and checked the news:)

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