Day 43: Uraguay

Today started out well. It was really foggy so I took out my headlamp, set it to strobe and strapped it to the back of my bike so drivers could see me. I made good time, arriving in Concordia by 10 am. I biked towards the river to cross into uraguay and asked where the bridge was. I found out from a couple of guys waiting at a bus stop that the the closest bridge was 40 km away and the only way across the river in the city was a ferry. As a consolation they offered me some blood sausage they were eating. Only in Argentina do you ask for directions and get offered blood sausage. Unfortunately the ferry left every 2 hours so I was stuck until noon, I asked the boarder guard if he could just renew my visa without crossing over, but he could not. I sat around for an hour waiting for the boat to take me the quarter mile across the river. I honestly could have swam across the river in all the time I waited. The boat took 15 minutes to cross. I went through immigrations and then had another 2 hours to wait for the return ferry. I road my bike around a little and found an empanadas store for lunch. They did not accept argentine currency, so I had to change some money for lunch. The prices were comprable to Argentina. It turns out it was a good thing I changed money because the ticket for the return ferry was only sold in uraguayan currency. I made it back to Argentina by around 3, having spent about 4 hours on my detour to uraguay. I decided to make a try for chajari. I was rested after my trip to uraguay and was holding about 25 kph, but I had 77 km to go. I bit off a little more than I could chew and decided to stop just before the sun came down about 20 km from the chajari. I was fortunate to find s hotel right by the highway. It was s little pricey, relatively speaking, but I had no other options besides my tent. Tomorrow I will try to make it to Mercedes and visit my family there for a few days.