Monday, December 20, 2010

I arrived in Salto at 6.30 am. I asked different companies if there was a bus to Concordia, on the Argentinian side (you have to go there first to get to Brazil). There wasn't. I noticed an European girl with a big rucksack in the bus station. I asked her if she was going to Concordia by chance. She was. So I  hitch-hiked with Francesca from Germany. It was a great fun although not easy to hitch-hike at 7 am on Sunday, in a violent storm.... (in the picture: before the storm).
But... nothing is impossible. A man gave us a lift to the Argentinian border and another one, a custom officer, to Concordia (all the distance: 29 km). It appeared that all the buses were leaving from Concordia to Iguazu late at night. We couldn't bear waiting in the sad bus station all day, so we decided to.... hitch-hike more, in the rain.
There were two dogs I was "talking to" at the bus station. They walked us to the road where we started stopping cars, quite a long way. They were barking at some cars and at some not, like telling us: these are good people and these are not. Interesting.
Somebody gave us a lift to the highway and he spoke to the patrolling police officers. The police stopped a truck for us and asked the man to take us to another city. 5 hours later the driver spoke to another truck driver and we changed at a petrol station. The second truck was going straight to our final destination!! - we did about 1000 km in total, hitch-hiking in South America (cost: 0 pounds!..). I would never ever did it in the north part of the continent. I used to hitch-hike a lot on my own in Europe years ago, and I loved it. But in some South American countries doing it means robbery, rape or death.