We had breakfast by 8:00 am and the owner gave us two large pomegranates which we fitted in our cooler bag. We left by 10:30am and fuelled up on our way out of town. We rode on the longest straight road for most of the day – through thick brush first and then later in the day it opened up to open grassland with farms and kms of corn fields. We stopped in Union which was about half way to our destination and fuelled up – the petrol station was cash only – luckily we had enough cash as there was no other petrol station and we would not have made the total of 320kms. We stopped for lunch on a side street and a young guy who had been welding on the street came over to say hello and we talked and he told us that a friend of his had been to Australia for a working holiday – he pointed at the house on the corner and said to knock if we needed anything – such friendly people and so many people we meet at very remote places either have been to Australia or know someone who lives or works in Australia – such a small world. After a tuna sandwich, saying hello to the local stray black dog and charging the phone with our solar panels, we continued the second half of our trip. Along the way we saw an armadillo running across the road, the fences on both sides of the road continued and we saw some large bird nests on the power lines and lots of Crested Caracara (Caracara plancus) on the side of the road. We ticked over 10,000km since our start riding in South America on January 7 – a great milestone. One of the little birds that often sit on the road or fly very low to the ground across the road did not make it as I hit it 😞.

We arrived at the municipal campground by 3:30pm and I set up the tent while Andrew walked to town to get groceries. The mosquitos were huge and there were millions of them 🥺🥲 and their bite was actually painful 🥺🙁

We cooked dinner early and retired to our tent early – we listened to the very loud screeching of the parrots outside and the local kids at their soccer practice on the field nearby and then had a great night sleep in our cozy tent without any mosquitoes inside.

We slept in the next day and had a late breakfast with the pomegranate we were given at Hotel Barcelona. We spent the day with washing our clothes, bird watching and identifying the various birds – the ones that build the large nests and screeched all day were monk parakeets (Myiopsitta monachus) which build social nests and they are very beautiful. We also saw and heard a Green-barred Woodpecker (Colaptes melanochloros) and watched the southern black ants or leaf cutter ants (Acromyrmex lobicornis) carry pieces of leaves much larger than their body from the trees to their nests. We also saw a Spot-winged Pigeon (Patagioenas maculosa) and the National bird of Argentina, Rufous Hornero (Furnarius rufus). I had some relaxing hammock time and caught up on writing the blog.

In the afternoon two Argentinians arrived on their adventure motorcycles (one CFMoto and the other one was a RVM) and we walked over to say hello – the caretaker came over to collect money from them and the mosquitoes were really bad – one of the Argentinian riders had a can of repellent called “off” and sprayed my legs and I asked him where I could get one – they said any shop has them. Later on, the caretaker came over to our site on his scooter and brought us a can of repellent for us to keep – such a nice guy 🤗 and much appreciated as I had about used up the entire Australian Rid that I had brought with us during our stay here and I still got bitten multiple times 🥺😳.

We had an early dinner and just after we finished dinner, a cyclist named Mattias arrived who has been travelling since COVID and we chatted and he gave us lots of useful hints and tips of places to go and those to avoid. It was a very warm, still and humid evening and it took a while before it cooled down enough to sleep and we kept the fly of the tent open for some air flow.