June 6, 2009
Quick Trip to Argentina
The girls and Nana had never been to Argentina, and we hated to be that close and NOT go. Not to mention, I'd read online that Posadas was the home of a big Wal-Mart sort of store. We knew that the paperwork for our SUV wasn't stellar (that's an entirely different story), and we were told by the dealer that we wouldn't be allowed to leave the country until he got us the proper paperwork. Worth a shot, though, right?
We were so excited when the officials whisked us right out of Paraguay, until we realized that didn't guarantee entrance on the other side of the bridge into Argentina. We drove over the beautiful bridge all giddy about "getting out" of one country so easily, until we got to the line of cars trying to get into the next. Oh, so THIS is the hard part...
The lady checking our passports smiled and sent us on our way, which was straight into the path of the man checking the vehicles. He looked inside ours, checked in the back trunk part, and then asked for the paperwork. Uh oh. While Ken was digging it all out, I began to ask the man some touristy sorts of questions. Something we've learned about South Americans is that they are generally proud of their home country, and they love to tell foreigners of its benefits. So this man looked at my map, pointed out some high points, answered all the questions I kept posing, and sent us on our merry way. He'd gotten so involved in being a tour guide that he forgot to look at our papers. I've been saying for years that THERE ARE BENEFITS to having talkative women around.
We thanked God for His help, and immediately ran down the Wal-Mart knock off. The store was called "Libertad," and except for the generic brands not saying Sam's Choice, you'd never have known it wasn't a real Wal-Mart. WHAT FUN! We didn't actually buy much of anything, but it's just neat to be somewhere that feels like home, even if we did have to continually wrap our brains around their money unit, the peso. We met more hippies, talked with some nice "regular" folks, and enjoyed exploring the town. Below is another view of the bridge from Argentina this time, but I didn't take many other pictures. I spent the day navigating with my little street map, while Ken drove us here and there. While it was nice, we all felt better when they let us back into Paraguay and we were back on familiar soil. Good to be home!
A new place on my list to visit! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteYeah, you were close to us...so sad that we're not home! Libertad has pretty good prices on food, but since it's far out of town we don't go too often! Hopefully, you filled your tank while you were there, gas prices are 30% less in Argentina.
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