Sharon and Andy's World Tour 2006

Sunday 30 July

As I may have mentioned in the past, it's not all adventure and excitement in this round-the-world travelling lark. Inevitably, we will encounter times and places where sufficiently little of interest happened to enable the writing of an enthralling blog entry (difficult to believe, I know).

Posadas was one such place. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that Posadas is a fabulous place to spend time in; it's just that we were only passing through and didn't get the chance to make the most of the place. Matters weren't helped by our choice of lodging; a four-bed wooden dorm in a campsite (the Aventura) right on the outskirts of town.

A long journey from Mercedes, with a change of bus at Corrientes meant that we didn't arrive until 6pm. Thankfully, although out-of-season, the campsite offered all the amenities we required for the night including a very nice restaurant which overlooked the Rio Parana and gave views to the distant city of Encarnacion in Paraguay.

Monday 31 July

Did I mention my dislike of long bus journeys? One of the best ways to overcome the tedium and discomfort of these unavoidable journeys is to bury your nose in a good book. The bad news is that English-language bookshops in South America seem to be rarer than hen's teeth.

Our trusty guidebook (published 2003) suggested that such a bookshop ('Liverpool Libros'!) existed in downtown Posadas, so rather than spend the day mooching around the campsite, we took a two-hour mooch into town instead.

Such was our desparation for decent reading material that we spent the best part of three hours searching for Liverpool Libros, at one point asking the Tourist Information Centre for help. Finally, on the point of giving up, we found the address given in our guidebook. To spare potential embarrassment for anyone else looking for Liverpool Libros, you should know that it's now a lingerie shop...!

Tired and hungry, we headed for lunch to a steak (what else) restaurant on the main square. Typically for Argentina, the meal was fabulous even at lunchtime (although it was 3pm when we left). The highlight though was an innocuous sounding dessert called a 'Copa Don Pedro' ('Cup of Don Pedro). This turned out to be a dessert dish filled with whisky into which a tiny amount of vanilla ice-cream had been dissolved, and sprinkled with a few chopped nuts. Brilliant! The alcoholic's dessert!

As July drew to a close we neared the end of our time in Argentina, but of course the reason we had been heading North all this time was to leave on a spectacular note.