Day 66 - 09 Feb.2012 - Paso de la Patria

As we travelled already 140 km of today’s part yesterday, we decided to try to drive tomorrow’s road today as well. The road crosses Argentina in a straight line and ends up in the city of Resistencia next to the river Parana.
Before we left, we went through the village and took some pictures. It started to drizzle a bit and after we were on our way along the RN16 the drizzle developed into a long tropical downpour. At times we had to slow down to almost 10km/h to drive through the puddles. In this way there was no chance we would reach Resistencia today. While we stopped in Monte Quemado for lunch, some clear spots were appearing in the sky on the horizon. It stopped raining heavily and shortly after Monte Quemado the clouds got thinner and the temperature increased. By the time we were in Resistencia the temperature was well over the thirties again. We went into town in search for a hotel. The town was heaving when we arrived and the traffic so dense that it made it very difficult to search for a hotel. The city was so packed that we were even having difficulties to stop anywhere to enquire about room availability. What is quite remarkable about Resistencia is the number of sculptures you can find just wherever you look. Apparently there are some 500 sculptures they have here. This is due to the Biennale Festival when artists from all over the world gather in Resistencia producing their art on city streets where everybody can follow the process. The winner’s sculpture would then be placed permanently somewhere in town and so every 2 years Resistencia becomes the host to yet another art piece. Indeed you feel there like in an open-air gallery. If it wasn’t for the traffic and if we had a bit more luck with finding a hotel, we would have stayed there for the night.
After cruising aimlessly for an hour through the city, we decided to leave in search for a smaller town where the search for a hotel is easier than in this dense traffic.
We crossed over the river Parana and drove to Paso de la Patria, a little village famous for its fishing possibilities on the river Parana. It was indeed quite touristic and we found a nice place to stay in an “Imobiliaria” (we first thought it would be an estate agent). It was not the cheapest, considering it does not provide breakfast, on the other hand the breakfast is very often quite thin anyway here and we could prepare our own breakfast in the kitchen.