Corrientes

We continued to skirt Paraguay along the Rio Paraná. The decision not to enter Paraguay was based as much on the lack of anything interesting in the southern part of the country as it was on the stories of street crime and corruption in the cities. We heard of some beautiful reserves in the north, but they are difficult to reach, and relatively undeveloped. Even the bikers that we met in Brasil recommended that we avoid it. The major cities all sit along the Rios Paraná and Paraguay. Posadas is the capital of Misiones and the last town before entering the province of Corrientes. From our hotel window we could see the city of Encarnation across the river in Paraguay.

As we continued west we stopped in the town of Itá Ibaté to gas up and have a coffee. When I went to shut my bike off, I found that both bolts that hold the ignition switch into the upper triple clamp had vibrated out. The ignition was just dangling. Fortunately, one of the bolts had got caught on the wiring loom so we could see what size threads it had. The bolts go up from the bottom and sit inside a recess so they are difficult to see. To make matters worse, they are a special headless bolt installed at the factory that are designed to prevent theft (part of BMWs policy of over-engineering). After finding that the one hardware store in town did not have a metric bolt that size, we were directed to the "fish store." I thought that this was a mistake, but the fish store actually did have some bolts. It seems the area is very popular with sport fishermen, and the fish store is a place where they weigh and clean their catch and purchase parts for boats and outboard motors. We still had the problem of the recess that the bolt fits into, but after several trips we got the right combination of longer bolts with washers. The gentleman in the picture above took me to his home workshop, where we were able to hacksaw off one edge of the washer to make it fit next to the ignition. His wife lived for a short time in New Jersey, and in addition to running this cafe, she is the town's english teacher. (Note the red dirt on the engine.)

Itá Ibaté's dominating feature is this 33 foot high carving of the crucifixion. The Christ figure is carved from a single tree trunk.

Just outside of Itá Ibaté, we road through these grass fires.

In the next province Santa Fe, we ran into this group of bikers from Brasil near the town of Vera. They told us they were all  PHDs. (Proprietários do Harley Davidson) It's the Brasilian equivalent of HOG.

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