because of all of the police checkpoints, we didn’t get to mercedes until night. seems like a nice enough city….although nothing spectacular. one nice thing about the city is that their tourist office is just off of the exit from the highway…meaning you don’t have to drive around the city without a map (unfortunately, it was closed when we arrived). another nice thing is that many streets will have mirrors on the corners so you can see if their is traffic coming from the side street. this is very helpful, because in argentina, most of the streets don’t have stop or yield signs….meaning foreigners (locals too?) are kind of at a loss as to who has the right of way. supposedly it’s the vehicle coming from the right, but it also depends on which is the bigger road, the bigger car, etc. pretty confusing.

the hostel we’re staying at is in an old building, which feels a bit like a ranch house (although it’s in the city). the beds are wooden, chairs are leather and floorboards are falling apart. the women working here kind of remind me of the women from the movie ‘witches’ — they’re nice, although they smoke up a storm and it seems like there’s something looming underneath their apparent kindness. tomorrow, we’ll hopefully drive over to another national park…..close by, but a gravel road.