{"id":3704,"date":"2022-09-11T20:08:12","date_gmt":"2022-09-11T23:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eayrs.com\/blog\/?p=3704"},"modified":"2022-09-12T05:30:10","modified_gmt":"2022-09-12T08:30:10","slug":"chaco-and-formosa-2022-day-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eayrs.com\/blog\/archives\/3704","title":{"rendered":"Chaco and Formosa 2022 Day 24"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Date<\/strong><\/em>: Sunday 11 September 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trajectory<\/em><\/strong>:  Mercedes – Mburucuy\u00e1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Distance covered:<\/em><\/strong> 220 km (with side trips)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Left Mercedes hotel after miserable breakfast and undrinkable coffee \u2013 for what I paid I expected better. Hotel curious for staircase (no lift) with steps whose height and spacing seem to have been designed to fail to meet human expectations, so going up and down was a most laborious and disconcerting affair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First stop of the day was supposed to be the urban reserve Aka Pita, which took forever to find \u2013 Mercedes could work on its Tourist information. Or maybe the reason it was unsigned is that it was closed today, for no reason the custodian could give.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I drove on, and found a jewel \u2013 completely unmentioned by the Tourist Office. It seems that the Gaucho Gil, a C19th Century Robin Hood like religious folk hero was probably born near here and most definitely died and is buried here. More on my Facebook page. Here a statue:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026his place in the Mercedes City cemetery \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026 and the entrance to his sanctuary\/shrine, a few miles outside the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was a shortish drive to Mburucuy\u00fa, shorter perhaps than the time it took for me to learn to say it. I was stopped by Gendarmes and asked where `I was going. I slobbered out Mumburoocooyoocoo a few times and finally had to spell it out for them. I then had a brief pronunciation lesson from three gendarme teachers and spend the next twenty minutes repeating over and over again <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I approached the town I saw crowds of people at another religious\/folk festival, this one involving horsey activities. All of the gauchos, man and women, had put on their best finery: the older men, competing in gaucho skills and dressage \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026 the younger men, sporting a mixture of traditional gaucho and modern style gear \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026 and fine ladies on fine horses, in their best gaucho chic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I stopped and watched for a while, impressed by the high level of horseriding skills, and finally entered Mburucuy\u00e1, the home of chamam\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost forgot my bird of the day – cattle egrets, doing what they do:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tomorrow I\u2019ll visit the nearby Mburucuy\u00e1  National Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Date: Sunday 11 September 2022 Trajectory:  Mercedes – Mburucuy\u00e1 Distance covered: 220 km (with side trips) Left Mercedes hotel after miserable breakfast and undrinkable coffee \u2013 for what I paid I expected better. Hotel curious for staircase (no lift) with steps … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel-2","category-trip-to-formosa-and-the-chaco-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eayrs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eayrs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eayrs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eayrs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eayrs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3704"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eayrs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3718,"href":"https:\/\/www.eayrs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3704\/revisions\/3718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eayrs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eayrs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eayrs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}