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A quick update while I have the chance between internet blackouts and long driving days. Arrived without incident in BA on Saturday afternoon at 1500 after a 16 hour transit time with no jet-lag, the blessing of being only one time zone east of Toronto. Met by Hugh, the owner of Macdermotts Argentina, who will be our guide, driver and companion for the next 24 days.

Spent three days in BA making final arrangements, organizing documentation and loading the truck. While I love Buenos Aires and always enjoy being here, one event was particularly noteworthy, our dinner Sunday evening at Don Julio. Hugh introduced us to Don Julio in 2013 when V and I made our first foray into Argentina and we have taken every opportunity to tell friends to make sure to visit when in BA as well as dining here ourselves at every opportunity. When we first visited we were so taken with our meals that we returned twice more on that trip; the fact that we were able to make reservations for return visits on such short notice is a telling indicator of how much things have changed in 12 years. Its reputation has grown in the interim and it has been rated as the best steakhouse in the world by various critics, consequently the lead time for reservations is now measured in months rather than days. The restaurant decor has not changed significantly, the menu has not changed at all and the staff are as low key, charming and helpful as ever, no attitude, no sense of self-importance at the heights now enjoyed by the restaurant. However the experience has been refined to a new level of care and attention and the food and wine list are as compelling as ever. Briefly, R and I both had grilled sweetbreads for starters and grilled kidneys with grilled artichokes for me and grilled kidneys with grilled mushrooms for R, as our mains. I know, we should have had steak, but in my experience Don Julio is the best restaurant that I have ever visited for enjoying offal and the opportunity was too good to miss. Hugh and his partner Paulo joined us for dinner and Paulo, very knowledgeable about wine, picked a couple of exceptional Argentinian reds to help carry our meal, fabulous. It’s been a while since I was last here, absolutely worth the wait.

Off bright and early on Tuesday morning for the ferry to Colonia, Uruguay and then a 7 hour drive to our recently-vacated location near Treinta y Tres, Uruguay. Why here? A bit of background on the nature and structure of the trip.

R has been fascinated by Paraguay, his interest originally awakened by his reading of Bluestocking in Patagonia: Mary Gilmore’s Quest for Love and Utopia at the World’s End by Anne Whitehead. Whitehead, an Australian author, chronicles a bizarre social experiment which took place when a band of 500 ordinary Australians sailed out to found a socialist Utopia in Paraguay a century ago. One of them was a red-headed schoolteacher – the intrepid Mary Cameron. In a remarkable blend of biography and travel writing Whitehead follows in her footsteps and brings to life a testing time spent in one of the harshest places on earth.

Mary Cameron was an aspiring writer and feminist – but she also took with her white muslin for a wedding dress; she then married a nearly illiterate sheep-shearer, William Gilmore. Their socialist dream foundered before very long and they had to earn their passage home with their baby son – through the impossibly remote country communities of Paraguay and the vast estancias of Argentina to Patagonia, the “end of the earth” made famous by Darwin and Bruce Chatwin. With his usual academic rigour R has broadened the scope of his readings on that original utopian experiment to try and understand the conditions in Paraguay at that time that made it attractive as a location for the experiment. Treinta y Tres is the jumping off point for our adventure through Uruguay and Paraguay which will take us to the site of that Australian utopian experiment as well as to many locations which played a part in the War of the Triple Alliance, a conflict little known outside of the region but one which was an essential element in the formation of present day Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay and Brazil. However the conflict also had a profound effect on Paraguay and helped shape the conditions that made it attractive for the Australian experiment.

The current political and cultural realities of the region are therefore due, in no small part, to the Triple Alliance War and we are here to gain a better understanding of the conflict, the personalities and the dynamics that shaped present day South America and made Paraguay such fertile ground for so many interesting and bizarre social phenomena. Readers of ‘At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: A Riotous Journey Into the Heart of Paraguay’ will immediately understand.

The second portion of our trip is particularly exciting for me as we explore the Brazilian Pantanal and focus on the wildlife of the region. But more about that when we reach Brazil.

More to come!