Back of Beyond - Salta, Saenz Pena to Asuncion 6 and 7 Dec

It's has been a bit of a drag these last few days with hundreds of kilometers to drive and very little change in the landscape. Salta was like an oasis and once out of there we began to go through country with either low, thorny scrub or low, slightly wetter land with the odd palm tree remaining. It was once palm savannah but has been drained to give large green paddocks supporting cattle. It reminds me of the clearing of the paperbarks for sugar cane on the sunshine coast. There is virtually nothing remaining of the original ecology. Along the roadside in the wetter areas there were large drains along which it was possible to see beautiful wild flower and also pretty birdsnboth large predators and smaller reed dwellers. I also saw something like a jabiru and also a king fisher almost as large as kookaburra sitting on the wires like his Aust counterpart. As for the rest of the trip I can say: hot, humid, flat, fairly uninteresting.We stopped for a roadside lunch at a place called Formosa - still in Argentina. We were in a parking area close to a petrol station and there were many trucks and motorbikes lined up there. Seems there is a shortage of fuel. I have no idea how the fuel gets there but if it is by road it has to come a long way. There are no operating railways so it is most likely transported by truck to t he arse end of the world.We stopped for one night on the way through to Paraguay. It was at quite a good hotel in a strange litte town called Saenz Pena. We walked out for dinner only to find many of the cafes and restaurants selling pasta and pizza. We had dinner at guiseppes! It was like a country town in Aus but with no obvious character and with quite a bit of rubbish floating around. They haven't worked out that the plastic bag doesn't just go away but continues to blow from one end of town to the other for any number of years. Watermelons were for sale from trucks by the road but we didn't see them being grown. Just cattle.Millie,the bus started to cough when we got to that town and was still sick in the morning. After few false starts she got her wind up again. It was a problem with the fuel filter i was told. We wouldn't want to have a serious breakdown as there isn't anyone to take over the driving. When Raoul got run into by a taxi in Potosi it could have had a serious impact on our trip proceeding at all. I would be interested to hear what their contingency plan is when passengers get stranded which they must do at times.