The forager has picked up an on-line scent, the suggestion that there’s a river crossing in Bella Union. We’ve rejected an International Bridge and kept to the addictive Uruguayan roads for a further two days. Yet our Eurocentric commercial logic questions a boat’s existence. The first crossing is for 9am, the locals are early risers, so this isn’t a commuter service, it’s not in any guidebook, so isn’t part of the ‘gringo trail’, no obvious gambling den can be spied from our shore line. No apparent reason to be. I’m part convinced that it might turn out to be an ephemeral ghost. A ‘here today gone tomorrow’ apparition. Even in town there’s no evidence, no advertising road signs, no pointers to it’s existence.

It’s only when we find, at the dead end of a pot-holed road, the shed for a plethora of government ministries and a solitary security guard. Without the latter we might still be lost, but a short chat and all becomes clear. The lancha is real, the service does exist.

The boat’s reason d’etre, it’s whole existence relies on one simple commercial fact: ‘Things are cheaper in Argentina’. What I’m expecting are the orientally fabricated luxury goods branded with European names, cartons of cigarettes, cases of whisky, high value items that might excite the exciseman. What we find are the shelf fillers for the mercado and the autoservicio, from boxed wine to Seagram’s whisky, from canned peas to corned beef, from corn oil to toilet rolls.

We’ve served out our wind related sentence of a grounded day in town, rolled up to the concrete ramp, to find a hint of activity. Battered trucks are reversed, backed into the pavement in an anticipation of custom, groups of young men stand chatting and passing round the maté bombilla. A cycling empanada salesman calls his wares and moves through the throng. A small wooden table appears and names are collected in exchange for dues. We’ve completed the ritual of trying to explain which country we hail from. Just check a British passport: there’s four possible countries and twenty six others alluded to on the front cover alone, three languages inside, none of which appear on the migracion officer’s computer. Not that this international frontier has any electronic records. Even the date stamper had to be re-inked.

There is an air of imminent anticipation, yet nothing seems to be happening; it’s all Latino tranquilo, the Uruguayan strain. Slowly the officers of officialdom arrive and climb from their motos. The customs man, the immigrations man the prefectura man, the hydrographia man, the ministry of silly works man, men with jobs to do, and a suggestion that something might begin. Nothing does.

There is a ‘lancha’, a glazed-in river boat that looks water worthy, tethered up, but it’s not obvious if this is the intended craft. Maybe we’re waiting for another boat  that starts the day from the other side. First departure time has arrived, still nothing appears to be happening and then, as if an invisible whistle is blown, a crew morphs out of the crowd, the tethered craft is released and punted into place. We get ready, seasoned travelling Euros, ready to enter a scrum, intent on defending our space. Nobody else moves. Different rules apply here. It’s not ‘Retiro’ and the Argentine bus system, no kicked heels, no sharpened elbows, no pushing or shoving. Polite Uruguayan decorum. Names are called and individuals step forward, present their documents to migration and are nodded past the prefectura. Customs is lounging by the rail; he’ll wait till they return. At any departure point, it’s hard to tell who is actually travelling, how busy will the transport be, who is journeying and who are the meeters and greeters. There’s a capacity quota, and we’re bumped to the next sailing. It’s only fair; we’re on holiday and these people are at work. It’s fortuitous as we will get to see the second half of the story.

The lancha soon returns, crabbing across the fast current, the keel considerably deeper in the water than when it left. A few passengers climb from the cabin and it’s now that the real work starts. A chain forms and packages and boxes

So in the interests of research we head into a local ‘taverna’, to see if they serve the local product.  The ‘café con leche’ arrives with the inevitable glass of carbonated water and the mandatory stack of sugar satchets.  They’re local. However, the real reason that were in a café is that we’re killing time.  BU might be a one company town, with three duty-free emporia and a full hand of government offices, but it has one major saving grace: it has a boat crossing to Argentina.  Only the ‘lancha’ is small and today the wind is up, a stiff breeze that’s fighting a strong current, setting up racks of standing, stationary waves.  The first crossing is cancelled.  Grounded in BU.  Having to drink coffee.  It’s the easiest way to buy some WiFi access. Only it’s clunk-click slow, which leaves too much time to stare at the wall mounted TV and the ubiquitous day time fare of talking heads supping the sponsors’ water and clutching the stereotypical yerba maté paraphernalia. Maybe we’ll get the graphics for a weather forecast.  The strap line across the bottom is a depressing

They come in a selection of sizes and a compilations of temperaments. From the glossy black leaf-cutters that forage on vegetation, to a tiny rusty brown omnivores that have successfully gained entry to a  sealed bag containing a salami. Maybe it’s the chilli in the sausage that gives their bites so much fire, so much success in defending their prize. A pyrrhic victory, as they and the meat both ended as landfill. The Navigator is feeling victimised: the mosquitoes inject through clothes and have raised itching red lumps, a bee attack follows and now it’s the turn of the Fire Ants. How they can enter a double sealed ziplock bag, navigate round three-fourths of a screw top jar, is a question for our time.  What is certain, they will inherit the earth when those who, erroneously believe they have  priority on the food chain, have left. 

Too often the the roadkill debris is the sole evidence for the noises that emerge from the roadside verges. The multiplicity of croaks and grunts, weeps and sighs. The ones that sound like a wet chamois being wrung out, the distant, incessant car alarms, the road peckering digger, the greasless bearing, the overzealous referee. It builds into a soft cacophony, a background music that plays to the dark, right through the night. Yet there is one caller that had us perplexed.  A daylight song of falling sorrowful notes, that sounds like it might come from a bird, one that would complement the sad call of the Mourning Dove. The noise was coming up out of the flooded sedges by the roadside verge, and not, as I expected from the bushes on the fence line. It only takes a thrown pebble and the subsequent silence, like a flicked switch, to give the answer.  A frog.  Many frogs. I try to verify my own theory that the smaller the amphibian, the bigger the noise. Small Frog Syndrome.  All I ever get for my effort is a plop and series of concentric, spreading rings.  This frogs’ chorus will accompany us for several days, the noise becoming less languid and more manic, of turbo-charged F1Grand Prix cars screaming passed the chequered flag.  Are they a part of the carnage of blotted carcasses litter the verge, odourless dried out husks?  Then the next skunk broadcasts its presence.

It’s at this moment, at the height of the attack, that we hear a

Our  tent is starting to  acquire the features of a water bed, as the groundsheet ripples with a rising tide of puddles.  As the crackle of shorting out electricity fizzles across the sky, the vibration of the hammering blows rise up through the ground.  It’s now that we get the mortar round, an explosion that shatters into my sense, an instant injection of adrenalin, a racing heart rate.  The smell of wet camp-fire drifts into the tent.   How close?…Too close. 

We seem to be trapped between two competing  storm cells  The belligerents truculent invective and quarrelsome abuse reaches a peak and then, slowly they disengage.  Two battered, punch-drunk combatants that are still reluctant to back down, still they fire off an occasional retaliatory salvo, a final spat.  Now the rain settles down to a wet night, we breathe out, stepping down the picket from it’s puddle watch, as the tide turns and the ponding gets a chance to drain. Only the ants seem to be the new invaders, attacking  through the zip’s defences.  Besieged, we resort to defence, repelling this next invading army of fugitives.

 A rhythmic beat of rain settles in, the frog chorus resumes and the dog sleeps in the night.