Iguazú Falls (Not to Be Confused with IguaSioux Falls, SD)
2013 September 13
Hola, de nuevo. About last post – if you read it, but noticed something was a little off, like the fact that more than half the pictures were missing, fret no more because I have fixed it. The dozens of thousands (divided by thousands) of people that read this can rest easy now that they can actually see what I’m talking about now since I rely so heavily on those beautiful images in this blog. Speaking of beautiful images.
This is mini wine that they gave us on the bus to the Misiones Province of Argentina. That’s right, the very Thursday after the Monday we returned from Mendoza we were on our way to another plus-40-hour-bus-ride weekend. The trip to Misiones was planned long before any of us came to Argentina, therefore it would have been a little late to change our minds. So, 2 weekends of overnight bus rides it was. Admittedly, I wasn’t in the best mood back in Buenos Aires during that week after being liberated from my passport, computer, bla bla, etc. And because of this, I really wasn’t ready to travel so far again. But when I realized I was complaining about vacationing, I decided to stop moping and just try to enjoy the trip the best I could, which ended up not being so difficult (see picture above).
On the bus ride there, we saw some movies in English with Spanish subtitles which was kind of a nice change. And don’t get me wrong, I love movies en Español con subtítulos ingleses (one of my classes here is Cine latinoamericano), but not when the films are originally shot in English. It just doesn’t look right when the actors’ lips are moving and different sounds are coming out of their mouths. It didn’t do me well watching Halle Berry in The Call sound like a squeaky mouse from El Salvador.
After a night and morning of 17 Again, The Hobbit, and Spiders 3D (haha wtf?), we were in Puerto Iguazú, Misiones, Argentina. The hostel we arrived at was called… Hostel, or something. Not quite as memorable as Monkey Hostel but they had nice scenery.
The night we arrived, we went “downtown”, (when compared to Buenos Aires I wouldn’t really use that word here) where we went to another casino. And of course I didn’t gamble, but at least we were there to support JJ’s future crippling habit (jk JJ).
The next day we took a short cab ride over to the falls.
And they were pretty great. There are a lot of things I can say about this day, such as how it was overcast, the scheduled van didn’t pick us up to go to the falls (hence the cab), and that because we came late we didn’t get to the tour group, etc., but we were at one of the most Googleable waterfalls in the world, and no matter how “badly” things went, the weekend really wasn’t that bad. After all, I’m writing for dozens of thousands (divided by thousands) of people here, so I’m not just going to complain on this blog. In fact the weekend surpassed my expectations and became one of the best weekend here yet, especially near the end.
There were animals.
Some were fearless and harmless.
And others were fearless and little creepy-acting.
My first instinct was to pet these ones, but I stopped myself short of doing that. These animals (are they tapirs? I’m pretty sure they were tapirs… South American squirrels?… wallabies?) were oddly aggressive and there were way to many of them hanging out by the food-eating areas of Iguazú Park. Plus there were signs all over the place that basically said “beware of the animals” and showed pictures of really ugly bite marks on a little kid’s arm… so there’s that.
This just added to the excitement.
Here I am needing a haircut, but first, sir, I think… a shaaaaave.
Morgan y yo
Amy y yo.
And, again, sorry for the lack of group photos, but that’s what Facebook is for.
And this is the very border of Argentina and Brazil. In this photo, Argentina is the island I am standing on and the land to the left of the river while Brazil is everything to the right. We didn’t go to Brazil 🙁 but couldn’t have gone legally anyway. It takes 6 month for US citizens to get approval to go to the country. But, if we really wanted to go, we could have paid a shady taxi to take us off the main roads to cross the border away from all that pesky border control, but that would have been too much fun, so we decided against it.
And really, there’s not too much more to say. I feel like Iguazú Falls, although really unique and a good experience to do, is more of an experience to say, “I’ve been to Iguazú Falls”. We left that night to ride our fourth overnight bus in 2 weeks’ time. After A Dark Truth, Just Go with It, and half of Water for Elephants, we were finally back in the city in which we actually currently live.
The best part of the weekend came Sunday night at round 2 of the Medio y Medio bar.
From left to right: Morgan’s step-dad and mom, Agustín (an AIFS program coordinator), Pamela (a local of Buenos Aires, originally from Patagonia), me, Amy, Jessica, Mariano (another AIFS guy), Morgan, and Ihavenoeffing Idea (in English that name means “Whoareyou Whyareyousittingwithus”). Morgan’s parents came to visit for the week and came at a good time for her. The day we left for Iguazú, Morgan’s childhood dog, Bullit, passed away, and I think it’s pretty obvious how I feel about dogs. Also, it was nice to see Pame. We met her the very first Wednesday in Argentina at Mundolingo, and she is not afraid to correct people when they speak Spanish (which is awesome, because how else is someone supposed to know when they’re saying something wrong?). The weekend had been kind of ‘meh’ before Sunday night, but I think talking about it in Medio y Medio with good company truly made this weekend one of my favorites so far in Argentina.
And wow, that was August 25. I have a lot of catching up to do.