And then my jaw hit the dirt path so hard!

First off:  Wow, I’ve been pretty tardy on this blog post (this trip wasn’t last weekend but the one before).  I’ve either been A) Too lazy, B) Too tired, or C) Too busy….mostly letter A though.  I could have made this post before.  Oh well, here it is, and it’s gonna be a fairly big one.  Table of Contents:  Travel to Iguazú on Thursday, Iguazú day 1 (Friday), Iguazú day 2 (Saturday), Iguazú/heading home on Sunday…okay I’ll make my finalized class schedule a separate post, you convinced me.  This is just going to be about Iguazú.

Traveling to Iguazú (Thursday)

We all met up at the big train and colectivo (city buses) and microbus (big comfortable nice bus that you ride to distant places) hub/nexus in Retiro around 2:30pm.  This was fairly well planned out, believe it or not, and we actually were there on time, bought minutes for our phones (and snacks at a nearby cheap Chinese Mercado :D)  and met up with close to zero issues.  Well, we had to wait for the other half of our group for about 10 minutes not knowing where they were, but that’s NOTHING compared to the meeting-up woes we’ve had before.  Getting on the bus wasn’t a big deal either, and soon we were on our way.  A microbus is actually very comfortable and feels very airliner-esque as far as the seats go.  We only paid for “semi-cama,” which means that the seats lean back pretty far but not as far as “full cama.”  Since they cost less, we lived with it.  The drive there was mostly during the night, so there wasn’t too much to see most of the time.  We were on the top level of the bus, so whenever the bus had any sort of issue with the ground we felt it a lot.  It was fun.  Also fun: going to the insanely tiny nasty bathroom while being tossed around.  It’s REAL fun when you’re actually in the act of urinating, too.  No wonder there was …liquid on the floor.  One must wear shoes to the bathroom.  I was NOT the cause of the wet reality in the bathroom though, I was incredibly accurate. 

We conversed a ton and watched terrible movies all the way there, sleeping about an hour and 15 minutes (I obviously wanted much more but was incapable, lame) for the whole night.  Movies included: Something terrible with The Rock (we renamed him La Piedra in honor of the Spanish language) which they played TWICE, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Nicholas Cage, also terrible, didn’t watch) and I think that was about it.  The food was cool though.  We got some medialunas and coffee (+sugar in the coffee, mala idea yo) and an interesting kind of cena (did we have lunch too?  Can’t remember) which was pretty decent.  Minus the insanely preserved slices of ham…those were questionable.  But I ated them.  The ‘snacks’ we had (mostly cookies) were very very appreciated.  Mmm dessert.

Iguazú Day 1 (Friday)

In the morning as we neared Iguazú with the sunrise I found that we were driving through Selva, rainforest, and that it looks absolutely beautiful in the morning.  Also: rainbow (arco iris for you Argengringos out there). 

Puerto Iguazú is the small town near the falls (like 8 miles or something, so not THAT near), and it was a pretty nice place.  The people we met were all very nice.  The hostel was pretty cool, and so were the showers we took upon arrival.  Literally cool, like there wasn’t warm water.  But it’s okay because Iguazú was pretty humid, tropical, and HOT.  The pool was a joke.  Oh well.  We waited for two others to join us that took a different, later bus.  When they got there and got settled/showered we hopped onto the bus to the falls.  A few hundred pesos later we were inside, walking around.  It’s a humongous park area, so there’s a lot of walking to do and a lot of falls to see.  We just kind of started walking towards the closer falls.  Things we saw:

-BIG BUGS:

-A MILLION AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLIES:

-Coatis.

-Some great foliage.

-A split of our group (because we were too slow, taking pictures of everything) and consequent shenanigans with the hilarious park signs.

-Lots of fun joking about things.

-Amazing, random sights.

And then we got to the waterfalls.  THIS:

I don’t know what to say about Iguazú falls except that they are INSANELY beautiful.  I can’t imagine going through life and not seeing them, honestly.  You MUST go.  You won’t regret it.

That night Sara cooked us ravioli with a vegetable sauce for dinner.  It was incredibly economical and incredibly yummy.  During/after that we watched the Argentina – USA soccer game on TV (1-1 final, lame, go Argentina!).  After THAT we pulled out the homework and I came across a part in which I needed to “interview” some Argentines about the economical crisis of 2001.  So with some egging on I just walked straight up to some and asked them about it.  What followed was over an hour of conversation (mostly me just listening) and gaining a wealth of knowledge directly from Argentines that were there.  Amazing.  Then we got onto historical topics of how the crisis came to be and eventually we discussed the Policia.  The policia isn’t exactly loved here, lol.  They poured me a beer repeatedly and welcomed me VERY warmly and it was one of my best experiences in Argentina yet. 

We also made some decidedly cool friends in a British couple from Surrey, south of London.  We talked to them loads on and off, here and there as we were around them in the same sleeping room.  They were very interesting, of course, very nice, and I gave them some instruction for when they got into Buenos Aires.  Important note: they say Nike and Adidas in a very funny way, but I can’t exactly relay that through text very well.

I didn’t sleep too much that night, but I slept GREAT.

Iguazú Day 2 (Saturday)

We had a slow morning and half of us went to the falls earlier than the other half (I was in the late group).  Breakfast consisted of a crepe (YEAH) smeared with dulce de leche, some TERRIBLE “natural” orange juice, amazingly soft bread with jelly or dulce, and frosted flakes with milk that was far too warm.  Pretttttty good I guess.  My tummy disliked the frosted flakes for whatever reason.

Back to the falls we went.  From there we followed a certain ‘nature trail’ to get to the area for swimming.  Turns out it was below a waterfall.  How can you match an experience like this?  It felt INCREDIBLE to get in the water (and being directly under the waterfall…hurt, haha) finally because the day was SWELTERING and humid, as was the day prior. 

After that we met up with the others who had arrived earlier, including 2 dudes that were saying somewhere else but are likewise from our program and headed to La Garganta del Diablo (The Devil’s Throat).  I’m not sure I can remember the last time I was this in awe of God’s work.  Look at this stuff:

I was SO blown away.  I couldn’t walk away from there without thinking about how powerful God himself is, and without being utterly disquieted by his handiwork.  I haven’t a doubt that he made that, one way or another.

We had another good night back at the hostel, hanging out and having a slightly less successful but still good dinner (the cook and+1 left that night).  The remaining 4 of us played BS and Pictionary.  Pictionary in Spanish can be very hard since there’s a high probability that the partner will NOT know the word in the first place…so that was interesting.  We ended up nearly tying and just left it like that, with no clear-cut winner.  Good game, yo.  We also taught two argentine guys how to play BS.  They were TERRIBLE at it (though they claimed it was because they were just tired).  Great times!  Then I wanted to sleep but I ended up hanging around with Lucas, a guy that works at the hostel, and watching TV with him.  More good on top of good = great night!  Then we slept, not enough of course, and had a slow morning.  The trip back was better for sleep..but that’s not hard to do when you slept no more than an hour and 15 on the trip there.  I slept more like 4 broken hours in total, which was frustrating but good.  The food was worse, in general, but we enjoyed ourselves….and the movies were interesting.  They showed American Pie, American Pie II, American Wedding, American Pie Band Camp, American Pie: The Naked Mile.  It was incredible that they thought that was remotely appropriate, haha.  After that…Another weird movie that began with some dude getting hit by a car out of the corner of the scene…and lots, I repeat lots of drugs.  And sex.  Then they turned it off like 50 minutes into it, and we STILL didn’t know what it was called or what was going on.  Then they played a crazy Dwayne Johnson/The Rock movie (MORE of this guy?!) that included plenty of killing and intensity.  We conversed a lot, again, but we were delirious tired so it was not quite the quality of the trip there.  I got back around 6:45am, then went home and slept a few hours.  After that I had only one class for the day, a visit to a museum for a few hours with my tango class (happy I didn’t have to dance for once, I was dead). 

And that was Iguazú.  Unbelievable.  Loads of fun.  I really missed my brother though, it was his birthday while I was on the trip, and I really reallllly wished I could spend time with him.  More about the last 2 ½ weeks in the next post…I promise to try to work on it sooner rather than later.