In the 7 months I've been in Argentina, I've had plenty of visitors come through. The month of May marked for the first time, however, that someone of the family came down. Sondra arrived at about 6:30 am on the 10th of May, as opposed to the 4 am time that was originally thought. It was fine though since I work in the nightlife industry (sounds weird when I put it that way) and I was up anyways. I got to the airport at about 3:45 and was actually able to sleep on a bench until her delayed flight landed. Next stop was the hostel, the Milhouse, which is located on a street unpronounceable by anyone who is just visiting. The street is Hipolito Yrigoyen, pronounced EE-PO-LEE-TOE EERIE-GO-SHEN. Anyways, this just meant that anytime Sondra needed to get back to the hostel, I had to go to the cabbie and tell him. The first few days in BA were spent pubcrawling, eating, and basically lounging around watching TV since the weather was pretty crappy. This was all good though as we decided to bus up north about 2000+ kilometers to
Las Cataratas de Iguazu, or in English, Iguazu Falls with my good friend Freddy.
Getting to and from Puerto Iguazu (the actual town) is fairly easy, as is most travel in Argentina. The only issue is that distances are so deceptively big here, that most bus trips to anywhere of interest are between 15-20 hours from Buenos Aires. We hopped on a 6 pm bus on Friday the 15th and got in at about 11 am on the 16th. It's always good to take buses that take as long as this as an overnight option. That way, you aren't losing time and you don't have to pay for a hostel. Sondra managed to sleep like 15 hours or something ridiculous. The buses are THAT comfortable. So we arrived, checked into our hostel, and planned our first day. Unfortunately because we arrived a couple hours before check in time, we missed out on being able to go to the falls that day. So instead we ended up walking across the street to an animal rehabilitation center that ended up being really interesting. It is mostly full of birds, but there are monkeys, coatis, and other strange animals that have been injured in some way. It ended up being that most of them were taken illegaly from the Brazilian rainforest to be sold around the world and were injured in the transit process. Some had been rescued from as far as Madrid. After doing the tour of the center we headed back to the hostel for a big
asado and Brazilian dance show (which would later prove to be HILARIOUS).
The asado was good, not great. Either way it was a fun night. We met some really nice Canadian girls and a really obnoxious guy from New Jersey (who we later found out used to be a pimp, or at least claimed to have been one). Now onto the Brazilian dance show. The town of Puerto Iguazu is on the "Triple Border" between Brazil and Paraguay. The show was put on by dancers from Foz do Iguacu (the Brazilian side) who came over to Argentina to do this weekly show at the hostel. The guy was dressed i
n perhaps the most sparkly shirt I've ever seen and the "women" might not have been women after all. Good thing they get all the guests liquored up on
caipirinhas before the show, otherwise no one
would stick around for the embarassment that would ensue. This "show" is more of a ploy to get drunk tourists to get up and look stupid. Fun right? It's the kind of thing where they pick you out of the crowd to
samba with the dancers. Fortunately
almost everyone had to go
through it so it's not so bad. I came in second in the guy's samba competition (woohoo!) which was fortunate because the winner got a very weird, nasty lapdance from the "women". After the show, everyone ended up outside at the hostel's poolside bar. Yes, there was a big pool, complete with volleyball net. One of the most unhostelly hostels I've ever been to. The dance party was pretty uneventful but a funny thing did happen. There is an outdoor individual bathroom by the pool. At about 3 am, I ended up going in to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately I didn't realize that on the other side of the door, the handle was missing. So after about 20 minutes (no lie) of trying to figure out how to either get someone's attention or get out of the bathroom, I used my drunken strength to wedge it open. It would have looked pretty funny because there was a tiny, little window facing the bar outside and every time the music would stop I would flail my arm out of the window and scream for someone to open the door. I really thought it was going to be my bedroom for a moment.
Image: Sondra sitting at the triple border. Left is Argentina, middle is Paraguay and the right is Brazil.Sunday was the day of the falls. All I can say is WOW! You see pictures, you hear stories, but until you see them with your own eyes, you can't full understand just how amazing they really are. We also didn't realize it was such a big park. You really need at least one full day to explore the whole thing. Some of the main highlights:
1. Butterflies.
Never in my whole life have I seen so many butterflies and so many different kinds. Amazing!
2. Boatride.
One of the main attractions of the waterfalls are the speedboats you can take UNDERNEATH the massive falls. Terrifying but so thrilling.
3.
Garganta de Diablo (Devil's Throat). The biggest fall in the park. The viewing platform overlooking it is amazing. Apparently a lot of people commit sucide there...
4. Giant bug. Not so much a highlight, but a funny story. The way you get around the park is with this little tram thing. As we were walking to go to the Devil's Throat, Sondra noticed this gnarly ass monster of a bug on this woman's neck. She obviously had no idea it was there. I felt the obligation to let her know, being the concerned citizen. Her friend upon seeing it reacted instantly and flicked it off her neck, RIGHT AT ME! Some grateful people they were...
After the day at the falls, Freddy treated us to an amazing meal in town. Being that we were still in Argentina (if not barely) we had to get some
bife de lomo. We did also get some amazing river fish, the name of which is escaping me. The three countries are separated by rivers so there is a lot of good river fish. We were pooped after the full day in the sun at the falls and a big meal that I think we ended up passing out at about 9 pm.
The next day we contemplated going to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay for well, no real reason. Apparently it's a seedy, Tijuana-like border town, known most for having a physical black market where you can buy anything from guns to cheap electronics. Unfortunately, to get there, you have to pass through Brazil, for which we didn't have Visas. We ended up just taking a walk around the dinky little town and catching an earlier bus back to BA. This busride had some moments on it that made me feel quite anxious. Because of the unmonitored border between Brazil and Paraguay, there is a lot of drug trafficking. A lot of which ends up in BA. This meant that there are frequent police checkpoints. Within an hour we had been stopped 3 times. Each time, a new policeman would come on board to check our passports. The first two guys were very nice and quick. The 3rd guy however had a real chip on his shoulder. He must have looked over my stamps about 3 or 4 times. This would have been fine, but I was illegal at the time, having overstayed my 3 month visa by about 3 months! I was sweating a little bit. Apparently he didn't notice. Fhew! In any case we made it back in one piece, even though the return bus took about 20 hours...
The plan when Sondra got here was to make at least two trips to places within the country. Iguazu down, we were going to try to make it to the western wine-country city of Mendoza but it was just asking too much. Decided not to do it for various reasons, one of them being that if we went, she wouldn't get to experience a full weekend in this madness that we call a city. We did make it to Uruguay for a day though, to the city of Colonia. We decided to do this because it's a nice day trip and also because I was at the time an illegal alien and wanted to get that feeling off my chest. Fortunately, the rules are a bit more lax here than they are in the States. Consequences for overstaying your tourist visa is now about $80US, up from the $18 that it used to be a month ago. You get a slap on the wrist and then you're given a pass and another 3 months in this wonderful country. Here are some photos, with captions, of our day in Uruguay...
The view over Rio de la Plata from Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires before getting on the ferry
Street scene
Sondra showing off her wad of "play" money that is the Uruguayan peso on her hog...we couldn't rent mopeds as originally planned since we didn't have our driver's licenses with us...
Just some of the many many street dogs around the town
That's me sneaking into the grounds of an abandoned bullring; interior of the bullring
