La belleza de Iguazú: amigas y arcos iris

All right, dear readers, it’s story time! This is going to be a long one, complete with lots of photos from Gwen’s camera. I’m excited! Are you?

Once upon a Thursday, Emma, Gwen and I embarked on an epic journey to Iguazú Falls. Here’s a little map so you can locate it:

(pretend this is the map at the beginning of the storybook)

To get from the star in the middle to that little triangle up in the right-hand corner, we traveled seventeen hours by bus. That may sound like a nightmare, but in fact, dear readers, it was a delight! We chose a bus with super-camas (full beds), so we were super comfy, and we were served wine, tea, and coffee (and food that we didn’t eat*) multiple times during the journey. We were also given the option of champagne or whiskey before bed – odd?

Anyway, we felt like we were on a spaceship/in a Harry Potter book/at a slumber party. Pretty ideal, if I do say so myself. Looking out the window, I got to see a lot of the beautiful and bizarre landscape and rural life, which was really interesting after months of city streets.

Here’s Emma getting used to the comforts of super-cama before we even pulled out of the station:

Wow, this is going to be a long blogpost. ANYWAY. We arrived in Puerto Iguazú on Friday around noon. We observed that the town was cute and that we liked the color of the dirt. Our hostel was only a few blocks from the bus station, so we quickly got to satisfy our urges to brush our teeth and change into shorts – while Buenos Aires is just on the brink of what I would consider springtime weather, it’s already quite hot on sunny days in Iguazú!

We found out we’d be sharing a room with three girls from Barcelona, who were nice and had fun accents and interesting hairstyles. We spent the rest of Friday relaxing. Here’s a shot of Emma and me playing unenthused mothers while Gwen splashed around in the pool:

And one of Gwen and Emma befriending the pack of dogs that lives in the hostel:

That evening, we played Scrabble in Spanish, which was shockingly not that much harder than Scrabble in English, and somehow a lot more fun.

WOW this is gonna be a long blogpost. ANYWAY...

Saturday morning, we geared up to go explore the Falls! We felt like Dora the Explorer (we later decided, however, that we were more like the Wild Thornberries – Gwen = Eliza, Emma = Nigel, Isa = Darwin – and that we needed to find a Donnie to complete the gang).

Once we arrived at the park, we made arrangements to start the Gran Aventura we’d selected. This started with a short safari-style tour through the forest. Already beautiful! We took some pictures, learned about some wildlife, and found our Donnie: a young businessman from Germany dressed entirely in bright blue who was traveling by himself and didn’t speak a word of Spanish. Success!

At the end of the safari, we went down some stairs and Donnie snapped this photo of the three of us:

Next, we got on a boat like this:

As you can see, it’s headed for the falls! We were about to get soaked, and I was about to get very scared, in a fun way. Here’s us preparing for our fate:

The boat went over some rapids and then right next to the stream of the waterfall, soaking us completely and freaking me out – at a couple of points, all I could see was white water rushing around me! It is, of course, very safe and touristy, but an adrenaline rush nonetheless.

We parted from Donnie for a moment, and got some Argentines to take this post-waterfall-shower picture of us:

Here come the waterfall photos! First, a view from the boat:

A little further up, we made use of Donnie’s photo expertise once more (he also got us to take and re-take a bunch of pictures of him looking manly in a German way – shoulders stiff, thumbs up, subtle smile - these are obviously on Donnie's camera, thus not in my possession)

Here's me:

As we continued to climb, the views got more and more breathtaking. It still seems unreal that we were there. Gwen took some amazing waterfall shots, complete with rainbows:

Here’s us at the top. DISBELIEF!

That’s about it for the waterfall pictures I’m posting here...many more available on facebook! I should, however, post a pic of a coatíe. They’re these adorable little pests that we met while stopped for tea. They may look innocent, but they have the claws and the SKILLS necessary to, for example, leap up on the table and steal Gwen’s bag of chips. It was impressive.

Saturday evening, we ate out at a cool restaurant whose walls were covered in chalk-messages from customers from all over the world. We were all extremely hungry, especially Emma, who had somehow managed to fast for Yom Kippur all day. We ate a bunch, and when we got back to the hostel, we had some wine and played some more Scrabble. That night was barbecue night, so we sat down with the staff, a French couple, las chicas españolas, two porteñas, and a Japanese guy who has been traveling all around Argentina by bus – semi-cama, not super-cama – and communicated with us using an electronic Japanese-English translator. Rough for him!

(On a brief economic note: to give you a sense of the cost of this living situation, I got two nights, two breakfasts, a fourth-meal [couldn’t resist the barbecue], plus wi-fi, use of the pool, and air-conditioning in the room all for 100 pesos. That’s about 25 U.S. dollars. Score!)

We had half of Sunday to enjoy the town and use our legs a bit before boarding the bus for another seventeen-hour stretch home. While Saturday had been gorgeous, Sunday was a bit rainy and chilly, but still not bad. We wandered into a store selling hand-woven goods and chatted for quite a while with the owners. Unlike porteños, people working in Puerto Iguazú are used to a constant stream of tourists who don’t speak any Spanish at all. They were pleasantly surprised at our ability to carry on the conversation, and I was pleased to feel that we exceeded expectations :)

The weather started to clear up as we headed back to the hostel to gather our things, and we noticed some flowers we wanted to check out. “Let’s be like our moms and admire the horticulture,” Gwen suggested. And so we did, and here’s some of what we got:

Last but not least, we got a group portrait with las chicas españolas and the Japanese guy. A great photographic finish.

Our bus arrived in Buenos Aires at 9:15 Monday morning. I had to get to class by 10:30 – Conexión Creativa, no less. My life. I went home, washed up, and made it on time. And we all lived happily ever after!

The End.

Phew.

Love,

Isa

Word of the day: po** – verb. I fight for my country.

*We brought our own empanadas and pears, fyi. I suggest you do the same, bus food is kind of sad.

**Disclaimer: this is definitely not a real word. But you should use it anyway.