Viaje a Iguazú

16 Julio

Thankfully on Thursday we did not have class because Guillermo was sick. This gave us all opportunity to get everything together before we met at Expanish at 6 to leave for Iguazú. Soon after awaking, I started packing and realized I didn't have any clean clothes. So I threw all my laundry in a bag and walked to the lavadería (clothes washing place), where they wash your clothes for you. My lavadería only charges 8 pesos ($2-3) per load, but apparently Adam's charges 10, and Cambria's 13. It's a really good system. I pay only a little less to do my own laundry at a laundromat, and they wash, dry, and fold your clothes for you, which makes transport and storage of the clothes insanely easy. I might be getting spoiled by my lavadería. Normally they need several hours to have your clothes ready for you, so I was concerned that I would be out of luck, but I told the Asian woman working there that I needed them by 5, and she said it could be done.

Then, I met up with Bridget, Cambria, Adam, and Serri (Cambria's housemate) in order to satisfy our cravings for Mexican food. However, this Mexican restaurant was unlike any we'd ever seen. Instead of the corn chips that we all know and love, there were flaky chips that were more like wontons from a Chinese restaurant. Interestingly, the salsa also seemed oriental, much like sweet and sour sauce, with just a little spiciness. My entree was a stuffed crepe filled with spinach, mushroom, and chicken. It was all really good, but not any sort of Mexican we'd ever eaten before. As we lingered in the restaurant we noticed more peculiarities. Above our table, there was a chandelier made out of corn cobs. Also, at one point, I stuck my hand under the table and flinched when I felt something spongy and foamy. It was spongy foam. I had fun watching the others flinch when they felt it, too. For dessert, I got... (you guessed it!) flan. This flan had an orangy flavor and was really good.

After we ate, I went back home. I strolled by the lavadería to check on my ropa (clothes). They weren't done yet, so I walked to Farmacity (comparable to Eckerd's), and bought some much needed toiletries. While in the checkout line, I talked to an American girl and an Argentine guy who work for an intercambio program that lets English speakers and Spanish speakers practice speaking together. By the time I got back to my lavadería, called "Burbujas" (Bubbles) by the way, my clothes were done.

I think I remember previously mentioning a homeless man who pointed out which door was mine the first time I walked back to my house, which I thought was very strange. This same man always sits in the same spot on the porch of a kiosco next to the entrance to my housing complex. Normally, I walk past him and say "Hola," and keep going. But today I turned back and asked him what his name was. David. I told him, "Mucho gusto," and offered my hand for a hand shake. He showed me his right hand, or lack thereof, which I hadn't noticed before, so we did one of those awkward opposite-hand hand shakes while I have him a sympathetic "I had no idea" look.

By the time I made it to my room, I had less than thirty minutes to pack everything that I would need for the next 4 days. And since I was only using my backpack and my laptop case, this was rather difficult, but I managed and arrived at Expanish on time. From Expanish, we took taxis to the bus station. This whole trip I would continue to be grateful for Marcos, our tour guide/chaperone who also accompanied us to Colonia. He arranged the taxis, bus tickets, and everything else. In addition to being friendly and silly, he took care of all of the details of the trip that would have been really stressful if I had gone on my own. Somehow he's found the perfect balance between responsibility and flexibility, and he never seemed too concerned about time. If one event fell through, we simply found something else to do.

Something strange about Expanish is that it seems like in a group activity if anything is being handed out, I'm always the first one called. I'm not used to this, but it was pretty cool. I was given my bus ticket first, which assigned me to seat number 1, which again made me feel privileged. Seat 1 happened to be in the very front of the double-decker bus, which meant that I had a little more room than those behind me, and I had a great view out of the window. I felt like royalty. It was a 14 hour drive, and the bus was more comfortable than an airplane. After watching Yes-Man, they served us dinner, and every hour or so they would hand out something else. Coke. Coffee and cookies. Free champagne or whiskey. Caramels. I shouldn't have had the coffee, because it prevented me from sleeping. I woke up several times at night, and I was freezing, despite my jacket and blanket. After they turned the lights off, I attempted to read some the the Borges story that Marta assigned, but I didn't get very far.

17 Julio

One of the times I woke up marked the beginning of Friday. I had a crick in my next from sleeping in a weird position. Luckily, I had a face mask that enabled me to sleep a few more hours before breakfast around 8 AM. Breakfast was standard: coffee and medialunas, and a roll with some cream spread and dulce de leche. After breakfast, I was glued to the window, looking at the landscapes of Misiones, the province of Argentina wherein lies Iguazú Falls. I had been told by some people that it took 24 hours to get to Iguazú, and then from others I heard 18. At the rate we were going, we would have been there in only 14 hours. But all of the sudden our bus came to a halt. The man sitting next to me and Adam said that there was a manifestación, a protest. The protest lasted almost 2 hours, and there our bus sat. But it gave us an opportunity to stretch our legs and take some pictures. No one on the highway seemed set aback by the delay. The highway seemed to turn into a big party. Several people broke out their mate. The car just in front of ours was filled with some Brazilian men, one of whom sported a giant mate and giant thermos. Marcos explained that that was how Brazilians drink their mate: cold and in big mates, but of course they call it something different.

After being on the road 16 hours, we made it to our hostel, or should I say resort. This hostel was enormous, with a pool, restaurant, bar, and all of the standard hostel commodities. After checking in and throwing my stuff in the room, I got an omelet for lunch. Soon afterward, we all walked to a nearby animal reserve where they take care of sick animals, display healthy ones, and in general do all they can to ensure their survival in the wild. After paying the unexpected entry fee, we were loaded onto a trailer, much like a hayride without the hay. I sat in the front to be sure to get a good view for picture taking. Unfortunately, the rain forest is so dim that unless you and your subject are still, it's difficult to get a good picture. While we waited for the trailer to fill, I decided to begin giving the tour by talking about a nearby humongous stalk of bamboo. I even translated part of my explanation into Spanish. Whether it made sense, I'll never know. Soon afterward, the trailer filled, and two argentinitos squeezed into the bench next to me. Their parents sat behind me. They were very fun to listen to, and I love that kids in other countries are so blind to cultural differences. They treat foreigners just like they would treat anyone else. I eventually asked them their names, Juan and Maite, and their ages, 8 and 4, respectively. They and their parents were visiting from another province in Buenos Aires, Entre Rios, I think. The kids, like most of us rain forest first-timers, expected to see more on this truck ride. Maite kept asking me where all the birds were. I tried to explain, "Tienen miedo." (They're scared.) Soon, though, the truck stopped, and we began walking down a trail with caged animals in them. One of the most fascinating ones was what Marcos called a "muco," which I later learned from Google and Wikipedia is short for "tolomuco," but its English name is "tayra." I don't know why the zoological world can't be more consistent with its animal names by now. Anyway, it looks like a giant ferret. The tamanduas were really cool, too. I was also fascinated by the coati, but that animal would soon become old hat. We enjoyed the monkeys, but they didn't seem to enjoy us, poor things. Animals in the zoo at least don't have their home on the other side of the fence taunting them. At every animal exhibit we passed, we had a tour guide who would say something about each, all in Spanish. I was distracted with taking pictures, so I didn't catch much, unless Juan or Maite asked a clever question, which they did any time the tour guide asked if anyone had a pregunta (question). I wish I could remember more examples, but it's hard to remember things trans-linguistically. After one question of Juan's, though, I remember an old man in the group said in Spanish, "He was raised in the zoo," indicating that Juan had asked a very informed question. Another time, Maite pointed to a blank spot on a map of Misiones and asked what city it was. The two stayed at the front of the group near the tour guide the entire time, and it was fun to hear him try to answer their questions intelligently. While the tour guide was talking, Juan started to shake a large vine on a tree, and the tour guide told him to be careful because the vines are very fragile and we wouldn't want to damage the rain forest. Juan smarted off in his most mature voice, "What about Tarzan?" Kind of irritated by this point but trying not to show it, the tour guide explained in a professional yet sympathetic way, "Well... Tarzan is a myth," and then he struggled to get back to his original topic. The group got a good laugh out of it. After seeing several caged birds and a carpincho(capybara), we rode the truck back to the park entrance and walked back across the street.

Then we waited several minutes to take a bus into the city, Puerto Iguazú, where we would be able to use an ATM and have dinner. Dinner was very good. Complimentary bread was served in leather containers, a very Argentine thing to do. I ordered my first mojito, which I loved (I'm a sucker for mint), and a curry chicken (...and for Indian food). We also celebrated Leo's birthday (21st or 22nd), and he said it was the best birthday he'd had in a long time. The restaurant gave him a free chocolate flan.

After eating, we walked several blocks to a place that overlooked a fork in the river. The view itself wasn't that spectacular, and I asked Marcos, "¿Qué significa este lugar?" He explained that it's the point where 3 countries come together: Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. That made the view a lot cooler. I was standing in one country and looking into two others. Normally on this trip to Iguazú, we would have been able to go to the Brazil side of Iguazú falls, but thanks to embittered international relations between the U.S. and Brazil, it would have cost each of us estadounidenses over 100 pesos to enter Brazil for only a couple hours. That being said, I doubt the Brazil side of the falls can compare in grandeur to the Argentina side anyway. From the tri-pais area, we took taxis back to our hostel, which apparently after dark becomes a huge party. There were loud music and people enjoying themselves, dancing and pushing each other into the pool against their will. We joined in after a while, and started playing a game of signs, which was really fun. After that, I was pretty pooped, so I pooped the party and went to bed relatively early to everyone else.

18 Julio

I slept really well that night and enjoyed a standard Argentine breakfast Saturday morning which also included frosted flakes. I hadn't seen much cereal since coming to Argentina. Soon after breaking the fast, we took a bus to Iguazú national park, which was a lot more rainforesty than the reserve we visited the day before. I admit, I was disappointed at first that all the trails in this park were paved, but I soon realized that if they weren't, I would have been knee-deep in mud and mire. Despite the pavedness, I was basking in the rain forest atmosphere. Since doing a unit on the rain forest at the academic center in elementary school, I've been in love with it. It was like I'd always seen in pictures, but this time I could hear, smell, and feel it, too. (Sorry, Taste.) The air was nice and humid, but not overwhelmingly so. You could almost smell things growing in the rich soil. Surprisingly, it was mostly silent, except for the sound of rushing water or Alex's voice. When I looked at the ground, I wondered how there weren't a ton of leaves still decomposing from the last winter. And then I remembered that there is no winter in the rain forest. Everything just keeps growing and growing and growing. This means that everything keeps growing on top of other things that are growing. Hence, no tree trunk was bare, if you could even see tree trunks through all of the overgrowth. They were covered in vines, or moss, or mushrooms. It was impossible to see more than a few feet through the mass of green. To top it all off, the green was speckled here and there by brightly colored flowers. Many plants gleamed with the satisfaction of collecting droplets of water. When we made it to a hillside where the trees let us look through, I could see the utter vastness of the rain forest whose green overgrowth spread for kilometers in every direction. On a neighbor hillside, separated by a deep river valley, eagles and other birds of prey lazily flew in circles around a mysterious object of interest, obscured by the forest's canopy and a layer of mist billowing in from a distant waterfall. You might be able to tell from my verbal artistry that in all honesty this rain forest atmosphere was more exciting and breathtaking to me than the falls themselves.

We took the high trail first which allowed us to see into the valley from above: everything was was tiny down below, yet it all somehow worked together to suggest some sort of order. My photos don't quite capture the sense of space, height, width, and breadth of the cliffs, covered with hanging green plants that are perforated by streams of white water, plummeting into the misty below. We saw and walked over waterfall after waterfall, each one just as astounding as the last. When you hear about Iguazú Falls, it truly is several hundred falls that span several kilometers. Then we took the lower trail, which plunged us into the misty below. From down there, everything was enormous, making us feel like single-celled organisms. Instead of order down here, one finds chaos: The trees and plants grow on top of each other, fighting over soil and sunlight. The malcontent water above demands to be united with the churning pools below and cascades over the mountainside. The single stream becomes a mob of droplets, racing and bouncing off one another in a wet frenzy.

After seeing the sights of the low trail, our group split in two. Marcos took one group somewhere else, and my group went even further down the mountainside to the river. We had all bought tickets for 150 pesos for a boat ride around the falls. On my way down the trail, I checked every place my ticket could be and I couldn't find it. 40 dollars, down the drain. When we got to the boat, the people there gave us water-proof bags to put our stuff in that we didn't want to get wet. I took off my pants (I had shorts on underneath), and put them in the main part of my backpack, and there was my ticket. Phew. We got onto one of the boats, and it's hard to make the ride sound really fun, but it was, albeit I was freezing most of the ride. I decided to sit on the side. The boat drove us under one of the waterfalls I described before, and I got completely soaked, then the boat zipped around on the water, which blew cold air onto my freezing wet body. But it also helped dry me off, until, of course, we went under another waterfall. I really did enjoy it though. The view of the cliffs and the rain forest hanging over the cliffs was really spectacular. It occurred to me that I was viewing the same sights that the guaraní and other native tribes had viewed long ago from their canoes.

Eventually we reached land, kilometers down the river from where we started. We were unsure of how we would get back to the rest of the group, but we followed the other wet people up the hill where we found a bathroom that we used to change into dry clothes. Further up the hill, a truck was waiting for us that we (or at least I) didn't know about. On the truck was a female tour guide that pointed out different aspects of the rain forest in both English and Spanish, so I got to hear everything twice. The first tree she pointed out was the palmito, which is used to harvest heart of palm. However, it takes fifteen years for a palmito to mature, and then you have to cut the entire tree down to harvest a single heart of palm. For that reason, palmito is a nationally protected plant. Argentina actually imports its heart of palm from other South American countries that grow different varieties of heart of palm with multiple fruits. The second thing she talked about was the rain forest animals. She explained that the reason you don't see many animals in the rain forest is that most of them are nocturnal. I wish I had known that piece of information to give to Maite the day before. The last thing the guide talked about was a plant called ambay. Ambay is a medicinal plant that can be used for asthma and several other respiratory illnesses. She said that sometimes the park workers will take a leaf and stick it into some hot water for an herbal tea. We drove past a part of the park that had previously been cut down. Now, they were regrowing the rain forest in this area. She explained that ambay was used as a forerunner plant in areas of reforestation, because it fills the soil with nutrients, and its broad leaves protect smaller plants from the hot sun. Needless to say, I'm thoroughly impressed by ambay.

The truck dropped us off at the center of the park where all the restaurants and gift shops are, and we found the rest of our group there finishing up their lunch. I could have spent a bunch of money on lunch in the restaurant, but I wisely went to another building and bought some really good chicken empanadas that had egg in them. After eating, I explored the premises and ran into the tour guide lady and talked to her briefly. She said that she had learned English only through her job. I'm envious of other countries because they seem to have so much more opportunity to learn our language than we do theirs. Possibly to get me away, she pointed out some leaf-cutter ants nearby. It worked. I was fascinated and honored to see them in real life.

Throughout the park, anywhere there were people, there were also coaties, which look like something that climbed out of a Dr. Seuss book. If you are holding a bag to your side, they will come up to you and look in it for food. There are signs up everywhere that say not to feed the coaties, but, of course, people do, causing many of them to get sick and/or overweight. Hopefully humans don't alter their way of life to the extent that they are dependent on us for food.

After relaxing in the center, we headed for la garganta del diablo (devil's throat). I really didn't know what to expect, but the name sure made it sound cool. When we got to the train station, we had the option of either walking on the muddy trail along the tracks or taking the train. I and a few others decided to experience the rain forest by walking through it. One of those other people was Sven from Germany. He took a year off of his education in Germany to study in the United States. He's in no hurry to run through life, and he said he prefers to walk through it to get a richer experience. The concept applied to our situation. Everyone on the train missed out on the details that we saw on the way there. Among them was the bustle of butterflies that flitted all around us. I'm not sure how, but we ended up arriving before several of our own people who took the train to la garganta.

The train dropped everyone off at the entrance of bridge that went over a river to the other side. But, when we walked to the other side, we found that the "other side" was just an island, and there was another equally-wide river to cross. This happened 5, 6, maybe even 9 times before we finally made it to our destination. In the distance, I could see where there was a big hole in the river as if all the of water suddenly fell into a giant pit. And that's exactly what it did. It reminded me of Charybdis from the Odyssey:

Homer, Odyssey 12. 231 ff
"So with much lamenting we rowed on and into the strait; this side lay Scylla; that side, in hideous fashion, fiendish Charybdis sucked the salt water in. When she spewed it forth, she seethed and swirled through all her depths like a cauldron set on a great fire, and overhead the spray fell down on the tops of the two rocks. But when she sucked the sea-water in, one might look right down through the swirling eddy while the rock roared hideously around her and the sea-floor came to view, dark and sandy. Ashy terror seized on the crew. We had looked her way with the fear of death upon us; and at that moment Scylla snatched up from inside my ship the six of my crew who were the strongest of arm and sturdiest."

Lucky for us, there were no cliffs around where a Scylla might perch. The edge of the platform let you look right over the edge of Charyb --la garganta. The water seemed to just fall down into nowhere. The throat created so much mist that you couldn't see the bottom. But the mist also interacted with the sunlight to create rainbows. There were so many people there that it was difficult to find a spot to peer over the edge into the abyss. There were butterflies, here, too, and one of them latched onto my skin and stayed there for over 20 minutes, exploring different tastes, I suppose, with its long, green tongue. Meanwhile, I started talking in Spanish to a girl for whom I took a picture. Communication was difficult because she didn't speak Spanish; she spoke Portuguese. She asked where I was living, and I told her Buenos Aires. She asked if I spoke English, because her English was better than her Spanish, and she was amazed by my flawless English because she had understood me to have said that I was Argentine, which gave us a good laugh. Her name was Bruna, she was from Brazil, and she was simply traveling with a friend. She was also really quirky and quite a talker. She was really excited because she said she never got to use her English. She ended up walking back to the train with part of our group. According to Gill, she said that she could tell who was part of our group because we were all so white.

On the train back, Cambria and I happened to get into the same car, and next to us sat a woman named Holly who had been a missionary with her husband in the province of Chaco for the last several years. She was very interesting to talk to. I wish that I would have asked her more about their ministry, but we ended up talking more about our experiences in Argentina than hers. The train stopped, and our convo was cut short. From the train station we raced to the park entrance where our bus was waiting for us and would leave if we weren't there in time. Sven and a few others decided to walk back again, so our bus left them, and they had to pay for a bus back to the hostel. I guess walking through life isn't always best.

Despite our full day, we had a couple hours to kill before dinner, so after freshening up, Cambria, Bridget, and I played a game of cutthroat (pool). Cambria won against all odds. Dinner was decent. It was Brazilian themed, and we had steak and chicken and all sorts of help-yourself sides, and there were free carapinhas, a sweet Brazilian mixed drink, which I like to call a carapiñada. After dinner there were two traditional Brazilian female dancers, traditionally clad as well. The rest of the show consisted of finding volunteers, voluntary or involuntary, to see who was the most comfortable doing the most uncomfortable dances --and having the most uncomfortable dances done to them. I discovered that my booty-shaking abilities are sub-par, but also that I had any booty-shaking ability at all. After that, they tried to teach us all a Brazilian dance, and then the room broke out into a Conga line. Over all, it was pretty fun. After the show, the nightly hostel party began, and people continued to dance.

After a while, I went inside to see if I could use the computers, but they were down. But there was a girl typing an email on one still. We exchanged a few words before I stuck out my hand for a handshake. She said that she couldn't shake my hand. I assumed that it was because of the swine flu scare, but she explained that she is an orthodox Jew and she's not allowed to touch any man but her husband. I, of course, was fascinated, and asked her more questions which she enjoyed answering. Apparently the U.S. has a Jewish population that rivals that of Israel. The country with the third largest Jewish population is France, followed by Argentina. All of this I learned later on Wikipedia. I was fascinated by all of the traditions that she follows and that she enjoyed following them. She seems to have adopted them as part of her identity, which I can identify with in part. I also asked her what she had to do to go to Heaven, and sadly, she was unsure. She listed off several things that were good to do, but she made it clear to me how works-based Judaism is.

After talking to her, I rejoined the party for a while, then went to bed. Apparently some were going to yet another place to party some more. I didn't know about it, but I probably wouldn't have wanted to stay up for it even if I had.

19 Julio

Sunday morning I immediately packed my things and went to check out. Then I had what breakfast was left and waited for the group to come together. Eventually they did, and we were given the option of going to an Indian site called the Aripuca or chilling on the hostel grounds until we had to leave for lunch in Puerto Iguazú. Most followed Marcos to the Aripuca, but I had to borrow cash from Cambria for admission, because the cost of the boat ride was so unexpectedly high. On the way to the Aripuca along the highway there were some interesting billboards that you can see in my Facebook pics. When we got to the site, we paid and were given a brief tour. "Aripuca" is a certain tribes word for a kind of trap used to catch animals. And the tribe built a giant aripuca out of enormous logs from all different kind of trees, the names of which were carved into each one. Other than that, I'm not too sure if there is really any significance to the Aripuca. OK, got it. Google brought up this web page: http://www.stuffwedo.com/argentina_aripuca_wood_preservation_near_iguazu.htm, which calls it a "wood preservation park" whose purpose is "to increase appreciation of forests and wood in general." Riveting. You should really visit that web page. It's hilarious that the couple is so fascinated by wood. Most of the buildings were gift shops, and I was really upset that I had run out of money. This was my last chance to buy anything from Misiones. Then, I discovered that the gift shop took Visa. Cha-ching.

Instead of walking back on the highway, we took the muddy neighborhood streets, which I enjoyed because I got to see rural Misiones, inhabited by people who seemed to live pretty simple lives. When we returned to the hostel, we grabbed our stuff and while some of the girls and Adam sunbathed, I took some final pictures of all the fruit that was growing around our hostel. It was increíble: avacados, possibly papayas, and some unidentifiable, non-edible tree productions. It reminded me of C. S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew of The Chronicles of Narnia when Narnia is a new world. In new Narnia, everything grows, even a lamp post, and some gold and silver coins. Misiones soil seemed so fertile that just about anything would grow in it.

After getting our stuff together, we took taxis to the same restaurant where we'd had dinner two nights ago, but the group that got there first thought it would be a good idea to eat outside. When they first got there, the table was mostly shaded, but by the time our food came most of us were sweating in the hot sun. Also, a clumsy waiter spilled two drinks, and at least one of them was a soda, which attracted several bees that buzzed around us while we ate. Me and Adam split a heart of palm pizza, since we'd never had heart of palm. I liked it; it was a lot like artichoke, but Adam wasn't too fond of it. The bus stop was practically next door, and soon after lunch we were on our Omnibus headed back to BA. Before bed we were stopped by border patrol two different times and had to show the officer our passports, which I found strangely similar to US border patrol whenever I went from Mexico through Texas. We also got to watch Meet Joe Black and Changeling, both of which I enjoyed. I had a better view of a television on this trip because Me and Adam were pushed back one row of seats. This go-around I chose a different combination of drinks: wine with my meal, no coffee, and wiskey afterward. It seemed to work because I slept so well on the bus that night that I missed breakfast the next morning.