Hottest Thanksgiving EVER

Leah and I spent our glorious Thanksgiving holiday in a wonderful little resteraunt called Amaranta Bistro.  They had everything we could have possibly asked for in a Thanksgiving meal, even cranberries!  There was this awesome butternut squash soup, turkey with stuffing, potatoes, vegetables, and of course, pumpkin pie.

The only problem was that it was hot.  Not hot in the way that you feel mildly uncomfortable, but hot in such a way that sweat was pouring off everyone in rivers.  There was only one fan in the entire place, and it was placed above our table so that it hit all the other tables perfectly, but not ours.  I think Leah and I each went through 3 bottles of water before we had even finished the first course.  The worst past was that once the food was brought out, the steam from the food would hit us in the face and makes us even HOTTER, if it was at all possible.  I later found out from a friend that this Thanksgiving was the hottest one on record in BsAs.  If you were standing out in the sun, then you were standing in 104 degree heat.  

Stuffed and incredibly overheated, we decided our only option was to go chill in the cinema for a couple of hours and cool down in the amazing air conditioning.  We bought tickets for the only movie showing at that time, having no idea what it was about.  It turned out to be some terrible movie with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Guy Pearce about Houdini and psychics and true love blah blah blah. 

After the movie we went to an air conditioned bar for a while, were still incredibly overheated and decided to go home to watch my favorite actor, Tim Allen, in The Santa Clause.  On the way home the wind was so strong we were blinded by the debris in the air and saw someone actually get hit by a blowing branch.  We got inside just before the storm arrived, which thankfully broke the heat wave.

I also should mention that Leah decided to dye her hair that afternoon.  We spent at least 20 minutes studing the boxes at the pharmacy, deciding which red would be perfect for her hair.  We chose a light, rich red, very similar to the color her hair already was.  So we watched a Friends Thanksgiving episode (the one with all the thanksgivings) and dyed her hair. Unfortunately, after Leah rinsed her hair out, we realized the box had LIED.  Her hair is now darker than mine, if you can imagine, with hints of red, but definitely far FAR different than it was before.  I'm finally getting used to it and think this is a good look for her, because who doesn't want to be a brunette? 

Video: Iguazu and Misiones

Actual video footage proof that we are still alive and kicking in Argentina...

Get Excited

Okay, get excited because all day Leah and I have been working on an awesome photo montage/video thing of our trip last week. And by working on I mean she has put the entire thing together while I just sat there laughing til I cried of shame over movies of me playing with my food on a bus ride.  Hopefully that footage will never be seen by you fine readers, but Leah has been known to have a cruel streak, so be kind if you view it.

It should be up within the next couple of days and I feel like it's been put together so well that you will feel like you were actually THERE.  And with awesome music.

My 2 cents

Okay, so Leah has done an amazing job describing the first leg of our vacation, I just thought I would make a few comments of my own. Being the lucky person I am, I have had the opportunity to visit the falls twice now, and both experiences were equally amazing.

I never realized one month difference could change the falls so much. It was 20 degrees hotter, much sunnier, and full of mosquitoes. Thankfully Leah and I had the foresight to purchase suntan lotion and bug spray before the visiting the falls, with the latter having the amazing brand name of "Fush!" I am also grateful to Leah for being equally, if not more, insane than I about applying our suntan lotion. I think we must have stopped every hour to put more on, yet I still managed to get red. Why am I so pale?!

Anyways, there was also more wildlife this time around. Last month I saw iguanas, a tucan, and coatis. The coatis were actually my favorite part. They are the south american version of the raccoon and will steal your food from you if you turn to look somewhere else. There were signs everywhere saying to watch out because they may bite, but I just thought they were too cute to do so. Then out of the jungle lumbered this giant coati that had a coller on it. Something tells me that that fat guy was the reason for all of the signs.

This time there were fewer coatis, but a lot more iguanas and little lizards. An iguana actually sprinted across my feet when i was walking up the side of the waterfall. I had no idea that lizards could move that fast, so it was pretty cool. We saw birds, termites, and giant ants similar to those in the 4th Indiana Jones, so you can imagine how gross they were. We even saw wild guinea pigs.

San Ignacio was also pretty cool and Leah didn't get a chance to mention my favorite part of the entire visit. We kind of joined a tour group, but about two minutes in realized we were the youngest people in the group by about 50 years and probably joined a private tour we weren't supposed to be on. The best part was the crazy old woman who made the group go into the shade and then basically fired questions at the tour guide for about 10 minutes. The poor guy answered them the best he could and afterword the woman insisted she be allowed to sit down because she was tired. Now I don't know if this was explained very well, but The San Ignacio ruins were spread out over about 6 acres of land, and we had only walked past the entrance. I don't know what this woman was thinking, but if she was already tired after having walked about 4 feet, how was she going to do the whole tour? I couldn't help but think her exhaustion was due to the heavy black jumpsuit she was wearing with about 10 lbs of jewelry and her high heels. We obviously took a picture of her and will post it as soon as possible.

Posadas was amazing and we will update soon. I also just want to take this moment to thank the game "Amazon Trail." Because of this game, (similar to Oregon Trail,) Leah and I were able to recognize most of the animals our tour guide talked about during the jungle tour and when we went to the Puma reserve in Posadas. Who knew that game was so accurate?

Iguazú Deja Vu

So almost a month ago, Kelly last updated the blog with the first edition of her thrilling tales of Iguazú. Since then, the blog broke down and we didn't update. Or, more accurately, nothing exciting really happened that merited rapid dissemination to all family and friends...until now.

Mostly, I've been keeping to a consistent schedule of teaching English Mon-Thurs and working the night shift at Sugar Bar on Fridays and Saturdays. As the weather got warmer (reminder: southern hemisphere), I started to feel smothered by the city having not left its gray, concrete confines since arrival in July. This led to a sort of panic: I HAD to get out of the city. So I canceled classes for the week (not being able to take a night off from bartending) and decided it was the perfect amount of time to see Iguazú falls. I was letting nothing stop me, even if I had to travel alone, but fortunately Kelly enjoyed herself so much on her first visit to the falls she didn't hesitate in agreeing to come along.

It's a condition of those traveling to Iguazú who are of a certain age and travel type to stay at the Hostel Inn. It's the nicest hostel I've ever seen - beautiful pool, good food, breazy lobby. However, the border town of Puerto Iguazú is somewhat lacking (though we did discover that they have quite a booming olive industry...who knew) and so visits are brief, generally limited to 2 nights: enough to see the waterfalls and experience the full rotation of meals served at the hostel. Which are amazing. The first night was a Brazilian rodizio style asado (which is to say a luscious side dish buffet and endless meat parading by on trays for your selection) with bottomless caipirinhas. This night's dinner is accompanied by a show; we were there for Argentine tango night, though Kelly experienced Brazilian showgirl night on her last visit. The whole town seems to be confused about whether it should be pandering Brazilian or Argentine customs to the tourists.

We spend the entire day on Wednesday in the national park that surrounds the falls, springing for the 'Gran Aventura' package tour which started with a ride on a 4-wheeler through the subtropical rainforest. Kelly and I managed to amuse boundless Germans with our renditions of the Indiana Jones theme song and various photo shoots. We saw 2 tucans and I saw some kind of midsize mammal scurry across the way (which Kelly missed because all I could muster at the sight of it was 'Kelly! Look! It's a thing...with a thing! Look!' and she understandably had no idea where to turn). We then boarded a boad and navigated the narrow rapids with Brazil on our left and Argentina on our right (closest I'll be getting to that country if they expect me to pay $100 for a visa) and approached the falls, which are completely indescribeable. You just have to go, there's no other way. You can look at pictures, but it won't really help.

The next day we woke early to travel on a bus for 5 hours to San Ignacio, which Lonely Planet said had some ruins. Sounded good to us.

The bus dropped us off on a red dirt road, one of many that cover Misiones province, which was kind of cool but kind of distressing as we had no idea where to go. Fortunately, the town is limited in size and activity and we were quickly able to assess that we needed to walk 5 'blocks' to see the ruins. Then we could leave.

We had lunch at Café Yesica, which was a sad spot to say the least. We pondered what it would be like to have such places as the finest restaurants in town. But we ate well and went on to the ruins, which were rather stunning in their size and vibrant red color. We joined a random tour that was in Spanish, left that after a bit and rambled about on our own. San Ignacio was a mission founded in the 17th century we learned, and we saw the inside of quite a large church, the library, row after row of houses, and the jail. It was fascinating, but the burning sun made us in a hurry to leave and we hopped back on a bus for an hour ride to Posadas.

My piece of advice for those traveling to Posadas: do not trust Lonely Planet. Nothing is right. The hostel we sought didn't exist, the naturaly history museum, aviary, and serpentarium, the main sites we wanted to see, had all closed years ago, and the best restaurant in town had changed names and ownership. We checked into a hotel the first night that was rather nice and were so tired that we were immediately sucked into an amazing Lifetime-style movie about a Amish orphans who are forced to move to Portland, OR of all places to live with their estranged aunt. It was amazing in its terribleness. Saving Sarah Caine I believe it was called. We then forced ourselves out for probably the most delicious meal we've had in a while. We had bountiful leftovers that we stocked in our minifridge with full intentions of finishing after we got back from the pub later that evening. However, we never made it to the leftovers as we both passed out into a food coma and then were both rudely awakened by food poisoning. Still, days later, we wished we had taken those leftovers with us, they were that good.

On our full day in Posadas we were at a loss for what to do. Fortunately, Posadas happens to have a fabulous Tourist Info Office that enumeriated for us all the possibilities (it was not a long list, but a thorough one). We decided on a trip to the Puma reserve followed by a day in town with a visit to the Paraguyan goods market and a stroll along the river coast. More on that later as my battery is dying.

Hooray, the blog is working again!

Sorry it's been so long, but day-light savings time seemed to mess with our blog and we couldn't post anything for a couple of weeks. But now that it seems to be working again, I thought I would share my amazing adventures in IGUAZU!

So before I get going, I'm warning that this is going to be a pretty long post and broken into two parts so it doesn't look so awkward. I'm also going to write like I just went this past weekend because I saved it when it wasn't posting on the blog and it's easeier that way. It's basically uncensored as well because it's soooo much funnier that way.  And for those of you who don't know, Iguazu Falls is a series of waterfalls shared by Argentina and Brazil and were featured in the recent (and pretty terrible) Indiana Jones flick, making them extra cool.  

So last week at some point, the idea of going to Iguazu was mentioned at a bar by my friend Kris.  I didn't really think anything of it until Wednesday, when Anna apparently volunteered me to go and I was included in the plans.  I am greatful to her for this, because as most of you know, I really need a push to go through with things and I never really had any intention of going until she basically forced me to.  Anna and I were going with 4 other people, but decided to take a cheaper, less fancy bus then them, so we left at different times, but would meet at the station in Puerto Iguazu and then go to our hostel.  So we bought our tickets for

 the 20 hour bus ride and planned on leaving Thursday night at 6 55.

We arrived at the bus station with plenty of time to spare.  We asked an attendent which bus to go to and he pointed us towards one headed to Iguazu.  We stood in line and the conductor looked at my ticket, tore off the stub, then did a double take.  He proceeded to tell us that this was the wrong bus and our bus was about 4 over.  Unfortunately, by this time it was 6:57 and OUR BUS HAD ALREADY LEFT!  Nothing in Argentina EVER runs on time, but this one bus had to be on schedule, with no last call, no nothing.  So we ran over to our ticket booth and freaked out at the ticket guy until he managed to get us another bus, but it cost 40 more pesos and was a much less comfortab

le bus.  He then walked us over to where the bus would be and told us not to move until our bus got there at 8.  We stood there, really pissed off at ourselves and the whole bus station.  I kept checking the clock and at 7:55 we began to freak out because the bus was not there.  The same conductor who we talked to earlier saw us and tried to calm us down and finally just told us to go on a different bus from a completely different company because it had room and was headed towards Iguazu.

So we got on our bus (which left 10 minutes late, btw) and tried to relax, but not before seeing the bus we were supposed to be on pull up as we were leaving.  Oops.  Worse news was to come.  This bus company was the only company in the entire bus station that did NOT serve alcohol with dinner, which was basically the only perk of the 20 hour bus ride.  So there 

we were, leaving an hour later, on a cheaper, slower bus with no booze to help medicate us through the long ride.

Just as Anna and I were at the point of despair, we turned around and saw sitting behind us not one, not two, but FIVE american guys who had clearly started drinking and had several bottles of alcohol between them.  We started talking to them, found out they were all University of Colorodo students and were staying at the same hostel as us.  We talked from our seats several rows away for a while, ate the disgusting food that was supposed to be dinner, then moved to the back with them to have a mini party.

We hung out in the back of the bus with these guys for several hours, probably annoying everyone around us.  We were delayed two hours due to a traffic accident, which only made everyone on the bus more restless and annoyed.  We played card games, watched a terrible Argentine movie, and even sang a few disney songs.  Anna and I decided we were tired and wanted to get a good nights sleep at around 1, so we said good night and passed out.  The boys said they settled down around 3, probably more from the amount of alcohol they drank than from actually being tired.

Now, throughout our entire mini party in the back, one boy was especially drunk.  His name was Damon and he was slurring and forgetful and overall very funny.  What wasn't funny was when I woke up at around 3:30 am to hear him spitting behind me.  This concerned me because whenever I am about to throw up, I normally spit several times beforehand.  I turned around to see him bend over and my fears were realized when he began to throw up all over his feet and the floor.  I woke up Anna and we both stared in horror as he threw up several more times.  I began to hit the leg of John, his seatmate and told him to wake up and help his friend.  John pretended not to hear me until I told him that Damon had thrown up on his feet.  That got his attention and he went to get napkins to clean up the mess.  The smell was awful, but when we woke up the next day at noon, we could finally see the humor in the situation.

We finally arrived in Puerto Iguazu at 4:30 pm, 20.5 hours after we had begun.  We took cabs with our new best friends, the University of Colorado boys, and headed towards the hostel.  We checked in, relaxed, had dinner, then tried to go tob e dearly for our 7 am wake up call.

I'll actually talk about the falls in the next post, so bear with me as I try to type it all out.