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.