Las cataratas de iguazu

What a trip! Last weekend a couple of friends and I went to see the Iguazu waterfalls at the border of Argentina and Brazil. They were absolutely amazing. I really haven't seen anything like that in my entire life -- just truly breathtaking. The waterfalls are actually a group of around 250 waterfalls clustered together over a span of 2.5 miles. They are so many that you really can't get a sense of how big they are by looking at them. Right now its spring here and you would not imagine the amount of water tumbling over the cliff. The water was a bit of a brown color because of the spring rainfall but during the summer and fall, the water is blue.

Me at the waterfalls!

We went to both the Argentinean and Brazilian sides. The water basically flows from Argentina to Brazil so from the Argentinean side, you can get right next to the falls (actually, they constructed these walkways so you can stand at the top of the falls and look over. Very freaky) and on the Brazilian side, you can get a better view of all the falls at once. It was huge enough from the Brazilian side but the crazy part was that we were only looking at one part. The rest of the falls curved out of view and with all the mist, you really couldn't see them. Unbelievable!

A ton of waterfalls right in a row but these are just some of them!

Really amazing. These are the main ones that you can see from the Argentinean side. When the water is a little lower, you can actually go to the island on the left.

A coati. It like of looks like a cross between a raccoon and an anteater. They are everywhere and have no fear of humans (and will steal your cookies!).

So much water! These walkways were closed.

The trip really came at a good time. I love being in Buenos Aires but its a huge city with tons of people, traffic, pollution and noise. So getting away for a short weekend was really perfect. It was so nice to see trees and open spaces and smell clear air (or at least not smell other things in the air). It was the perfect break to mark my first month here!

Fresh air and beautiful scenery. The Pampas, where the farms and cows are. They say the meat is so good because of the quality of the Pampa grass.

We passed through a lot of small towns on the way. Very different from BA!

We booked the trip through STA and it included the bus, hotel and all transportation when we got to Iguazu. Though I appreciated how the package made traveling much easier to plan and handle, we were stuck with those huge tour groups that I would normally try to avoid like the plague. And, seriously, we were ripped off for everything that wasn't already included in the package. At first, we were really self-conscious of being Americans and easy targets until we realized that everyone else was also getting ripped off.

Drinking mate! Its all they do here. We were waiting at yet another gift shop our tour company dropped us off at. Argh!

The trip almost didn’t happen though. We missed the bus on Friday because our travel agent told us the bus would leave at 8 when in fact it left at 7. It was so stupid and we should have double-checked the tickets but there you go. We were frantic at the bus terminal and couldn’t get another bus out that day. We all went home, had a drink to decompress and then came back on Saturday and got on the first bus out. It turned out to be okay though since we found out that the park was closed on Saturday anyway so we wouldn’t have been able to do anything had we actually made our bus. The bus-trip was pretty good. The cama buses have these big seats that almost fully recline and we they even served us dinner and drinks on the bus. Pretty swanky except when the bus ran out of gas in the middle of the night. We were stuck for a couple of hours until the driver came back with some gas but after that, it was smooth sailing!

Luxury bus at a pit stop. We were on the top and had an incredible view out the front windows. Really made those 18 hours fly by (no joke, 18 hours!).

We also committed our first illegal acts in Argentina. We were told by many people that we had to see the falls from both countries so we were pretty excited to go. But we weren’t really excited about paying US$100 for the Brazil visa especially since we were just popping over to see the falls for an afternoon. Luckily, our hostel was able to direct us to this dude who would be able to drive us across the border and bribe the border patrol to let us through. We called the guy and for half the price, he drove us to the Brazil side, snuck us across the border and waited for us to drive us back. It definitely seemed a little shady, especially when he made us all roll-up our tinted windows as we drove into Brazil, but we got in and out just fine. And the Brazil side was definitely not to be missed!

So despite being ripped-off by our travel agency with all their little tack-ons and missing our bus, the weekend was incredible. Sorry, I would have updated the blog a little earlier but I got a little lazy when I got back. I had to deal with new classes and trying to find a homestay and so didn’t really have time to write. But now I have loads to write about so stay tuned! More posts coming your way. I also have more pictures from Iguazu that I will post but they are on my friend’s camera and I still have to download them. Hope everyone had a great Halloween (I spent it on the all-night bus)!