Iguazu

So Saturday morning I woke up and flew to Iguazu with Art. It was supposed to be 1 1/2 hour flight, but there was fog, so we circled for another 2 hours. When we got in, we decided to go to the Brazilian side of the falls - so, oh yeah, I went to Brazil - but first, we stopped in a hosteleria (hotel/hostel) that Art had been to before. [Check out the picture. That place was 100 pesos - about $30 - and it had two beds, a private bathroom, cable TV, a closet and desk. Breakfast included.]

Then we got on another bus and went to Brazil. When we got off, a group of English speakers gathered together to work our way toward the falls. This included me and Art, then David, who was Welsh, and two Korean girls, Young-A and Young-Ming. I totally thought they were Korean-American by their accents, but they were Korean-Ecuadorian. They spoke Korean, Spanish, and English fluently. Damn them. I made sure to get a picture with the two of them as part of my continuing effort to use this blog to make Devin jealous.

The falls were pretty cool. We walked around a bunch and took a million pictures. You can see more of it from the Brazilian side, but you're further away for the most part. That is, except for this walkway that goes right out over one of the falls, where we were getting sprayed with mist, so I don't really have any pictures of it. I did take one of the walkway itself from above. Afterwards, there were a bunch of these South American racoon animals with no fear of humans. No fear because I think humans feed them all the time. We did not.

On the way home, we stopped at the Brazilian get-your-passport-stamped place, and there was some confusion on the bus. David jumped off, but I don't think he really needed to. The thing is, they didn't bother to stamp us on the way in - we got an exit-stamp on the Argentine border, and later we got an entrance stamp coming back in. Brazil pretty much said "don't worry about it if you're just going for a day to look at the falls." So we lost David for the time being.

We went back to the town with our hosteleria and met up with Young-A and Young-Ming for dinner. Young-A (23ish, right in picture) is a student in Seoul studying English literature and linguistics, Young-Ming (28ish, left) studied tourism in Ecuador and is now a flight attendant. They are sisters. We had been sitting around for a long time at the restaurant when David stumbled upon us. He'd had a really difficult time at the checkpoint, especially because he doesn't speak Portugese (and speaks Spanish with a thick Welsh accent), and at one point they were threatening to take him to the British embassy all the way in Sao Paul. I don't know why the dude got off the frickin' bus when none of us did, but we were glad to see he made it out alive. A big dinner for the four of us (David got a separate bill) with 2 big 1L bottles of Stella Artois was 135 pesos. They included the amount in dollars: $37.50. Everyone else had meat/fish.

In the morning, we woke up early and met up again to head to the Argentine side. There was a lot of walking through jungle-type areas, and some trains to get around. There was also a large group of Japanese people with an Argentine guide who spoke Japanese (while I was with Korean-Ecuadorians speaking English). They were pretty awesome. One woman had a green poncho with Waldo on it, and you can read what it said in the picture. Young-A kept making fun of them.

We got some pretty good views of the falls - I think from this side you get more up-close and personal with the actual "fall" part of the waterfalls. The first picture is from "Garganta del Diablo" or, "The Devil's Throat."

The last thing we did was go on a boat tour of the falls. This was both a great and a terrible idea. Great in that it was the most fun I've had in a long time. Terrible in that I got soaked and only brought one pair of jeans to Argentina, let alone Iguazu. So I stayed wet until I got back to Buenos Aires hours and hours later. Oh well, it was worth it. After that, we said goodbye to the Young's and booked it to the exit to catch a taxi to the airport.

Our flight was delayed in the airport, so Art and I went outside and took pictures in an empty fountain. Everything was laid back and pretty fun. All in all, it was a great weekend.