Iguazu Falls, Argentina = heaven.

November 25^th, 2011 7:30am. Location: dirt roads of Itaugua, Paraguay. Mission: Peace Walk. Today is the International Day of Awareness of Violence Against Women and we are ready to be heard. With lots of planning in early November, it has finally all come together. Co-workers, artisans, local women, all of us holding our signs marching the streets. After the weeks of planning/organizing, it was so cool to be a part of the walk, see everything come together. My favorite part of all of it was the feeling of being here, on this little dirt road in Paraguay, helping put on a Violence Against Women Awareness March. I don't know how to explain it. Its a completely different feeling then being a part of a march or protest in the midst of NYC with thousands of people, where there are cameras/media and its on TV and its all glamourous to some extent, if that makes any sense. Here, I was marching, with women and children, maybe 50 to 75 of us altogether representing the whole country of Paraguay, some of which were crying, some laughing. Bruises, mosquito slapping, headaches from the insane sun, getting filthy from the dirt roads, crying and laughing and shouting and sweating all at the same time...nothing that is going to hit the news or any tv or anything over here but something that is so important. just a local 2 hour event trying to make a voice be heard.  All of these women, whether they were marching with us or just heard us on the street, are there in solidarity, with each other. Thats what it's all about.  

March in the morning...Argentina by night!

So our latest adventure was our visit to Iguazu Falls, Argentina. December 2^nd marks our 3^rd month here. We have a 90 day VISA so we have to cross the border to renew our VISAs every 90 days, hence making out border crossing into a trip/adventure to Argentina.

Six hours bus ride and we are loving it! Highlights from the busride:

1.       Pulling over on the side of a dirt road/no civilization whatsoever to pick up a random lady in a skirt who was selling Chipa. There we are driving for over an hour on an empty dirt road with NO stops and all of a sudden a random lady in a skirt and apron is on the side of the road selling Chipa (this bready/donut tradition food here). We pick her up and now she is our bus cater girl. Nothing like random Paraguayan food service on the side of a dirt road. Classic.

2.       

Sp   1.Spooning watermelon/skittles.

3.       2.Our bus seat neighbors- this interesting couple- a lady wearing all orange, including her hair scrunchy, orange ring and orange WINTER socks (it is high 90s out). Her husband who had the biggest diamond wedding Diva ring ever.

4.       3.The man sitting behind us with his shirt unbuttoned playing with his white chest hair.

5.       4.The man sitting diagonally across/behind us with his pants unbuttoned in luxurious spenders.

6.       5.NSA (bus company) is a double decker bus and we had front seats, literally on the top deck. It was quite interesting to be sitting there and all of a sudden approach a tree, see tree branches come right at your head, close your eyes, hear a big bang and then see leaves on the window and big branches on the side of the road. Ahhahahaha, we just causally were taking out trees because the bus was too tall. No big deal.

The bus leaves us in Cuidad del Este which is a city in Paraguay right near the border (an hour away from our final destination) around 7:30pm where we met the Paraguayan version of Bob Marley. All the buses and ferries to our destination JUST closed and night it creeping quickly. A taxi is our only option. After going back and forth with a taxi guy about crossing the border (he said at this hour, he can only cross through Brasil which we did not want to do being that we don’t have Brasilian VISAs/didn’t want to end up behind bars in Brasil), we decided it would be safest to plant in Cuidad del Este in such a random hotel named “Hotel Tia Nancy,” which was an experience in it of itself and shoot out in the morning.

6am! Wakey wakey, we were on the first bus out. With some crossing fingers hoping that we are translating correctly/doing the whole renewing the VISA process correctly (it was our first time), we made it through immigration, crossed the “Friendship Bridge,” and were in Puerto de Iguazu just in time to grab the free continental breakfast that Hostel Bambu provides. We walked into the hostel and boom I was hit with a wave of HEAVEN, totally in my element! 

The lady that ran the hostel was named Natalie and couldn’t be any sweeter/cooler! There are actually two Hostel Bambu’s-one called Hostel Bambu Guazu (big) and then right up the block Hostel Bambu Mini, which is where Mo and I were staying. Between the two hostels were AIR CONDITIONING bed rooms, ping pong, awesome bar set-ups, A POOL, and HAMMOCKS! 

Does it get any better!? It was totally our paradise and little did we know it was all just about to begin! There is so much detail that I really don’t even know where to start right now. I am just going to list some things because it is impossible to talk  about everything right now.

1.       Characters- life has so many characters, so many fun fun characters. There is Natalie & Chris, Argentinian hostel runners, Aaron (started his own charity in Africa) & Dan and their boy posse from England, there is talking-Martin from Austria, Mark from Holland, Australia girl, Emma from Switzerland, random 45 year old French man with fusia polo that didn’t speak one word, Estafano and Cristiano the two cute soccer boys from Italy, Denisse from Canada, and the list continues- from Belgium people, to France, to Germany, etc. etc. All such CHARACTERS! Hostel BBQs each night, sharing our individual adventures, 10 languages clashing at one table, going with one of our new friends as he got a new tat, to ping pong, to poolside, to tooooooo many laughs.

2.       Butterflies! There were soooo many butterflies!! Butterflies! Butterflies! Butterflies! There was this one specific butterfly with orange and purple wings that became Monetti and I’s bestie! She was beautiful! She walked the park with us BOTH days and I am not kidding. She landed on leg, then my hand, then my sunglasses. Monetti’s hand too. She did our hikes with us and everything! It was too cool.

3.       Day 1 Visit to Iguazu Falls (just recently named one of the top 7 wonders of Nature)

-Macuco Jungle Trail- an hour walk through the jungle where we saw all kinds of animals including huge lizards, snakes, and a monkey tribe crossing RIGHT over our heads which included a mom monkey holding its tiny baby monkey!! Oh another animal highlight was the raccoon. I forgot the name of it but it is the South American version of a raccoon. It looks like a raccoon except it is a little bigger and has a long snout. It jumped up and out into the walking path onto a lady to grab her bag of food she was carrying! So funny!!  A little scary but obviously I found it so funny!

-end of jungle walk lands you in the Natural Swimming pool and our first view of one of the waterfalls. AMAZING! Ended up staying here for 3 hours, swimming, eating lunch. My favorite (and scariest) part was climbing up the rocks behind the waterfall! Literally there is this huge powerful waterfall a foot in front of my face as the wind from its power is full force in my face as I look up watching the water come flooding down from well, heaven! There are no words to explain it! AT ALL! I was screaming on the top of my lungs because I literally didn’t know what else to do! You know in movies when you see someone screaming on the top of their lungs out of happiness, like one of those cheesy scenes…well that was totally me and I never understood the extent of how someone just shouts because something is cool..until that moment. It was literally all my body could do!

-Garganta de Diable (Devil’s throat). I can’t even explain this view of the waterfalls because literally I felt like I was in a fake world. This was definitely one of my favorite spots out of the entire weekend. It is insane! You are right on top of the waterfalls getting soaked by their spray. We were just standing there getting drenched not saying a word to each other because there are no words for it. Plus, there was a gigantic FULL rainbow where we could see every single individual color of the rainbow! If I were to make up what Heaven looks like- it is here.

Day 2 Visit- Being that we could not bring ourselves to  leave the natural swimming pool and Devil’s throat the first day, we had another full day at the park the following day to try to see all the other spots we hadn’t seen yet.

-We signed up for this “Gran Aventura” boat ride. We ran into a park ranger who was trying to get us to do his Jeep Rangler Jungle ride (which probs would have been awesome) but we couldn’t afford to do both. He was a highlight because as he was respectfully explaining why his excursion was better than the boat, he dropped the F bomb inbetween every 3 words with NO exaggeration at all. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone curse so much in a matter of 5 minutes. Classic. Such a character!

-GRAN AVENTURA! We took this boat through the rapids close up to the Falls where we got slammed by the mist/spray from the falls. Being so close to the gigantic waterfalls like that was INSANEEE!!! I literally felt like one tiny grain of sand in the ground next to a the world’s biggest tsunami. Of course I had to go on the side of the boat so I could get as close as possible! I was lovinggg it! Monetti was screaming “Holy Shit!! Holy Shit!! Are you scared! I’m scared!” aahahaa. It was terrifying thrillinggggggg!!

-San Martin Island (which is closed more than it is opened due to the high water level/danger)

Our first day at the park the island was closed. But with luck on our side, it was OPEN the next day! So we spent 3 hours on this island after our boat excursion.

HOLY CRAP! Yet again, INSANE! We took a boat over to the island and spent some hours there, lunch on this beach surrounded by waterfalls! I still have a hard time grasping that!

We hardly spoke that much here either! The two days at the park were so ridiculously amazing, we were LITERALLY speechless most of the time. Literally. There was so much to take in, it was overwhelming! Sidenote-we spotted two cute soccer boys on the beach which later turned out to be the Italian boys at our hostel! Small world!

-The hike on San Martin Island was awesome. It was tough though. The stairs climbing up to the top of the mountain made STJ Women’s Soccer stadiums a piece of cake! With many breaks and some encouragement from this 80 year old fit old women, we made it! That was awesome! We saw a beautiful tucan with a huge beak during this hike! SO COOL!

Obviously there are a lot of little details inbetween but I could write for days just about this place! I thought I’d just give you a few highlights and then just tell you YOU HAVE TO GO SEE IT YOURSELF to even understand one/tenth of what Im trying to explain.

Some other highlights from the weekend

-Puerto de Iguazu (the town where our hostel was/the falls were) was so awesome! It had all these little quirky shops with handmade everything. I loved the style of all the clothes! They were so many cool dream catchers made out of tree branches! So many things made out of recycled material. We made besties with one of the shop owners. He had some nanduti artisan’s work in his shop so we told him about the Fair Trade Business we work with in Paraguay and now he is our new business partner! We loved him the most because he creepily saw that I had a runny nose (due to the winds of the falls!) and randomly approached me giving me his packet of tissues and a rub on the back. It was at this moment that we became besties and now future business partners. He was so gentle!  

-ALMOST getting tattoos

-swimming in a pool at the hostel/the water by the waterfalls (remember Paraguay is a landlocked country. We have one lake here!)

-Mo hiden inbetween big rocks taken a nap like a creep while I crept away for my own mini stream adventure. Even in South America, people are disturbed by our weirdness.

-PIZZA! Pizza in Argentina actually somewhat tastes like pizza. Gold mind.

-Icecream. Always icecream.

-Grundler! When we signed up for the boat tour, the man that signed us up- his name was Grundler. We asked him what was a good time to do the tour. Within the 3 minutes we talked to him, he changed his mind about what time we should take it 7 times.

Grundy “You should do the 10:45am. Take the early run.”

Us “Okay.”

Grundy “No do the 11:45am then have lunch.”

Us “10:45 or 11:45am? If you were to pick one of the two which would you do?”

Grundy “10:45am.”

Us “ok”

Grundy “Come here I’m going to sign you up for the 11:45am”

Us “You are confusing us.”

Grundy “You know it doesn’t matter. What matters the most is that we are alive! WE ARE ALIVE!!!”

(I left out a few other times where he went back and forth between the time choice all in a matter of 3 minutes. Character- everyone is a character!)
-On our way back to Paraguay, the guy sitting next to us...his teeth fell out. He left them there on the seat. Dead serious.

I can go on and on with these random listings of small details that made this trip a hilarious one to remember, but I have black bean sauce dried on my leg so I should probably shower. All in all, this trip was probably one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had in my entire life and I feel beyond grateful to have experienced it! I have yet to see the Brasilian side of the Falls but through word of mouth, if you are going to pick a side of the falls to see the Argentinian side is the way to go! You will not be disappointed and I 100% promise you that! 

Con Cataratas, Mariposas, Hostels, and ADVENTURA,

Jess


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgEfYGzojcA&feature=related