Two weeks ago I was able to fulfill a dream I've had since when I was about five years old, that dream being a trip to Iguazu Falls. I went with a group of exchange students during the long weekend for Easter (which did mean, sadly, that I missed my host mother's birthday and Easter). We left Saturday night, a group of 9 students and 3 volunteers, from the Formosa bus station. In a couple hours we arrived to Corrientes (for those of you that don't know, that would be the capital city of the province Corrientes), got a bite to eat, and got on the tour bus. We were in a group of about 40 total. We spent the night on the bus, and I was naive enough to think they would give us blankets and pillows like most of the buses do and against the advice of my entire family I wore a pair of shorts and a tank top ... which meant I spent a very sleepless night coughing and blowing my nose from the awful cold I had had for the past week and shivering while trying to curl up into the tightest little ball possible. I don't know why they insist on putting the air conditioning so high at night when everybody is freezing, but every bus does.
Around nine or ten in the morning we arrived to the Wanda Mines, which are some mines of semi precious stones, like quartz, and we got tours throughout the mines. The photos are awful because we had just spent a night *trying* to sleep on a bus, and were exhausted, but it was really cool! Afterwards we continued on to the hotel, and after an hour or two in the bus we arrived, went to our rooms, and got ready for lunch. I was sharing one room with three girls, an Austrian, an Italian, and a volunteer from Formosa. The room had space to sleep six people! It was great, two stories, bathroom, air conditioning... By that point it was around 12:45 so we headed out with the group of exchange students to go get lunch. We walked through the blazing heat to one restaurant- there was an hour wait. We walked a few more blocks to another restaurant- hour wait. We walked back towards the hotel to a cheaper looking restaurant and the whole group was able to get a spot to sit, and we waited about a half hour, before the owner of the restaurant said he wasn't sure if he was going to serve us or not. So we up and left. Finally we found a place that served food where there was space and waiters that were actually decent, and we ordered our food. And waited. And waited. And after an hour and a half were finally served. By that point it was 3 in the afternoon and the only thing we had eaten all day were a croissant and a piece of toast each, so you can imagine that we ate pretty fast.
Afterwards, we went to the hotel, slept, slept, slept, went to the pool, and had dinner from the hotel buffet. And, because it was the German girl's birthday the following day, we went to the center of town and we all sung happy birthday in our respective languages and we got back to the hotel late... allowing us an hour and a half of sleep before waking up the next day for Iguazu.
A little bit of sleep would have helped, seeing as that day we walked over 6 miles of trails around the falls. It was incredible! I don't know if you all have been to Niagara, but Iguazu is Niagara times 10. There's not only one major fall but dozens, and instead of hotels and streets and noise, it's all nature, crocodiles, coaties, fish, birds, and rainforest. It was amazing. We got to go in boat to the falls and actually went completely under a few of them and got soaking wet! The only downside of all that was that to get back from the boat trip we had to climb a never ending set of stairs, and we were all so tired our legs were literally quivering by the time we reached the summit. Thankfully we got to sit for lunch, which was a huge buffet. But, we are all stingy people, and although the buffet cost about $10, that is pretty pricey for an Argentine lunch, so half of us paid and we just stuffed our bags with fruit and cookies.
On our way back to the hotel we went to a nature reserve type place that had some huge buildings made of huge trees and all this information about mate (a common bitter tea-like drink in Argentina made from a plant) and we tried ice cream with mate flavor, which was strange, to say the least. We were all ready to be back at the hotel, so pretty quickly we got back on the bus. We got back, slept, had dinner, and then had a nice night in the hotel, drinking mate and terere in a group of about 6 students, the volunteers, and some other Argentines and Israelis that we met in the hotel.
The next day we headed out early. We went to the San Ignacio Ruins, which are ruins of a Guarani village from the 1700s. It was interesting but we got distracted taking a bunch of pictures and we didn't really listen to the guide. Afterwards, we had lunch (and there was a huge scandal; apparently there was a blonde girl who ate and left without paying and they sent the bus driver after her. The blonde girl turned out being me, not the platinum blonde girls from Germany, Denmark, Iceland, or Austria, and it turns out I did pay, so ha). Then we headed back for Corrientes. We spent the bus ride all in the back of the bus drinking mate and sleeping. Finally we got to Corrientes and later on, to Formosa, around 10:30pm, and then headed to our respective houses. It was a great trip, we all had a lot of fun and it's definitely a place I would like to visit again. Photos are on my Facebook, I'm too lazy to upload them here.
