El gran viaje 2007

It took me three days at the beach to get a real sunburn, a record for me I think. Anyway, it´s just as well because after three days of perfect, clear blue skies it´s rainy and cool today in Florianopolis.

Before leaving Brazil´s sunny coast in a few weeks to head inland for Bolivia and the Andes, we needed to take advantage of our best chance for a few days at the beach on this trip. It´s been a lazy few days for us. We´ve got a little apartment in Barra da Lagoa, a little fishing village on the island of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil. Having a kitchen and being near the beach gave us an excuse to do basically nothing for a few days. But after an intense visit to Iguazu, we needed a vacation from our vacation.

After miraculously getting our visas for Brazil in about an hour in Puerto Iguazu on Wednesday morning, we headed to the waterfalls. We started out our tour with a boat ride that took us close enough to the spray to completely soak us and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the park, checking out the falls from different angles.

On Thursday we headed back to the park to do the Macuco Trail, a 4 mile easy walk through the subtropical rainforest where we saw giant spiders and ants, more butterflies, strange unknown birds, lizards, a monkey, and a deer. The hike ended at a little waterfall where we went swimming. Then it was one last look at the falls before heading back to our hot and crowded hostel.

On Friday we crossed the border into Braziil and after buying our bus tickets to Florianopolis and stashing our backpacks in the bus station´s lockers, we headed straight for the Brazilian park. The views from the Brazilian side were amazing, but visiting this side wasn´t as exciting as the Argentinian side, where you´re pretty much actually in the waterfalls.

Brazil is very beautiful, at least from what we´ve seen so far. The beaches here in Floripa are surrounded by low, green mountains and the water is clear and blue. But we´re feeling anxious to get back to speaking Spanish, and Brazil is expensive. The plan now is to zip up to Rio and then head West.

Today Sergio and I arrived in Puerto Iguazu in the Misiones in Argentina. Iguazu is famous for having one of the most impressive waterfalls in the world, but we haven't seen that yet. So far we've just been in this small, sticky hot town long enough to get lost twice trying to find the hostel, eat a pizza, discover that the Brazilian consulate is closed, and find an internet cafe.

Yesterday we spent the day in San Ignacio, a really tiny town also in Misiones. We stopped their on our way up here because San Ignacio has the ruins of an old Jesuit mission. The Jesuits (a trendy and controversial part of Latin American history) were kicked out of the Spanish territories in the eighteenth century and left behind dozens of missions where they taught and worked the local Guarani people. Anyway, seeing the Jesuit ruins was more my kind of thing than Sergio's, and we mostly had a quiet day (okay, we didn't have a choice, there wasn't anything to do in San Ignacio after seeing the ruins besides hang out in the hotel and watch Mean Girls).

Our goal for our few days in Iguazu is to spend as much time as possible at the national park and to finally get our tourist visas for Brazil. Hopefully that will take just a few days, but you never know. We also want to enjoy actually understanding the local language before heading into Brazil in a few days...

Now, we like Buenos Aires so far but it is kind of a ridiculous name for a place that smells like garbage, dust, and car fumes.

Out introduction to the city was a 2 hour long journey in a van through Buenos Aires traffic from the airport to our hotel. Lanes are just suggestions here, apparently, although we´ve seen worse.

We really like our hostel in San Telmo. San Telmo is the oldest neighborhood in Buenos Aires, and the guidebook just describes it as "crumbling". The hostel is an old 19th century building with a kitched 100% original from 1898.

Yesterday we mostly took things easy. We finally ended up at out hostel at about 2 in the afternoon. We went out to eat at a nearby restaurant recommended by Laura at our hotel. We ordered the parillada (ambitious for our first meal in Buenos Aires, but we were starving.) They served us a sizzling grill plate with like 6 different kinds and cuts of meat. Yummm. Some of the stuff on there was too weird even for me though. Besides eating, we walked around did a lot of napping.

Today was supposed to be more adventurous, but so far we´re stuck inside because it´s pouring rain out. On the bright side, the city´s streets could use a good rinse.