Iguazú

I have realized that I blog to procrastinate. Right now I have many many chapters of reading in front of me, but every time I start to read, I find myself thinking about what to put in my next blog. Lucky for all the readers, not so lucky for my grades.

Mimi, Leah Snyder (a friend for the University of Pittsburgh) and I started our trip to Iguazú on Saturday at 2 PM. We boarded the bus that was scheduled to arrive at 7 the next morning! The trip felt surprisingly short. The buses here are not your typical Anderson buses. You have three choices when picking your bus: semi cama, cama or cama executivo. We were on the semi cama bus, which wasn’t even that bad. Although the food was horrendous, the seats practically folded into beds (thus the name semi cama).

Anyway we rolled into our hostel, (which was more like a five star resort the only difference was you had 5 other people sharing your room. There was a pool, free breakfast and free Internet all for the affordable cost of $10! What a deal.) We met up with some of our friends, had some breakfast and jumped on a bus to Iguazú at the ungodly hour of 8:30. (Let it be said that we were up since 7!)

The story behind the falls is from the Guarani Indians. The Guarani Indians are the tribe of people that inhabited the area before the conquest. There are many variations of this story, but this is the one I found most often. M’Boi, the Serpent God, fell in love with a beautiful Guarani girl named Naipi. He wanted Naipi for himself, but unfortunately for him, Naipi was in love with another, the mortal Taruba. They planned on fleeing the place by canoe but M’Boi saw them. Outraged, M’Boi slithered down after them creating new twists and turns in the river. He finally caught up with the lovers and turned their canoe over, throwing Taruba to the river bank. He turned Naipi into a bolder and Taruba into a palm tree and then split the river, creating the Garganta del Diablo (the Devil’s Throat) so that they could see each other but never touch. Although it has been said, that they show their love by creating a rainbow, which starts at a palm tree on the Brazilian side of the falls and reaches over to the rock of Naipi in Argentina.

The Falls consist of 275 cascades that stretch over 1.67 miles. Apparently when Eleanor Roosevelt first saw these falls, she remarked, “Poor Niagara.” Poor Niagara indeed. We spent all day wondering around looking at the beautiful falls set in the amazing jungle of northern Argentina and southern Brazil. I found myself unable to stop taking pictures even though the pictures could not to the place justice.

We only were able to see the Falls from the Argentinean side because being American, we would have to get a visa to go to Brazil. This visa would cost somewhere around $200! (American dollars) I have found, that we also have to get visas for Paraguay, Chile and Bolivia. They do this to us because the American government makes it so difficult and expensive to get into the United States that it is their form of retaliation.

When we returned from the Falls we took a dip in the pool and made dinner. We woke up early the next day (8 AM) and walked to Las Tres Fronteras (the three boarders). From this point, I guess it is kind of self explanatory, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay can be seen.

The only bad thing about the place was that there were lots of bugs! There were tons of bees at the park, thankfully I didn’t get stung, although Mimi had some crazy allergic reaction to the mosquitoes and now it looks like she has golf balls under her skin. One thing that was really interesting and strange was that there were masses of butterflies! I felt like I was back in the butterfly garden in Costa Rica.

We had lunch and we were back on the bus to Bs. As. All and all I think that it was a great trip. It was good to get out of the crowded and dirty city, even though it was only for a few days. It was nice to be able to walk in a straight line without fear of plowing into someone or stepping in dog shit.