For those of you less informed, Iguazu is a city/town on the Brazilian border of Argentina and also about a 30 minute bus ride from the border of Paraguay, and it is famous for its waterfalls. Its on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, so the weather was nice and warm and the animals are very cool. We took a 17 hour bus ride there on Thursday afternoon and checked into the hostel Friday morning. The hostel used to be a casino, so it was more like a resort with a pool and tiki bar and all that fancy stuff. Friday afternoon Hannah, Malcolm, Dave, and I headed to a small zoo/sanctuary down the road. We saw some cool animals like toucans, monkeys, eagles, falcons, and some other strange creatures I can't name or describe. Our tour guide was hysterical and the rainforest was super cool, so we had a great time.
Saturday we headed to Iguazu National Park, where the waterfalls are. We first walked around the catwalks and balconies set up over the top of one side of the falls. You can literally stand inches above the water right where it drops over the edge, pretty sweet. We snapped some pictures and soon headed to the Great Adventure, a truck and boat tour we had paid for. They loaded about 25 people into an open-top truck and drove us for a few miles through the middle of the rainforest, pointing out cool plants and animals the whole time. Eventually we reached the river where we boarded the boats (and where an alligator was hanging out in the sun). We stripped down, threw our valuables in waterproof bags, and headed off down the river. The boat twisted and turned around some rapids until we reached the falls, which it drove right up to and under. Of course the falls would crush us if we went right under them, but I was about an arm's length away from a couple hundred gallons a second washing me away. We took a turn or two going under each side of the falls (they kind of twist around so its split between the Argentine side and the Devil's Throat which is half Argentina and half Brazil) and eventually docked and hopped of the boat. We walked around the walkways around the bottom of the falls for a bit drying off, then headed back to the hostel.
That night we had a big bbq dinner at the hostel with the 200 other British and Americans that were staying there. They put on this risque Latin dance show during dinner, which Brenny, Dave, and our friend Julian were volunteered to be part of, and which eventually turned into a hostel-wide party that lasted until morning. On Sunday, Dave, Hannah, and I just hung out and studied for our final all day/watched soccer. We took a bus back to BA that night, studied some more on Monday, and took our literature final on Tuesday. It went pretty well, I felt great about how I did afterward, hopefully I actually did well. We also had a take-home final for history due Wednesday that I think went fairly well also. Now I just have a huge paper and one final left this week.
The World Cup has been a ride. This country LOVES soccer, and every single aspect of life in Argentina has been dominated by the Cup since it started. Its all anybody talks about, stores have Mundial sales, everything closes for games, etc. Argentina played incredibly well all the way until today when they played Germany in the quarter finals (and got crushed 4-0). During the games the city just makes as much noise as possible- people constantly chanting, horns honking, vuvuzelas vuvuzeling- and its just an unbelievable atmosphere. I took some videos from my balcony the other day of my neighborhood all out on their balconies at halftime chanting Argentine soccer chants in unison. Its just so cool. As for USA soccer, we dressed up as American as we could and headed to the bar and heckled other fans for the games (That's the stereotype. Might as well embrace it). The American bars are a ton of fun for US sporting events, just too bad we lost to Ghana, again.
That's basically all that's been happening for a month. Things are really starting to wind down now, tonight is my last Saturday night in Buenos Aires (!!!) so we're going to celebrate a bit. Next weekend the guys and I leave on that awesome road trip for a few weeks, and a month from tomorrow I hop the big metal bird and head home for some NY pizza, bacon egg and cheese sandwiches, the beach, my drums, my pool, and of course, mom's blueberry pie (Marie, Michael, and Kristen- I'm not sharing, you've got like a 2 month head start on pie eating).
Here's a few pictures from the last month, click here for my photo page which now has an Iguazu album. Click photos below for full size.
A view of the Argentine falls from one of the balconies.
Some falls at the edge of the Devil's Throat, taken from the boat. Brazil is about 7 feet to the left of where I took this picture.
An awesome fort we made in our common room with some friends at 4am after a fantastic night out for Malcolm's birthday.
The guys dressed as American as possible getting ready to head to the bar for the game.
An awesome sunset from our balcony. I've been living in this apartment for 4 months and this still doesn't get old.
That's all for now. Happy 4th of July everybody, enjoy the weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment