Cataratas de Iguazú

I finally took my first real vacation in Argentina (I guess you could technically classify it as a vacation within a vacation.... since my school isn't too serious here). On Thursday afternoon at 7PM I took a bus from Buenos Aires up north to Puerto de Iguazú, in the province of Misiones (the little point between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay) with two girlfriends from Madison, Rachael and Julie, and Brady, also from Madison. We have formed a pretty tightly knit Madison posse. The main attraction there is the huge waterfalls, las cataratas de Iguazú, but there are a lot of other cool things to do as well. We arrived Friday around noon after an 18 hour bus ride with a dinner service and breakfast as well. The hostel that we stayed in (Marcopolo Inn) was really cool and I'll get back to that later.

We arranged an outing through our hostel on Friday afternoon so we all changed our clothes and hopped on a jungle truck. We rode into the jungle and entered into some government/ militarily controlled land through the residential area of Iguazú and up to a path where we got out of the truck and started hiking. The hike was not very strenuous but we made it to the area where they had a zip-line that was 3 segments long. We went zip-lining (my first time ever) and then we kept hiking, back to the truck and we rode to a small waterfall, which we again had to hike through the jungle a little to get to. Once we were there (we had our harnesses on still from zip-lining) we started taking turns rappelling down the waterfall. It was less nerve-racking than the zip-lining but I got 100% drenched. And then we hiked out and took the truck back to hostel and relaxed for the rest of the day.

-standing upstream from the waterfall that

we rappelled down

- just starting my descent. I ended up on that

platform below.

Back to the hostel... we decided to go to the dinner they were hosting, an asado (a grill-out/ bbq, more or less) which consisted of a really huge salad, some rolls, a glass of red wine, chorizo, chicken, and steak slices. It was all delicious but they incredibly over-salted the meat (other than the chorizo). We ended up becoming friends with about 7 germans who were staying at the same hostel and who happen to go to one of the universities in Buenos Aires as exchange students that we all take classes at. It was really fun to hang out with them, and we ended up doing things with them all weekend and seeing them all over Iguazú. We also became friends with two 30 year olds from England, one who is am American citizen but lives and works in England and the other whojust recently quit his job as a lawyer after 5 years at his firm and is doing a 1 year world tour. He is in Buenos Aires now for 1 week of touristy sight seeing with his friend and then 2 weeks of Spanish class, since he spoke absolutely no Spanish. We promised we'd hang out with him and take him out tosee the town once we got back from the falls. Rob and Paul were their names.

We hit the hay pretty early on Friday and got up at 7:30AM on Saturday, so that we could have a full day in the national park at the waterfalls. We took a shuttle there and arrived a little after 9AM, when the park opens. The biggest disappointment was that if we had brought our student ID's we could have gotten into the park for 25 pesos (about $6.25) instead of 85 pesos (about $21.25). Oh well, we now know for every other time we travel that bringing your student ID with you is ESSENTIAL for discounts. We had all left them at our respective homes in an attempt to not lose them, bummer. I can't even describe to you how amazing the waterfalls were. You will just have to look at my photos and try to imagine how much better it was in person. See facebook photo album link below, this time you should only have to click on it and log into your facebook and it will bring you straight to the page.

(http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=2060651&id=1280460131&ref=mf)

The most eventful thing that happened at the park was during lunch. We all bought over-priced sandwiches, because that's the only type of food you can get in a national park, and a koati (look the animal up online) STOLE the top half of Julie's sandwich! Right off the table, they were definitely not people shy.

a view from the isla de san martin, so great!!

-a view from the Devil's Throat,

pretty thunderous falls!

-another view from la isla de san

martin, probably where they filmed

Avatar/got the idea.

We literally spent all day Saturday at the park and we were all pretty wiped from hiking around the trails and everything by the time we got back to the hostel that evening. In estimation I think we were at the park for 7 or 8 hours, so if you think about the cost, a little less than $3 per hour isn't too bad in a place THAT BEAUTIFUL! Saturday night consisted of a hamburger and french fries across the street from our hostel and then just hanging out for about an hour before we all passed-out from exhaustion.

Sunday saw us up early once again, but without strenuous obligations. We paid for our hostel and our Friday excursion and then just bummed around all morning after our 10AM check out until 2PM when we went horseback riding through the jungle. We went with 2 of the German girls, Nora and Jasmine, and their New Yorker friend Joanna. We rode for 2 hours and stopped in a Guaraní village (the indigenous people of the region) where we bought jewelry made out of dried seeds (I felt pretty obligated after invading their lives in such a gringa manner) and saw a pineapple, in the flesh, still attached to the plant!!!! We also learned that for the past 3-4 year television has been severely altering the lives of the Guaraní and that they are a nomadic people who slash and burn the rain forest and move around every year or two.

We left on Sunday evening at 7PM and had a wonderful dinner which consisted of:

-a fruit roll up style jam and cheese (which I will call jamón y queso from now on) with an olive on the end of the little cocktail sword stabbed through it

-a bread roll accompanied by jamón flavored spreadable queso

-a cold slice of meatloaf with egg and olive cooked into the middle

-mashed potatoes with a breaded, very thin steak on top (known here as a milanesa) and to top that off, jamón covered with melted queso and little olive slices

-a muffin with dulce de leche and an overly merischinoed cherry on top

Now I know the Argentines LOVE their freakin' jamón y queso, but tell me that meal is not going a WEE bit overboard? It was okay though because the meal was accompanied by a tiny glass of red wine that we had to basically chug so as to not spill it all over all of our possessions and laps and was followed by a glass of champagne. We got back into Buenos Aires at 12:30PM today, after 18.5 hours on the bus, and now I'm not doing homework to tell you all about it.

Once again, (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=2060651&id=1280460131&ref=mf) is the link for my facebook photo album, if you are interested in seeing some of the most amazing photos of your LIVES!

VIVA ARGENTINA!

So folks, Argentina beat Spain 4-1 today in the friendly soccer match that they played pretty darn close to my apartment. It was awesome being there but my only regret is that some of my favorite and most anticipated Spain players WERE NOT THERE! I know that players like Messi (10 for Argentina, their best player, the man on my jersey, and the guy who scored 2 of our 4 goals today) who play for both Barcelona (a club team in the European league) and their national team (Spain or Argentina) had to travel A LOT in the past few weeks to get to all of the games [Mexico, Ireland, around Europe, Argentina] so I guess it's forgivable that they didn't make it. NOT NOT NOT!

Bitter that I didn't see Puyol in action. Mad it was such a blow out. The field was REALLY short (it was in the River stadium, an Argentine club team). Also, I just expected more out of the World Cup Winners (Spain). Oh well, it was still a great experience. I'm headed to las cataratas de Iguazú on Thursday evening. It's an 19ish hour bus ride to the province of Misiones, which borders Brazil and Uruguay. Las cataratas = the waterfalls, there are about 270 separate falls and it's right on the border of Brazil. I'll take a million photos (more or less) and then post them when I get back, but for now I have pictures for you guys from my trip to El Tigre, from around Buenos Aires when I go on walks, and from the Japanese Gardens. Not to mention the soccer game.

The link is....

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2057983&id=1280460131&ref=mf

So enjoy folks!

some photos, finally folks

Hanging out with Indiana Jones at one of the local boliches called Sahara, la Casa Rosada (the pink house - the equivalent of the white house here), some candy covered kumquats and other delicious fruit treats, an old theatre that has been converted into a massive bookstore/cafe when I discovered today that I really enjoy studying, my B-E-A-UTIFUL number 10 MESSI jersey, and the culprit wine that exploded all over my bedroom. (HINT: If you'd like to see the photos in a bigger format, just click on the individual images and they will enlarge in a new window.)

ARGENTINA VS SPAIN (previa)

Previa means preview, for those of you who didn't know. It can also mean pregame, if you are using it in the context of going out. If you don't understand what I mean by that, do not be troubled, its probably just a generational thing. ARGENTINA VS SPAIN (soccer game) this TUESDAY!! Guess who just picked up their tickets? Hint : She writes this blog. That's right folks, I just spent two and a half hours waiting in line, outdoors, on a drizzly day to pick up the soccer tickets that I had already bought online. Insanity. I guess it's just how they roll in this country. After taking breaks for food with my friend Julie, who waited in line with me since she had bought her own groups tickets on her credit card, I feel like I survived a truly Argentine experience. I waited in line for half an hour before Julie got there, and then as soon as she did, she held our spot while I went to buy alfajors (pronounced elf-ah-whores), which are delicious dulce de leche, chocolate, cookie type things that are going to make me SUPER DUPER FAT, and then a few hours later she went and bought french fries at McDonalds, which we split. Not the most healthy lunch but we needed to keep our energy up in the freezing cold line.

As soon as we were done picking up our tickets we headed across the street and I bought a gorgeous, official, 2009 Argentina national team jersey and had the number 10 and Messi's name printed on the front and back. ITS AWESOME, almost as awesome as being able to go to this game, but not quite as awesome. The good thing about it is that I can take it with me as a nice little reminder of how much I love this country. It took half an hour for the name to get printed on the jersey, so I went back across the street and went into the IFSA office. (IFSA, Institute for Study Abroad, is the program that I am here with) They have computers that students can use and classrooms where we can study, so I just hung out and used the computer for about 20 minutes before I went back to pick up my gorgeous jersey.

This is all kind of stupid because I have one of the Ticketex windows (the equivalent of Ticketmaster for Argentina) right next door to my building. You can pick up your soccer tickets at any of the Ticketex windows, and when I got home, the line for the one next door to me was, oh, about half as long. STUPID. At least I can be happy with the fact that I got in line at the window by the IFSA office when I did because when I was done picking up my tickets the line had just about doubled and was going around the corner of the block (a full block long line). Sucks even worse to be one of those people.

I'll give you some more photos and an update after I go to the game!!