#literally even then i knew that Iguazu was WRONG to me | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

alyinargentina-blog · 7 years ago

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Texas or Iguazu??

Iguazu falls looks like it’s fake, the pictures of it don’t do it justice but seeing it is like seeing something that would only exist in a Disney movie or a bad action movie that needs a cool set to make up for the mediocre acting. Katie and I left Buenos Aires Thursday morning, and sat at the airport getting live updates from her mom about the sentencing of Alec Cook, the UW student who sexually assaulted numerous female students in 2016. He was charged with five felonies and several other additional crimes, with a maximum sentence of 40 years. He got 3. Our justice system is so screwed up it’s revolting. Our flight there was painless, as was the ride into town. Our hostel, from the outside, looked nice enough, it had a lot of cool murals on the walls and our bedroom seemed clean. We hurriedly threw our bags down and retreated into the living room to watch the Argentina world cup game against Croatia, a seemingly meek opponent who turned out to look a lot better than Argentina ever did.

A painful 2-0 loss later, Katie and I found ourselves with little else to do than go track down a very early dinner. We found a mexican restaurant on google maps and headed there, only to be told it doesn’t open for another hour. We tried entertaining ourselves by shopping and browsing the little markets outside but the town of Iguazu has about as much entertainment as the Wisconsin Dells downtown area, which let me tell you is about zero. There were lots of the same tourist stores filled with overpriced knick knacks, clothing stores with more graphic tees in one place than I’ve ever seen, and a surprising lack of bars where we could sit and sip a beer before we devoured some tacos. Thankfully we found a bar at the end of the main street, got some beer and cornnuts!! and wasted way an hour until dinner.

The Mexican place was an experience if nothing else, one that involved very little real mexican food. Katie and I have decided that people generally like us: the waiter at the restaurant gave us a huge free plate of chips and dip with more to come later. We ordered some passionfruit daiquiris, which apparently are VERY different than margaritas according to the same waiter, and then our food. Turns out “quesadilla” to an Argentine means a flatbread ham and cheese sandwich, which is not quite what I had in mind, but oh well. The other two tacos we got were good, both of course needed something picante but we can’t expect Argentine sauces to provide that at this point in our semester, that would be asking way too much. After the food, our bestfriend (the waiter) came out with free tequila shots, which we were really not expecting but which were not nearly as deadly as I remember tequila shots being. By this point, Katie and I were sufficiently liquored up, and headed back to the hostel.

We decided to shower, which in theory is a relatively easy process. False. I ended up falling and severely bruising my hand and elbow because wet tile steps are not a semi-drunk person’s friend. The rest of the night was spent icing my hand and complaining about our professor who had just decided to send the prompts for our final essays that night, two days after he said he was going to and after having the last class be cancelled without any prior notice because the professor decided she had better things to do and “didn’t have time” to text anyone about it. Juan rescheduled the class for this Tuesday, directly in the middle of a very important soccer game, so I will not be attending. Sorry Juan. We went to bed relatively early because no one was at the hostel and there was nothing to do, but nothing in Argentina can go smoothly. In this specific instance, both of our beds were horrifying. As context, our bunk bed was positioned right outside the bathroom that did not have nearly enough ventilation for a sewage system that did not allow for used toilet paper to be flushed down the toilets. The toilet seats were also cushioned, which has nothing to do with the bed situation but is just gross in general. Katie’s bed had patches that smelled very concerning, one of which was right by the pillow, so she got very little sleep. My mattress started leaking fluid, am assuming it’s water because don’t want to think about other possibilities. I didn’t realize this until I moved around to try to get warmer and realized that an entire side of my shorts were drenched, and that my shirt had some wet spots also. I very quickly decided to change beds after that incident.

Friday was waterfall day! We woke up, had some rice and beans for breakfast, and then walked to the bus terminal to get a ride to the national park. The park entrance was surprisingly inconspicuous for such a big tourist destination, and the entire place really wasn’t too busy, which could have something to do with it being a week day. We got into the park and made our way to the Garganta del Diablo first, which is the biggest waterfall that literally looks like the earth just fell away and there’s a gigantic hole where the ground should be. You can hear the rushing water about twenty to thirty minutes before you can see anything. The trail to get to the walkway out to the waterfall is a gravel road next to the train tracks that transport all of the park’s old visitors to the flatter, easily accessible wire walkway over the river. When we got to the actual walkway, there were more people, many of whom were on guided tours that identified their members with fun matching hats. The walk out to the falls too about twenty minutes. The first thing you see is water seemingly being sucked away, and then the closer you get the more mist you see, and then the falls come into view. Definitely a “wow” moment: you can’t even see the bottom because the water hits with such force that the mist obscures it. It honestly looks like the earth disappeared and the water doesn’t ever hit a bottom.

After this path, Katie and I decided it was lunchtime, so we headed back to one of the eating areas and attempted to make our sandwiches. However, there was a small blip in these plans thanks to animals called Cuatí. Cuatí are little rodent things that look like a mix between anteaters and raccoons, completely with weird snouts and a long tail that terrorize the tourist at the park and try to steal every single item of food they can get their clawed paws on. Katherine loved them, I hated them. The one time we decided to sit at a table and assemble our lunches, they swarmed, at least ten of them, and almost ran away with our bag of bread. I was horrified. Lunchtime turned into a detour to the only indoor food court in the park so that we could eat in relative peace.

After lunch, Cuatí free thankfully, we did the lower path at the park, which was gorgeous, and gave us the stereotypical pictures taken at the park, with all of the waterfalls in a row and the rainbow glinting off of the spray from the water. This path was infested by this huge group of what seemed like an extended family on vacation, who would run on the walkway with all of the children, and then stop and take 20 minutes worth of pictures in the middle of the walkway because they apparently all needed a picture at the exact same place. Katie and I thankfully could bypass them, and get up to the last trail, the higher path. This one took us on top of the waterfalls we’d seen from the lower path, and had some cool panoramic views of all of the waterfalls with the Garganta del Diablo in the distance. This was our last trial, so we headed back to the park entrance behind a group of chanting geriatrics led by a man with a can who was zoom-walking and hitting signs with his cane aka an old man gone rogue.

We got back to our hostel to find it infested with a huge group of students from the University of Texas who were in Iguazu for the weekend, and in Buenos Aires for five weeks studying business management. None of them spoke spanish, or were making an attempt to learn it, they had never taken the subte or the colectivo (in fact they knew what neither of those things were), they spent the majority of their time at boliches and bars, and then had the audacity to question why Katie and I were a bit worn out by Buenos Aires. But they also turned out to be very entertaining. Matt, the first Texan that we met, took Katie and I to this light show overlooking the intersection of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, which turned out to be very cool. He parted ways to go meet his 35 Texan friends at a restaurant that serves Milanesa, something Katie and I get more than enough of with our host moms, so we headed to an outdoor burger place that had some pretty large burgers.

We got back to the hostel and expected it to be empty: all of the Texans had said they were going to this ice bar that is literally made of ice, and where 300 pesos buys you unlimited drinks for 30 minutes, aka you’re buying the death of your liver. Boy were we wrong: Texas was in full force in Igauzu. They’d taken over the small bar area and were continuing their binge drinking, so Katie and I opened our bottle of wine and retreated to the quiet of the small patio by our room. About ten minutes later, Matt invited us to play Never have I Ever with their group, which got rowdy real quick. We learned more than we needed to ever know about many of the boys in this group, all of whom were freshman which contributed to the absurdity of the entire event. By the end of the night, most of them were absolutely hammered, one of them was asking me why his friends wouldn’t share weed with him, another was not wearing shoes around the hostel, another was defending his decision not to give oral to his girlfriend of 2 1/2 years.

The next morning, they had to wake up at 7 to go on their guided tour of Iguazu, which meant not only that Katie and I got woken up when all of their 20 alarms went off in our room, but that we got to hear their shouted-whispers about how they were still hammered, had gotten into literal fist fights with their friends the night before, and had no idea what to bring with them to Iguazu. Katie and I stayed in bed for a while longer, ate breakfast, watched some soccer, and then headed to the airport to fly back to Buenos Aires.

The airport in Iguazu is literally falling apart. It’s partially under construction to “modernize” it but I think that basically means they’re tearing it down bit by bit because it’s barely functional and only has one gate. We got there about an hour and a half before our flight, because according to the guy that worked at the hostel that’s all we needed. But, as per usual in my experiences flying in Argentina, about five families had ten suitcases each, and proceeded to take at least 15 minutes checking them all and arguing about if they could have them in the plane or if they needed to be checked. It took forever to get our boarding passes, but thankfully security took very little time, and we were at the one gate right as our plane was supposed to start boarding. Except it didn’t start boarding for at least another half hour, in which two lines formed, frantic Asian women were asking everyone they could find which line was for Andes Airlines (they both were) and then not believing any of the answers they were given. We eventually got on the plane and flew home, with quite a bumpy landing, but the entire boarding process was a mess. Although Beatriz tried shaming Katie into staying another day in Iguazu to visit these jesuit ruins that turned out to be like on the other end of the province, at least a five hour bus ride away, Katie and I both agreed that one day in the town was more than enough to see the falls and head off to bigger and better (hopefully at least cleaner) places.

Speaking of bigger and better places, I only have two weeks from today before I fly out and home to Wisconsin. I am very ready to leave. Buenos Aires has been an experience that I think will ultimately be good for me, but right now I basically want nothing more than to be back in a city that I don’t have to worry about getting stolen from every minute, that doesn’t go on strike every other week, that has my dog and my bed and my car and a phone that can do more than one thing at a time.

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