Tres Fronteras! Iguazu Part 1: 6-24

Jordin pointing at Argentina, Stacey - Paraguay, and me - Brazil at the

Tres Fronteras, or Three Borders, point in Iguazú, Argentina!

After our quick night at home switching out bags, I woke up Friday morning to an email that had arrived at 4 a.m. from Despegar telling me my flight was cancelled…good thing we were way ahead of this obstacle! In an effort to perpetuate the stereotype that college students studying abroad are cheap (kidding), we took a bus and the Subte to the airport for the low cost of 50 cents. When in the United States can you get transportation to an airport for 50 cents?! Stacey and I used an awesome machine that let us scan our passports to check into our flight, proceeding to print the tickets. I compared this technologically fascinating machine to the ability to extract a PDF with images as well, how cool! The flight was less than two hours, but a much better option than 18 hours on a bus considering the time we had.

Mocking Despegar

I woke up from a nap on the flight to two old women tapping my shoulders, opening my eyes to the tray pulled down with a box of food on top. At first, I was aggravated by this, but I opened the box and looked at Stacey’s smile from across the aisle to see that the box was filled with 3 Havanna alfajores! Alfajores are popular cookies in Argentina, and Havanna is comparable to Starbucks. Can you imagine receiving the three best pastries Starbucks has as a complimentary addition to your short flight? Stacey and I were beyond excited. We arrived to Puerto Iguazú which already looked foresty, and took a taxi to our hostel about 15 miles away.

The town of Iguazu, Argentina has a population of only 70,000 and is located in the Misiones province, which is the most ecological province of Argentina. It’s known for its natural resources, production of yerba mate, the herbs used in the popular mate drink, and of course, the cataratas—waterfalls that are the highlight. Iguazu National Park and its waterfalls are the main attraction, because other than that, the rest of the town is pretty impoverished. Puerto Iguazú and “el centro,” the main area of the downtown shops, is at least five miles from the park itself, so the hotels and hostels have buses that take you to the cataratas (waterfalls). There are a lot of cool places to trek and go hiking whether you are inside or outside of the national park though, and excursion companies definitely take advantage of it.

Funny quote:

Katie: "Where's Paraguay?"

Jordin: "Oh..just right past the bank I think." And it WAS.

We spent our Friday afternoon checking out and taking a boat tour of the three borders- down the Paraná River and Río Iguazú to watch the sunset over Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. The guided tour taught us a lot about geography and Iguazú in general. We learned that the Paraná is the 7th largest river in the world and the 3rd largest in South America. We also passed the Fraternity Bridge, Puente Tancredo Neves, that connects Brazil and Argentina. After learning about the Guaraní Indian Tribe, the boat tour company has a partnership with them so we even got to pull up to Paraguay and see one of their ritual dances! Great way to spend a Friday night- and allow us to see four countries in 24 hours!

Bienvenidos a Paraguay!

Watching the beautiful sky and sunset with Paraguay on the left

and Brazil on the right! You can even see the town of Puerto Mayo, population 350,000,

and its buildings in the back right!

A ritual performed by the Guaraní Indian Tribe in Paraguay

As it got dark outside, we went to the bottom floor of the boat for a DANCE PARTY WITH A LIVE BAND! This is my dream right here. It was like the Odyssey boat cruise on Navy Pier but in South America, and better! The Latin American band even played the Zorba Greek dance! Definitely a great bout tour.

We went for a lomito dinner (a huge steak sandwich with amazing Argentine red meat) and to the heladería, ice cream shop, where we somehow paid basically $1 (5 pesos) for two ginormous scoops of ice cream. We told him we'd be back tomorrow and he laughed, but we weren't kidding. We don't turn down good ice cream. Funny quote:

Jordin, about the owner of the ice cream shop: "He loves us."

Stacey: "We tend to have that effect on people here."

Stacey: "I learned about the Guaraní in my Latin American history class...and now we're just here, SEEING them! This is our lives!"

We booked bus tickets, adventurous excursions and boat tours for Saturday, so figured we should actually sleep for once. Our hostel was called El Guembe, named after a hemp plant, and was everything we expected a hostel in the forest to be. The rooms were decent, with spiderwebs, semi-sketchy, weird blankets, the usual. Made me appreciate our apartment even more. Stacey & I shared a room, and Jordin & Elizabeth shared the other. Thankfully we booked private two-mans instead of sleeping in a huge room with strangers! Not the most real first hostel experience, but the cold water and loud nature definitely contributed to the stereotype.