Iguazu Falls

So this trip was perhaps on of the more memorable trips- not necessarily best, but memorable of this year. After 7 months of being abroad and traveling, we knew that renting cars was the way to go. So, we got a solid crew of 5 people to go in our usual car- the Volkswagen Voyage from Localiza. Come Saturday morning (oh yeah I forgot to write about our Midnight Yoga thing that we did on Friday night. Five girls (Liz, Shannon, Megs, Julie, and Tess) and I went to this combination of a yoga session with a puerto cerrado dinner- pretty dang good) we got the car, got loaded up, and found the other crew of kids that were going to Iguazu via coche were moping around all sad. One of their partners was screwing them over by saying he was "sick" THE MORNING OF, and said that he couldn't go. This made it un-doable for some of the others because it would be too expensive. A couple of them still wanted to go though, so we accommodated them and put 7 people in our 5 person car- 2 up front, 4 in the back and 1 in the truck. I spent a lot of time in the trunk because I was the smallest. Personally, I thought it was the most comfortable seat in the car- i could lie down on sleeping bags, pillows, and sweaters and nap. It was great.

While in the trunk, I guess we missed one of our roads (which proved to be a blessing later) and ended up in Rosario. We tinked around there a bit, got some choripan in the park, saw a pretty sick monument, and then headed off again. We didn't encounter any problems or questions from police until we were literally 50 yards from our hostel at 7am. It was a usual checkpoint, they randomly choose our car to check, and as usual asked us to pop the trunk. Aisha popped out to their surprise, they laughed a bit, questioned us, and then sent us off with a "Suerte!" We couldn't believe it. Anyways we rolled into our hostel for breakfast, showered, rested a bit, and then went to the falls. The falls themselves were absolutely amazing, but the park kinda sucked, it felt like an amusement park with way too many people. It's sad to see something so amazing so commercialized. But like i said, the falls were absolutely astounding. Never before have I seen such a force of nature so close and personal. Words could never do it justice. We saw the Devil's throat and did the Lower Circuit trail. Some of the guys did the boat ride that went into the falls while the rest of us went to go take a nap in the grass. En route to our napping point, we passed the Sheraton and decided to crash their pool and take naps on their pool deck. It was glorious.

That night we went into town to get a snack, dropped Arthur off at the bus station, went back to rest, read, and write, and then we had a great pasta dinner. To finish the night, we took a dip in our hostel's huge pool. That hostel is probably the nicest I've ever been in- huge main building, bomb endless breakfast, huuuge pool, TV lounge, kitchen, foosball, ping pong, all sorts of chairs and loungers out by the pool, our own room, and more.

The next day we rolled out semi-early, and decided to go to the Amethyst mines. The "tour" at the amethyst mines was pretty hilarious. It was essentially a walk through someone's back yard with a very uninformed kid as a guide. It was very neat to see nonetheless. The way back home was not nearly as easy as our trip up. Our lil detour to Rosario forced us to take a more inland route, farther away from the borders with Paraguay and Brazil. That road hardly had any checkpoints. This was not the case with our more direct route. We got stopped multiple times and each time they asked us to pop the trunk. Once they let us go after much hassel. The next time we told them we were spending the night in a city only about an hour south so they had us put 2 people on a bus there and we met them at that stop, only to continue on with 7 people in the car. The next time the same thing happened, but we were close enough to put them on a bus directly to BA. Funny thing was after that, we never got pulled over again, so they could have made it with us. Anyways, we made friends with some of the cops (one even added us all on FB). We got an official, documented "warning" and have the paper to prove it, but we all think of it as more of an award.

Eventually we all got home safe and sound and all was good. In addition to seeing one of the Natural Seven Wonders of the World, we got some great stories and memories out of it.

waiting at the police checkpoint

Rosario monument