Easter Weekend/Semana Santa: Part II

This is Part II of a 3-part series covering Teresa's Semana Santa vacations. Look soon for Part III in this exciting (hopefully not too wordy/lengthy) series. ;-)

Friday morning we were on a bus again by 7:00 am (I basically had no concept of a sleep schedule for the whole weekend...) on our way to Puerto Iguazú. Despite the fact that it was Easter weekend and, therefore, very busy in this town and its nearby mecca for tourists, we were immediately harassed by two different men outside the bus terminal to stay at their hostels. First approached by each one in English, we responded in Spanish that 'no, we wouldn't be staying at their hostel as we already had reservations.' The first gentleman was actually pretty cordial after that, pointing out to us the general direction that we would need to walk to reach our hostel; the second, well, not as gracious in laying off his promotional agenda for the hostel...I guess tourist towns/cities in various countries share the practice of pushing their services on naive/gullible tourists in the street. Just two blocks from the bus terminal was our hostel, Hostel Bambu:

Super chill and very clean, there had to have been fewer better places to stay in Puerto Iguazú. Upon arriving, the hostel owner gave us the 411 on las Cataratas and what we should do, what order we should see things, what we should take with us, etc. Since it was already 1:00 pm and the park closed at 6:00 pm (with an expected half hour bus ride to arrive at the park), we decided that it probably wouldn't be worth it to go that afternoon, even though the sunny, beautiful weather nearly urged us to act otherwise. Instead, we went to have coffee in town, go grocery shopping and take a short walk/hike to Hito Tres Fronteras (Milestone of Three Borders). With the town of Puerto Iguazú at the junction of the Paraná and Iguazú rivers, Hito Tres Fronteras marks the three way border between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. At this natural landmark, each country has its own column/pyramid marker with its nations colors, and, as our hostel owner shared with us, it is a beautiful place to sit and watch the sun set...

View down the waterway where los Rios Iguazú and Paraná converge. We see Paraguay on the left, Brazil just a bit on the right and Argentina where I stood.

View down the Río Paraná

Sun setting over Paraguay

Argentina´s marker at Hito Tres Fronteras

Back at the hostel, we jumped into cooking...Argentine style. Well, not exactly Argentine style in the food that we prepared but in a very "culturally appropriate" manner for the methods that we used to prepare it. The evening's dinner menu included pasta, chicken and vegetables and we were ready to fire up the gas stove when we discovered that it wouldn't light. After informing the hostel owner, we were told that we would have to wait about a half hour til someone arrived to work on it. A half hour turned into an hour wait (in which I taught Stacy and Sam new Argentine card games that I had recently learned), after which our hunger took over and told us it could wait no longer to be satisfied. I proceeded to become super creative in the kitchen, cooking up both our chicken and the mountain of delicious vegetables on the grill/sandwich press similar to a George Foreman and the pasta in small bowls in the microwave. I wish I had taken a picture of our dinner...it ended up being delicious. Huge kudos to my years spent in 4-H for these important life skills. :)

Saturday we headed to the falls on one of the first buses to leave the terminal. On the bus we met a lovely young woman named Laura from Wales who ended up joining us for the rest of the day at the park. My emotional build-up leading up to arriving at the park and eventually to the foot of the falls might best be described as the way a child (and me, even now at 22 years old) looks forward to Christmas. You know something amazing is coming, you may have even seen pictures of what is to come, but there really is no substitute for the waves of amazement that fill every possible corner of your physical, emotional and spiritual being when you reach that anticipated point. Maybe this seems a bit dramatic but words can't really do justice to this experience of being in the presence of such a natural wonder....

Lower circuit falls

View down one of the falls to a platform where we would eventually take many, many pictures.

View toward the falls of the Upper Circuit

As you can see in this final picture, the weather forecast was less than promising when we arrived Saturday morning and shortly after taking this picture, the clouds proceeded to begin emptying themselves on us. We shared a general thought consensus that: we're in a sub-tropical region. This will be like a nice, refreshing jungle rain. Warm breezes and sunny skies will ensue not too far behind the rain. Right? WRONG!! Unfortunately, the the rain continued, often at an intensity that I would label 'steady,' if not 'torrential downpour' at times. The vast majority of the falls' walkways were metal grating which became rather slick. The wind was absolutely brutal, a biting force that whipped through the park and pushed its way through my wet clothes to penetrate deep beneath my skin.  Nonetheless, we stuck it out in the rain for probably close to 5 hours more. Eventually we did call it a day; we were saturated and hoping and praying that Sunday would come with a miracle of better weather.

Back at the hostel, I was more than thankful for a hot shower and the chance to curl up in warm clothes and dry socks. Sam, Stacy and I sat down to do some lesson planning for our classes...but failed rather miserably as we had the chance to meet and converse with a variety of Germans and John, a guy from New Hampshire who is currently working in Brazil, also staying in our hostel. To make a long story short, our conversations started mid-afternoon and continued all night-- through a second excellent dinner of chorizo and vegetable stew that I concocted (yum, again!) and a few shared bottles of wine.

This post is certainly long enough. Kudos to you if you've stuck with me through the whole thing. There is a happy ending to this "rainy day" story, thankfully. Part III to come tomorrow!