And after a long bus ride, yet another amazing place. I´m starting to sense a pattern here...every time I think OK, this is enough, it can´t possibly get any better, sure as hell it does.
Starting with a minor irritation, though, AndesMar, the long distance bus folks, have tread on my last nerve. I don´t actually mind when a company has a monopoly, but it would be nice to pretend they actually want my business, rather than the rather obvious stand that since there is no choice, why should they concern themselves over service? For starters, they have no office in Salta where the people are, only at the bus station. Second, they don´t book foreigners over the internet because they have ´special pricing´ for us. Third, their 5:19 am to Iguazú left at 6:30. And finally, I have no idea what the steward did with his 24 hours, but it sure the heck wasn´t spent serving us! To a couple of guys from Quebec, I noted, ´Hmm, I would have thought the service should be a little better than this.´ To which the response was, ´Yeah, no kidding, on the bus from BsAs to Mendoza, we had wine, good dinner, lots of drinks, and lots of attention! It took this goof 5 hours to think to bring water around.
In any case, we arrived at about 8:00 this morning. I didn´t bother planning ahead...just grabbed my rolling bag and my knapsack and headed off from the bus station in search of a home. After a false alarm at a hotel near the bus station (300 pesos...um, no I don´t think I´m that dumb or needy), and a ´no vacancy´ at the Lulu Residencia, and a ´that would be way too gay´ at the Peter Pan hostel, I ended up in a great place with private room and bath, central to everything, for 80 pesos. So about $30 a night.
I had a long walk about, found a place with coffee and warm medialunas, and once again had a ´Hey, Brian, what´s up?´ moment with a guy from Israel I ran into a long time ago on a bus somewhere. It´s really neat to run into people that I last saw a few weeks ago...they and I have had some pretty neat adventures in the meantime, and there is a lot to chat about. Afterwards, I found the place where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet, and ran into some guy that said, ´Hey, come on this cool river cruise tonight!´ So without any plans in place, I said ´Sure, what the heck´, and gave him 10 pesos as a deposit. And then went home for a little siesta.
This afternoon, heading off to the river dock, I noticed another pattern: this morning, looking for the river I knew was there and finding my way back took about 4 hours (although to be fair, that included coffee, so maybe 3 hours, but still!). This afternoon, with the benefit of actually looking at a damn map first, I discovered the same place about 20 minutes away...maybe 15, cause I stopped at the bank on the way. Hmmmm.
The river cruise was great...about 2 hours on a catamaran, to a little ´cultural exhibit´ on a beach across the river in Paraguay, and back. The trip back was accompanied by a couple of Spanish guitarists, playing among other things their version of Simon and Garfunkel. Great fun. I danced with an ...ahem...mature lady who was pretty impressed by how a little Canadian dude can shake his booty.
The cultural exhibit was truly creepy, especially considering my work. Picture a bunch of native people paraded out for a bunch of white folk, singing and dancing and trying really hard not to look desparately bored. At the end of the dog and pony show, the crew passed them a couple of big bags of stuff - I assume food or pretty beads or some such thing. Very troubling, but business is business, I guess.
Iguazú the community is very pretty, very warm, and very humid. I´m expecting to be here about 3 (more) days: 1 day on the Argentina side of the falls, 1 on the Brazil side, and 1 touring a dam on the Brazil side - apparently the largest hydro-electic facility in the world!
For some reason that reminded me of a picture I saw in the BsAs Herald this morning of ´snow ghosts´on the ski hill at Big White, Kelowna, BC. It was pretty cool.
