Monday. About 8:00 PM. 3:00 PM Vancouver time (where I see it is 3 degrees...ouch!) That means that a week from now I´ll be well into the routine of being home, returning a few messages, arranging for some work, etc. I leave Buenos Aires Saturday, late afternoon or early evening...I think 5:00 or 7:00 or something like that, spend Sunday in Toronto, take off about 10:00 PM, and then land in Vancouver a little after midnight.
Hmmm....in 5 days I better have my ass on a plane is what that means. In a nice big cushy seat up front, of course, sucking back a little Malbec.
So I am leaving Iguazú tomorrow morning at 9:45, and will arrive in Rosario about 7:30 Wednesday morning. I´m trying out a different bus company, which a cute ticket agent assured me had wonderful service and would not disappoint me. Amazing how positive the ticket agents always are about their products!
I´m having to get a little brutal with the schedule, slashing and cutting things that don´t fit, and had a bit of a scare with one company that had nothing available going south until Thursday.
I had originally planned a day touring the historic Jesuit Missions around Posadas tomorrow, but given the ticking clock, I´ve managed to fill in the story myself:
In the 1600s, Jesuits arrived to evangelize the local natives, and built huge communes that supported thousands of people. Pretty cool as far as communes go...self supporting, exporters of crops and grains, strong development of art, music, etc.
In the 1700s, the Jesuits got booted out of Argentina, and the natives were mostly killed. Any that survived didn´t make it past the Spaniards and the wars for independence in the 1800s.
In the early 1900s, some guy planting his garden stubbed his toe on a stone wall in the middle of his potato patch. Ouch! Oooh, wait a minute, I bet that´s a historic site! And they´ve been excavating the missions ever since.
Skip forward to 2007, and as interesting as it seemed, it´s not far enough south, and I want to see Rosario. I miss water, and Rosario is a water (river) based city, and more importantly, only 5 hours at the most from Buenos Aires. I expect to be in Rosario Wednesday and Thursday, and then take the train to Buenos Aires Friday morning. One last chance at a late night!
