Iguazu too

A fire truck we saw at Iguazu. These are beautiful old machines.


One night while in Iguazu, we ventured out to "Hito" which is known for it's fantastic view of the confluence of the Rio Parana and the Rio Iguazu. Hito refers to the point on the land. The picture shows what looks like a bend in a river but it is in fact a 'T' intersection. The left hand river, running from the far background is the Rio Parana intersecting with the Rio Iguazu in the pictures' foreground. So, from this point, you can see Brazil directly across where the building is and to the left, you can see Paraguay. Kind of a neat intersection of three countries. The interesting thing about Paraguay is that no one we talked to recommended going there. We had heard this from Brazilians and Argentinians. They said there were some safe places to visit but that all in all it wasn't worth the effort. The Brazilian people we met, while in BA suggested that the part of Brazil close to Paraguay was in fact the best part of Brazil. Brooke and I would enjoy going there and I think would consider it in the future.


On our second visit to the falls, we enjoyed the company of our favourite information girl, Maria, who was so happy to see us again. She even had a card for us to stay in contact and wondered if we would like to go for drinks while we were still there. We of course did make it out for drinks with her, her husband and their little boy. When we first spoke with her, we thought she was quite young. She had a tiny frame and youthfulness to her. Then as we conversed, we discovered that she had two children, one eleven and one five. It was difficult not to let our jaws drop. I honestly thought she was much younger than us. When we went out, they were unable to get a baby sitter for their five year old so he just came along. We met them at a park at night which was crawling with people yet it had the complexion of a rough looking area. Once again, in Argentina, people stay out so late that there is safety in numbers. We sat in this little area where there was an ice cream shop and a snacks and beer shop. Their son just played and wandered around while we talked. There were in fact many children just playing here and there while their parents socialized. We were out till 2:00am! This sort of easy going situation would never happen at home. The crazy liquor police would first arrest you for having liquor near children and out in the open air without being fenced in and secondly, no one would go out and take their kids with them. The kids were well behaved in my opinion, perhaps because they were accustomed to this. There was a lot to talk about with them. Maria and her husband Rodrigo taught English in Iguazu which they had learned when they had lived in the U.S. for quite a few years. They lived in Aurora, just north of Denver. Maria had one of her sons there. What makes this story ever more interesting is that this is the very same town where Brooke was born.

I think we will try and keep in touch with them as they were a wonderful couple and had so much spunk and enthusiasm.



Eventually, Brooke and I had to leave our wonderful little paradise and we packed our bags and waited around our hotel discussing how we had made a poor choice in flight times leaving Iguazu. We were to leave at 2:00 which left us with neither a day in BA or a day in Iguazu, just a day splintered in two by a flight aboard a cramped plane. We left the hotel with what was ample time as we wanted to make sure we had over an hour at the airport to get through security etc. You have to remember that this is a small airport though and doesn't require any time running around. When we arrived at the airport however, it was like a ghost town. How did we get so lucky that there was almost no one there? We strolled up to the check in counter and told the attendant that we were there for our flight. She looked quizically at us as if we were on drugs. She took our passports and looked at her computer for a few minutes. Then she asked if we had any paper work. Then, she broke it to us that we had been moved to the earlier flight. Aerolineas Argentinas, the truth is we wish we had left you, all of those wild flights, those wild schedule changes, you never kept your promise.
We were apparently notified via an email account that brooke had been unable to access in Argentina. In the end, she offered getting us on the next flight, at 6:00pm. Anyway, our day was shot but we enjoyed pizza and wine at the airport while watching tv shows on the laptop. It turned out to be pretty fun in a funny kind of way.

Iguazu

Well, we arrived at the world famous site of Iguazu. The quaint airport welcomed us and, in fact, we welcomed it. Aerolineas Argentinas is well known for it's seats. It reminds me of my grandfather's saying regarding tight pants. He would say "those jeans are like the Cecil Hotel eh? no ball room". I don't think it's possible to get them any closer to each other. We caught our taxi from the airport for what was the astronomical price of $60 pesos for just a few kilometers. In BA, an equivelant ride would have been $20 pesos. Here in Iguazu the taxis seem to be colluding toward high minimum fares.

Iguazu, for us, was like getting away to a mexican resort even though we were on holiday already. It was nice to just have that "resort" feel. We booked a nice hotel in tropical paradise. The humidity was high and the sun was bright. We had gone from being simply hot in BA, to really hot in Cordoba, to really hot and wet in Iguazu. The hotel was large and comfortable with a nice jacuzzi, pool and a great morning breakfast. You can't beat having bacon and eggs for breakie every day.

Once we had settled into our room, we rode the bus into town and decided to wander the streets - usually a wise thing to do in a city you don't know. However, it is an extremely safe place. Iguazu is a small town with it's lifeblood connected to tourism. It felt uncanily like being in Maui....even the dirt was red.

We went and visited a hummingbird "museum" though I wouldn't call it that. It was this lady's really nice back yard that had bird feeders everywhere and an assortment of trees and flowers that would make most britsh gardeners evious. That said, she did have the climate to grow wonderful things. These birds were just incredible. Even though they move with incredible speed and precision in punctuated movements, they have a soft appearance and sound to them that is captivating. There is a thrill of hearing one pass by your ear and fool your sense. They move so fast that doppler effects pitch the sound up and down as they pass by. What I couldn't believe was the number of colours that they come in. You always think of the birds as one species, but you know this just isn't the case. Not only are there hundreds of species, there is sexual dimorphism to add to the pot.

You can end up with thousands of different looking hummingbirds.

Anyway, we were here to see the falls so the next day we walked out the front of the hotel and past the taxi drivers who gave us grief for declining their $60 peso quote to get to the falls and continued right down to the main road where we were offered a ride for $20 from another passing cab driver. We took it and hapily paid the man. That was the only and last cab ride we got at a "discount". We took the bus on our return trip from the falls for the astronomical price of $4 pesos each!


Our arrival at the falls cought us a little off guard. I personally wasn't expecting the level of infrastructure here. It was like visiting Jurassic Parks' little sister. Everything was in excellent condition and there was more than enough attention to educational signage and information. The main building as you walk into the park is dedicated as a museum of nature and early native culture. There were beautifully architected pathways everywhere you could want to go and even a train to take you from one end of the park to the other.

This picture to the left is kind of a joke as there was an actual information desk but it was wheeled to the side. You had only but ask a question and you were met with ample help unlike what the picture suggests.

We ended up meeting a sweet girl named Maria at the information booth when we arrived who gave us plenty of directions through the park, told us where we should eat for the best meals, and explained the sorts of activities we could do. We paced ourselves knowing that we were spending two whole days at the park. When it's that hot out you have to move fairly slowly and conserve.

We took off on a hike after meeting our new friend Maria at the information desk. We walked down a wonderful jungle path towards the edge of the hill that would take us down towards the base of the falls. On the map, we hiked from the top right corner and worked our way down the yellow paths towards the boats. The views were excellent even though we had no idea how great they were going to be later. We could se large sections of the falls from all sorts of vantage points. We worked our way down the path to the little boat that takes you across to the island. From the island you get even better viewpoints and a much quieter experience once you venture up from the beach. There were many people enjoying the sun at the beach and we were still interested in seeing the falls from up high and close. There are times you feel like your practically in it. The wind picks up and you are sprayed with a mist of water from head to toe. The aerosol nature of the spray means no surface is spared. Even my camera lenses pointed at the ground with lens hoods on got wet.

Anyway, the following is agroup of photos from the falls park. Enjoy!

This is a look at the devil's throat from the yellow pathway.

This is look at the beach we landed on to visit the island and see the larger divided side of the falls like what you see in the picture below.

All three of the above pictures show the same vantage point from wider angle to zoomed in. Notice the people on the edge of the cliff looking at the falls. This is where we were when I spoke of everything getting wet as if you were right in the falls themselves.

There is no other recycling we could find anywhere in any other part of Argentina. I think they dump these in the landfill and the bins are there just to make people feel good

Road Trip - Cordoba

Well, we left Rosario hoping for greener pastures. Rosario was nice but not that interesting.

Arriving in Cordoba by way of some sort of backroad really dropped our opinions of the city until we got to its centre. We think we missed the propper turn-off to the centre. Our turnoff was a "turn off". It put us through shadier looking areas where garbage pickup must not be included - garbage lined ditched as far as the eye can see. Once we got on this road it really felt like we were going the wrong way but I figured that if we kept following the river, we couldn't help but end up at the centre. This turned out to be rather intelligent though I wasn't feeling very bright at the time. We didn't have a map except what is in the guide book which only covers the city centre.


We arrived at our "boutique" hotel and were relatively impressed......until we got to the room. It was a good size but was really poorly finished. I am fussy about this kind of stuff. I hate seeing poor workmanship because it is just a waste of resources. You can't help but think "this stuff is going to last only a few years because they didn't install it well". Sloppy painting and poor choices in materials just cost more in the long run.

They were working on the hotel, which has potential. They had installed a pool on what was a beautiful rooftop patio but the pool was so cloudy you couldn't see the bottom. We actually care for our health so we opted to not go in the pool. A word of advice to other travelers, boutique, when it comes to hotels, is not quite the same as how boutique is used to describe a precious little clothing store where your honey got that special little something. In this case, it really refers to "we want our hotel to sound cute yet sophisticated". Additionally, "we're going to put nice stuff in the lobby so that the internet photos make it look incredible and fool you into thinking this place is wonderful". I shouldn't be so sarcastic because it was a pretty decent place but it did have the character of being thrown together like one of those modern art pictures everyone loves to make fun of.

Cordoba is more refined and significantly more attractive than Rosario (though Rosario had a really nice river front and some very nice parks). The streets are nicer and the city centre is cleaner and more open.

The population is about 20% students and this plays a major role in it's economy and character. As a result, it is likely far less prone to economic problems than the other cities are and that is reflected in it's greater appeal. With numerous universities, you will always have students and you will always have culture. It is the student town in Argentina and has, though not readily visible, a vibrant nightlife. We witnessed the anecdotal evidence - groups of girls dressed in unbelievably skimpy outfits strutting the streets with their high heels on a saturday night. They were walking to get somewhere and dressed to make men drule.

I think the culture and life in Cordoba would be great but you've got to be able to break into it. People here don't speak much english and so you're going to have to learn spanish if you wanted to really have a good time here.

That said, Cordoba still lacks that special something to make it irresistable. There is nothing that grabs you and there's very little to do - the buildings and architecture are what you go for. And, you can just slow down and enjoy your time out of the fast land. Cordoba is a more relaxed and quiet place than B.A. Once you've done that, you leave and enjoy the many places the country side offers.

Road Trip - Rosario

Public transit no more. We're taking our lives into our own hands. We've rented a car and we're going to Rosario, Cordoba, and Santa Fe - in that order.

Driving in Buenos aires wasn’t something I was looking forward to. It looked like a disaster and it is. The chances of having a fender bender would intuitively be high but the reality is that you don’t see any smash-ups. It is like the drivers are all geniuses at keeping within inches of eachother but not touching. There are no sudden moves – that would cause inevitable failure of the system. Slow and steady veering and an occasional “honk” to say “I’m here beside you” seems to keep everything in control.

We arrived into Rosario within around 4 hours. It likely should have been shorter but we took a “rosario” turn-off from the highway (autopista) and ended up on slow two lane country roads for at least an hour. Incidently this isn's the first time we've done this. We did this before when we were in Germany last spring by accident. We knew, kind of, that we were on the right highway to Mainz but we saw an exit sign for Mainz on it that said to turn off. So we did. It went through every tiny crap German town on an exhausting, not so wonderful snake through the country side. Indeed, it got us all the way to Mainz…..at about 50km/hour. If we had stayed on the Autobahn like our maps told us, we would have shaved three hours off the trip. This was a repeat. And a treacherous one at that. The high way had no shoulder and many slow trucks.

Many of the large trucks down to the little vans had stickers on their back that showed the permitted speed they could travel at. So, when you got behind a huge truck with an “80” sticker, there was usually a long line behind him of potential passers. What exacerbated this was that someone in their shit car with a death wish would just pass the whole line of cars as if you weren’t waiting to pass anyway. So, not only did you have to deal with timing up your pass, you had to continually shoulder check that someone wasn’t asininely passing you too!It turns out that driving in Rosario is a game....of cat and mouse. In the city centre, where it's all on a gridwork, almost all intersections are unmarked. As you approach an intersection, you look both ways and if you are closer to the intersection than anybody else, you gun it and bolt through. There's no room for caution. It's a game of dare you had better not lose.

The big highlights of Rosario include the monument to the Argentinian flag and the beach. The monument is quite startling - huge and beautifully architected. It’s quite a thing to see and, if you take the elevator to the top, you get a great view of the city.






The other thing to do, is the beach. We started with a cloudy day our second day, so we tried to see the few museums in the city. However, they were all closed till the end of February….just because. The weather did however change it’s mind and we got a beautiful sunny afternoon. We went to the pay beach; it was 4 pesos to get in and it was a nice place. We were nearly the first to arrive at the beach as it was a weekday and likely people had put the idea of going to the beach out of their minds. I can only imagine what the place is like on a crowded day. I think we may have had the nicest day possible.























The sun got very hot and even though we had applied plenty of sunscreen earlier, I ended up burnt to a crisp. I hadn’t got burnt yet so it was bound to happen. You don’t see it coming. Well, I guess you do if you take 2 seconds to think about it....... but hey, we're on holidays, no thinking!





























Rosario was overall a nice place but not because of any one thing. The beach was nice but the water was muddy, the flag monument was pretty but oddly located and really only architecturally interesting, and the main shopping pedestrian mall was just like any other one. However, I think we missed one major part of Rosario- the night life. It could be a really fun place to party and meet people. We didn't. Unfortunately, you can only fit in so much. It reminds you that every city tends to have something to set it apart. Why? I guess it has to do with identity just as in people. If we were all the same, we wouldn't like it very much. In fact, I would like myself as much as I like anyone else. In terms of survival of the fittest, that wouldn't really work would it? It would be kind of a communist setup.

I think Rosario used to be an important port city of some sort. Perhaps it still is. We saw many large ships sailing up river past the beach. These were massive boats and there were ones docked at the port near the Rosario city centre.

We didn't really get anything here except a tan at the beach. But what a nice beach day we had!


The monument almost takes your breath away. Being in Argentina, you are always surprised by something. Juxtaposition is the only adjective one needs. Even in the first photo below, you can see an amazing monument with perfect lines and finish yet it is overlooked by rather drab and common apartment buildings. That said, it was a quiet day the day we went there and one couldn't help but feel the presence of grandeur.

This was taken from the top of the tower. One picture is a wide,
wide angle and the other is a zoom all the way across the River.

One last thing that amazed us was the odd coupling of certain foods. The culinary wonder below is a base of breaded fried pork overlain with an assemblage of cream corn, pickled leak, canned pineapple & peach, topped with a scatter of maraschino cherries and sauce of a thousand islands. Even more amazing is that is is called the Papakea. This has special relevance to me as it was the name of the the complex in which my grandparents owned a condo in Hawaii. Now, Papakea is not a common word so I can't even guess where this plate got it's name.