New Country, New Currency, New Language

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Day 17 & 18-22nd & 23rd September

This was the day we left Brazil; we’ve been there for just over 2 weeks and knew it was time for us to move on. The plan was to head over the border into Argentina and spend a couple of days in Puerto Iguazu so we could see the Argentinean side of the falls before undertaking the longer journey to Buenos Aires. We were sad to leave Brazil, we’ve had a wicked time in this country and we’d definitely like to some back. So onwards to the steak eating land of Argentina!

So once again we packed up our things and prepared to leave. After swapping details with Miguel who’d taken us into Paraguay the previous day and getting some directions we headed out to get a bus which apparently just said ‘Argentina’ on the front, pretty straight forward then! The way the Brazil/Argentina immigration works is you have to get your exit stamp from Brazil on one side of the river, cross over the river and get your entrance stamp for Argentina on the other side. We’d been warned that we must get off the bus to get the exit stamp and that we would have to get a kind of ticket from the bus conductor so we could pick up another bus after we had got our exit stamp (they don’t wait for you) without paying again. Well we managed this without any problems and soon we were in ‘no man’s land’ having exited Brazil but not entered Argentina and waiting for the next bus. This soon turned up and drove us over the river, we then had to get off the bus again and go through immigration into Argentina (have I confused you all yet??). One new passport stamp later we were through and got back onto the same bus (that had waited for us!) to take us to Puerto Iguazu.

We’d had a quick look on the internet for hostels and decided to go to the Hostel Stop that was not only cheap but the highest recommended, sounded good enough for us! We knew it was approx 5 blocks from the main bus station in Puerto Iguazu, however when I spotted it on the way we jumped off early and saved ourselves the walk. The last time I checked the exchange rate, it was 6 Argentina Pesos to the pound, and if that’s still true, we got two nights in a private room, with breakfast and an all you can eat buffet dinner on both days for A$360 (£60), not too shabby! First impressions are pretty good; we have a TV in our room, something we haven’t seen since the glory days of the Pestana in Rio!

We wandered up to the cash point as we only had Real on us and to our shock the bloody cash machine charged us 15 pesos for withdrawals! We got the Caxton card so we didn’t have to worry about that! Bastards. However we got ourselves a fist full of pesos and came back to the hostel. We spent the afternoon settling in and catching up on internet things. At 8.30pm we wandered down to the hostel Che Lagarto for our included dinner and proceeded to meet a British couple, Clare and Ben who joined our table. Many beers later we wandered back to our hostel and Clare and Ben tried to teach us the card game ‘Sh*thead’. I like to blame the beer as I was rubbish but Ellory, despite claiming not knowing what to do, promptly whooped our arses! (twice!)

The plan was to head to the Iguazu falls the next day, but as we went to bed the weather forecast for the next day was looking appalling and we prepared ourselves for having to stay in Puerto Iguazu a bit longer.

Turns out the forecast was right as I got woken at 7am by the most almighty bang of thunder and it continued like that all day. Puerto Iguazu is a very small town and there’s very little to do there apart from go to the falls so we lazed around really. In the evening we met up with Claire, Ben and their roommate, Scott and went out for a meal. The weather was looking a lot better for the next day and the 5 of us planned to head to the falls the next day. When we returned from the restaurant we went to book an extra night in our room and to our shock our room was booked for the next night! As were all private rooms! Expensive it may be, but Ellory and I decided, as newlyweds, that we’d rather pay extra and have some space to ourselves, hence why we’ve been in private rooms. We panicked a little as we had an early start the next day to the falls and it would be a bit of a nightmare to find and then move to a new hostel in the morning. However we then worked out that Claire, Ben and Scott had beds spare in their dorm and as we’d gotten to know them, Ellory was ok with sharing a room for 1 night. So we paid up and had somewhere to stay the following night! After a couple games of pool (I was RUBBISH!) we went off to bed and set the alarm for the godawful hour of 6.00am as we had to pack, move rooms and eat breakfast before the bus to the falls left at 7.30am.

Love
Liz xxxx

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