We got up early, ate breakfast, packed lunch and headed out to the ‘Piedras Preciosas’ mines of Wanda (yes, a town called Wanda). Our tour guide was fairly informative but I really had to probe to get him to spill the beans on where most of the real mining gets done. There was only one miner in the cave we went into, so we knew there must be some other mines hidden. He said they were in the jungle, but all the miners were on a Tereré break (a cold form of maté). We let it go at that, tipped the [View Full Entry]

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Arriving in Argentina and heading to Salta by bus from the Chilean border proved to be quite a deserted affair. Besides the moderate mountains and the 4 metre high cacti, it was pretty average scenery following our previous few weeks. It was also not helped by the fact that we were presented with ham and cheese sandwiches for breakfast, elevenses and lunch! It got better though...towards the end of our journey the exposed rock faces blended into rainbows of different colours. Dark reds colours were adjacent to bright greens and gunmetal greys, caused by different minerals within. It was also evident [View Full Entry]

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First of all, apologies for the multiple entries - been a bit too busy for all this computer geek malarkey, plus someone broke the PC at the last hostel... Also I'm once again in a cafe with no USB ports, so can't upload any more photos of waterfalls which I'm sure will disappoint you all. Anyway, from where I left off, we travelled for 5 or so hours to San Ignacio. The weather by this point was just like back home - bloody miserable. The point of visiting SI was to go to the Jesuit Ruins, which we did. I'm still [View Full Entry]

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ITA - San Ignacio Mini, Santa Ana Dopo la solita prima colazione argentina, con caffè, spremuta e medialunas (cornetti) ritrovo i due ragazzi danesi con i quali avevo condiviso la stanza, e andiamo a visitare le rovine della missione gesuita di San Ignacio, nel centro dell'omonima città. Coincidenze della vita.. uno dei due ragazzi, dopo questo viaggio, andrà a lavorare per Vestas, primo costruttore mondiale di turbine eoliche, e conosco quindi alcuni suoi futuri colleghi.. Il museo all'entrata spiega il contesto nel quale i gesuiti sono venuti nel XVII secolo a construire queste "riduzioni" in un'area qui si ricopriva parti di [View Full Entry]

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The journey from Pelligrini to Posados (our next port of call) was a bumpy one to say the least. We had one fellow travel companion aboard our truck/bus - JUAN PABLO, a lovely Chilean guy who was taking the same route as ourselves, the idea was to spend the night in Posados and then head straight to Puerto Iguaza. Low and behold there was no accomodation to be found because the city was hosting a rally tournament. So it was with great help from our saviour JP that San Ignacia was chosen to rest our heads, he had called ahead [View Full Entry]

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One of the main indigenous tribes of the area, other than the Incas, were the Guarani people who became closely aligned with the Jesuits. They were periodically relocating their towns and built this massive and relatively well preserved site from about c1770 having been ousted out of there previous home by the invading Spanish conquistadores. Its an impressive World Heritage site in the middle of absolutely nowhere!! [View Full Entry]

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Next morning we took a bus to San Ignacio, home to the largest and best maintained of the old Jesuit ruins in Argentina. These were not just religious settlements, but rather complete economic cells, providing accommodation, education, and work to indigenous people and also European settlers. Their success caused their sudden death - the Spanish crown was afraid of their growing influence and so the king banned these missions in the 18th century. We were lucky to come here in the evening when there was hardly anybody in the area, and as the sun was going down. The whole city [View Full Entry]

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Decided we would get up and go to San Ignacio to see the Jesuit ruins today. Caught a lavish coach to the sight and watched the weather turn sour. The coach dropped us at the side of the road in what looked like a completely deserted town. The rain was pouring, and we were dressed in shorts and flip flops again, however we did managed to remember our waterproof jackets. We walked for about 20 minutes up a hill to get to the sight, but it wasn´t exactly obvious where anything was, or what we supposed to be looking for. [View Full Entry]

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English summary: We visited San Ignacio, two hours driving from Puerto Iguazu. Here are the biggest Jesuit ruins found in the area. The Jesuit settlements rose under the Spanish settlements in this area. the regio was devided between spanish and portuguese rulers. Under portugese rulers the indians had to work as slaves and under the spanish rule they lived in this type of communities, where they worked together in a religious settlement. So in this period all indians fled to spanish land. Finally the portuguese took over which meant the end of the ralitively peacefull lifestyle they lived. Na een lekker [View Full Entry]

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After awaking and leaving the decrepit little hovel that called itself a hostel, we caught perhaps the slowest bus in all of Argentina, which would take us 300km south to a small town outside of the capital of Misiones, called San Ignacio Mini, home to one of the best preserved ruins of the Jesuit Missions that dot this spectacular jungle landscape. After taking what in effect was a milk run, stopping at over 31 different stops, not including the machete wielding campesino at the side of the road who waved the bus to stop, we made our way to the ruins [View Full Entry]

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