Las Cataratas de Iguazu

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A short long trip to the "Falls of the Big Water"

Woooow, been there!

But lets stick to the order...
Viernes, June 12th: Our bus to Iguazu departures - according to the plan - at 6:50pm del Retiro (Main Bus and Train station of BsAs). You are supposed to be there 45min prior to departure, so that makes it 6:05. Our group of six funny people - 3 Dutch, 2 Germans and 1 British) met at 5:30 at some subte-station in the city. Somehow we managed to reach el Retiro around 6pm (while only being slightly insecure where to go😉 ) and even found "our bus" out of the probably 60 buses that were there. Interesting enough, they can tell you were your bus is not earlier than 15 minutes prior to departure...so I guess the 45min spare-time were only adressed to the common Argentinian guy:D
On the bus and off we go. With very comfortable chairs that function as a bed as well and interesting compañeros a ca. 1200km busride after all didnt seem as long as it was. I took the time to teach my British "chairmate" Rachel some real language😉 She took revenge by bugging me the whole time with the German equivalent of "are we there yet" or "what time is it".... yeah that worked out well:D
After 17hours of British-German, MAOAM, wie spaet ist es, "boooooooring" and three movies, we finally reached Puerto Iguazu. Our hostel offered beautiful palm-trees and a swimming pool. Since we roughly had an hour and a half before our next adventure, everyone went into the pool...well, except the Dutch people (Melissa, Samantha, Alex):P The rest of us - Stefan, Rachel and I - took a little bit longer to figure out that the pool might be colder than it seemed and that our shower was not giving away any warm water....fuuuun time:D
At 2:30pm we went off to Brasil. Although it took us long enough to actually get to cross the boarder... we didnt get a stamp in the passport😞 just one, that said we left Argentina... So I guess technically we never been to Brasil but back in D/NL/GB???😉
Anyway, we visited the Brasilian side of the Iguazu Parque. Appearantly there you have a better panorama view of the "Cataratas"
, saw animals everyone knows but nobody can name and of course amazing waterfalls!!! I dont think that it makes much sense discribing...You just have to see yourself...or at least some pictures (if I ever get them on here)
Our tourguide liked us that much that she called us: ¡Mis amigos - my friends! - starting at the moment she met us:D - and we got to ride economical buses (so that means our group gets to sit and the other one has to push the bus?)... we returned in the late evening with lots of pictures and just in time for the BBQ and the following Brasilian show at our hostel. The BBQ was ....d e l i c i o u s !!! and the show very entertaining. They had two Brasilian girls dancing (one was a pleasure to watch... and Stefan got to dance with the other one😉 ) and a funny guy who was entertaining the crowd.
After a quiet night, with only one Dutch screaming and one Dutch snoring, we woke up at 7 and left after a cold shower and a short breakfast to Iguazu Parque...this time the Argentinian one.
We did quite a bit of walking there, lots of beautiful view-points, interesting scenery...and a tiny bit of water. Talking to some other people in the hostel we had kind of figured out that we would get a little bit wet when joining the boat ride that goes close to the Falls...
But wet gets a totally different meaning, when you are actually going UNDERNEATH the falls... i dont think there was a single dry spot left:D I think we all enjoyed it a lot... even though today 6 out of 6 people have a cold...
At night we went to a local bar and had very nice cocktails for roughly 2.40€
Monday, 15th, - holiday in Argentina - we tried to make our way to las tres fronteras... "the point" where Brasil, Argentina and Paraguay meet. Although it was very close, it took us quite some time...got on the first bus (busdriver: "si si voy a aqui") and got off the next stop ("no, no voy a las tres fronteras!") changed the side off the street, asked the next bus...and so on and on and on... everybody knew where to go, but not knew where to go. Eventually, two taxi rides later we made it there! It is not exactly a single point...since they are divided by the river(s). But you can see three pillars with the colours of the different countries.
Another two cab rides and a cafe later we made it on time back to our bus and enjoyed 18hours of driving towards Bs As.
All in all it was a great exciting fun trip that was long...yet felt very short.

Oh I almost forgot the most important part....the weather was just beautiful...all weekend long😊
Muchos saludos de Argentina

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