Waking up, hung over, and early. Were off to Iguazu! It’s only 3 hours away from where we were in Misiones. Part of the nature of the group is to have things to wrong so we ended up missing the bus because they were on strike and so we had to walk to another terminal to catch the bus. We finally catch the bus and 3 hours later get to the town near Iguazu falls. We’ve checked into our hostel and rush out. Were going to Iguazu falls in Brazil.
Lily couldn’t go because she forgot her passport in BA and had to get it shipped to the hostel which hasn’t arrived yet. None of us knew how to get to the falls but Lily explained to me how to get there. We exit Argentina and get our stamp out of the country. The bus does not stop for Brazil border and simply drives right through. No idea why but it just does. Her half broken directions dropped us off in the middle of nowhere in Brazil. I was told we needed to walk a little bit to the next bus stop and take the next bus to the falls from there. There ends up being a taxi there and he tells us that we need to get to the falls in 20 minutes because ticket sales ends at 5. There was no way we would make it by bus so we get in the taxi and surely enough he was right.
It was all well worth the rushing and the hassle. The falls were unreal. Literality waterfalls falling into more waterfalls. All around there were endless. There was a trail that took us to see most of it. At the end of the trail we were able to see the falls up close and personal. I’ve abused my camera to the point where it’s just about dead. Soaked from being so close to the falls now. For the first time in my life, I saw a full circled rainbow.
Exhausted… We left about 6:30 from the park and tried to figure out a way into Argentina. Lily missed telling us this part. Somehow, we found out there was a bus that lead us to the border. On the bus though through a random person seeing how confused we were, we were told the bus doesn’t take us to the border and instead takes us near the border in which we would have to walk or take another bus to cross. We were so close that we decided to just walk through the border into Argentina. Finally at the border, they ask us for our passports. In our group we have 5 Americans, 1 English, and 1 Irish. Border security goes through my passport and asks me where my visa was. Huh? He tells us that Americans require a visa to enter Brazil. At that moment he takes all our passports but he took the English and Irish passport, he simply said “Pssh” and gave it back to them. He comes back and tells us we were in Brazil illegally and may be required to pay a fine. Were pretty freaked out at this point. He then says “You know… You require us to get a visa and pay to enter your country so now you have to do the same”. I sigh and apologize. More begging and telling him we were only here for a few hours – he eventually let us in. What we did wrong was we took the wrong bus to head back and we were suppose to get a bus that goes straight through the border instead of stupid us walking across it. Finally get across and get a bus that takes us to our hostel. WHAT A DAY!
It was Lisa’s birthday so Lily had setup an asado(Argentinean BBQ) for us. I can never get tired of the asado. The long day deserved a drink so we got to drinking at the hostel. We made two new random friends that joined in our drinking. The dining/drinking area we were at is fairly close to the hostel rooms especially ours. Our 10 person dorm has 2 people we don’t know and the rest of us are in the one room. At about 11pm an Italian girl in her 20s jumps out of the room and outside and just went wild. She screams “This is a hostel!! I try to sleep!” and goes back into her room. Out of her mind we thought. We all decided it was time to leave and continue our night at a bar. Jenn goes into the room to get out some money and that’s when all hell broke lose. The girl again screamed but this time she took it to another level. In 6 months of hostels, I have never seen this before. “This hostel! Other people try sleep!” and my response was “Relax.. Calm down” and which she comes back with a very complex come back with “NO! You relax!!” Oh ok. Considering this is Argentina, a hostel, and still early – not sure what she expected. Not like she had work the next day. So we get out of that mess and into a restaurant/bar on the streets. There’s a group of 8 of us and ready to cause havoc. A few drinks down and we ARE the party. Music was meant more as background music for the place but instead we turned it into a club. Dancing, drinking, and just chatting about how crazy of a trip it’s been so far. Were having a good time. I find out that Kristy speaks wonderful Spanish and I’m at a level of drinking where somehow my Spanish improved so suddenly we got to speaking all Spanish. I was quite impressed with our convo lol.
Crazy day…
