Iguazú Falls

click on picture to see the rest of my photos!

I finally traveled!  August 18 was a holiday – San Martín Day, liberator of Argentina (and Chile and Paraguay?…)  So Amber, Mary Andrews, Kristin and I headed for Puerto Iguazú to see las cataratas (waterfalls).  These huge falls are along the Brazil/Argentine border.  They are not as tall as Niagara, but far more expansive.  See all my photos here!  Actually you will only see a selection of my photos as I took almost 300 while there!

 

 

 

 

Iguazú is in northern Argentine in Misiones province.  We opted for the cheaper bus ride, about $100 round trip (as opposed to $400 in plane) and 22 hour each way!  Definitely my longest bus trip.  Fortunately, since Miriam has taught me how to knit, I brought along plenty of wool and finished two projects.

 

Our bus leaving La Plata was four hours late, so we arrived in Iguazú Saturday afternoon instead of Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time to do anything.  However, we were fortunate enough to arrive during the full moon when they take night tours to the waterfall, so our first glimpse of the falls was at night.  It was huge and beautiful.  The mist was overwhelming and wind blew it towards us ensuring we were all soaked by the time we left.  We also saw a rainbow at night!  (Well that is what they told us it was.)  You could see a white arc, but there was not enough light to see the colors, it was pretty cool!

 

On Sunday we woke early and saw the waterfalls.  We pretty much saw everything there was to see in one day.  They were definitely beautiful and awing.  They were also very easily accessible.  We had to do a bit of walking, but no huge steps or walking down infinite number of stairs or steep slopes (as my experience was at numerous waterfalls in Costa Rica.)  There is also an island near the base of the falls, but there had been a lot of rain recently and the water was high, so the free ferry to the island was not running.  There were also boats that drove you near the base of the falls – so you could get the sensation of being wet.  But it was expensive and really didn’t look that impressive, so we saved our money.

 

Monday we turned around and hopped back on the bus for 22 more hours.  I enjoyed the falls, but was disappointed we couldn’t stay more time.  There are also old Jusuit Mission ruins relatively near that would have been nice to see.  Also, Missiones is the area where they grow yerba mate, the very popular tea like drink here.  It would have been fun to visit a plantation, but also not possible in a one and half day trip.  Maybe I will find myself back up that way some day…

Monday, August 04, 2008 – Halfway Done :) :(

So I am officially half-way through my Argentine internship.  I arrived six weeks ago and have six weeks left.  I have finally settled in and gotten used to living here and have some sort of routine with my work at the comedor.  I also have finally decided the direction I will go with my FSD projects (maybe a little late) – which further outlines how I will be spending my remaining weeks here.  I am also excited to start traveling and seeing parts of the country and feel slightly crunched on time.  At the same time I am really starting to miss my family and friends….and a clothes dryer, QuikTrip, and med red (that is my car for those of you unaware – I hope you are taking good care of her Jean). 

 

The other day I finally took time to read through an Argentine Lonely Planet tourist book to see which places I want to visit while I am here.  We will see what I end up having time to see.  Places include:

• San Antonio de Acerco – area of “las pampas” fairly close to Buenos Aires, has museums of gauchos (famous Argentine cowboys) and model estancias (ranches); Parque Nacional de Ernesto Tornquist – about 10 hours from Buenos Aires, there is a big hill/mountain there, if you hike to the top you can supposedly get a good view of the pampas, it also happens to be very close to the town of Tornquist, where my host parents are from, I am hoping I get to visit it with them;
• Iguazú Falls – in Missiones province, in northeastern Argentine, partially located in Brazil as well, I believe they are the some of the largest waterfalls in the world, I would also love to cross into Paraguay and Brazil (unfortunately visa is needed for Brazil) while I am up that direction, but am not sure if that will happen, as of now I am planning on going in mid-August when there is a three day holiday weekend, I will probably take more than 3 days as its about a 20 hour bus ride;
• Mendoza – province in western Argentina along the Chile border, famous for its wineries, also about a 20 hours bus ride from Buenos Aires, I would like to cross into Chile if I am going that far, but not sure if it will be possible;
• Tierra del Fuego – I am pretty sure this will not happen as it is extremely far, but I would really like to say that I have been! 
• I would also like to go to Colonia, Uruguay, which is about a two hour boat ride from Buenos Aires.  Technically I am not supposed to leave the country while under the FSD internship, but I feel since they didn’t tell us that rule before hand I am going to disregard it – seriously if I am two hours from Uruguay I am going to want to cross the border!  I also mentioned it to my host mom who has also visited, and she suggested that maybe we go this weekend when her son comes in town from Tornquist – I hope we go! 

So that’s where I want to go.  I am fairly certain I won’t get to most of it, but we will see.

 

In the last week I have learned how to knit.  I have knitted myself a very long, fluffy blackish/purplish scarf.  I have also bought yarn to knit a baby blanket (CONGRATULATIONS JULIE!!!!)  And have made a list of several other things I would like to make while I am here.  I get a kick out of it, as does my host mom who has been basically begging to teach me.  Mary Andrews (another intern) also came over last week to learn, and Amber (another intern who already knows how to knit) also came and we had a little knitting party – it was quite amusing.

 

I also tried my first shot at cooking for my host family.  I tried my specialty, spinach artichoke dip.  It turned out subpar for my standards, but they seemed to like (though sometimes I wonder if they just say that.)  I had to be creative as I couldn’t exactly find all the ingredients – and dairy/cream products are slightly different.  Everything is called “crema” or cream and I couldn’t quite figure out what was sour cream, also couldn’t find the cream cheese I wanted, so used mayonnaise (found in abundance here – it is there favorite sauce) as a replacement that I have used before.  However, I asked Ana, with FSD and she told me that cream cheese can be found, so I might try another round.  I need to make an actual meal for them as well, unfortunately all the real typical American/Kansans type food I don’t actually know how to make, I personally prefer Mexican food, but they don’t like spicy stuff.  We will see what I can come up with that will taste good and I can find ingredients for!

Weekend, June 12 – 13, 2008 – El Tigre

My intern group minus me...

 

Saturday morning we boarded “El Tren de la Costa”, the touristy train that goes from the center of Buenos Aires to El Tigre, ending at the “Parque de Diversiones”, largest Argentine amusement park.  There are nine stops along the way that offer a variety of activities.  Our boarding passes allowed us to partake in as many of the stops as we wished.  I stuck with the group of six interns that started at the same time as me and we got off any the first four stops.  The first stop only offered a cute café, so we started to hop back on the train and try the next stop.  The second stop was at a park with a nice view of the river and another café, so we stopped and had coffee before continuing the trip.  The fourth stop was a “fería de antiguos” or an antique fair.  The sidewalks were lined with stalls with varying antique artifacts – interesting to breeze through, but not really my forte.  The next stop was San Isidro, which had the most activity going.  There were various restaurants (this is where we decided to eat lunch – it was already 2pm!), shops, and a hug artisan fair, including various live entertainment.  We stayed at San Isidro until almost five o’clock and then hopped back on the train and went straight to El Tigre.  Each train ride was absolutely packed and we ended up standing for most of it, but since each leg of the trip was so short it wasn’t really a big deal.

 

Once in El Tigre, we looked for hostel, which actually ended up being a fairly nice hostel.  We then went to the famous “Puerto de Frutos” which is actually just another artisan fair.  The thing about artisan fairs, is once you have seen one, you have basically seen them all.  I think I have had a good taste of what Argentine has to offer in terms of “authentic handmade” souvenirs. (You should all know that I only bought a $2 pair of earrings and some olive oil.)  That night we went back to the hostel and had a short “taller” or workshop, talking about what needed to be done before leaving the country (the first group of summer interns will be leaving in two weeks.)  Marcela (FSD director) and her friend made us pasta for dinner.  I crashed early.  I had a head cold which is no fun at all and was not in the mood for hanging out.

 

Sunday we went on a boat trip.  The area of El Tigre is surrounding by various interlocking rivers, creating islands all over the area.  Apparently, people live on these islands, they have some normal amenities including electricity, telephone, gas (via propane tanks) and water (filtered from river for use, potable water must be bought.)  It was pretty interesting to see, there is no vehicle access to the islands, they must be reached by boat.  However there are schools, churches and stores, including “floating” medics, supermarkets, and boat “omnibuses”.  Children also get picked up by a boat to take them to school.  It was pretty interesting.

 

We had a typical Argentine “asado” or grill out on Sunday afternoon at a park on one of the islands.  The meal consisted of meat, meat and more meat (and a little salad and some bread.)  We started out with carne empanadas, and then each were given a chorizo (sausage) and morcilla (blood sausage – which I tried but do not think I like.)  We were then give the “main course” which was meat with bones (they eat so much meat here, I am not sure what the English equivalent is), seconds of meat with bones and then meat without bones.  Luckily we had ice cream for dessert!  I am a little sick of the meat here…I can handle a little, but a meal that consists of four types of meat is not exactly my favorite.

 

We had the afternoon free, in which we went to the “El Tigre Museo de Arte” which is in the historical casino building, which was beautiful (can’t say I am much of a fan of the actual art, but the building was pretty cool.)  We then met back up at the hostel and headed home.