Iguazu Falls!

This past weekend we finally took the trip to Iguazu falls in the very northernmost part of Argentina. All of us have been looking forward to it for a while, and it is definitely one of it not the highlight of our activities that we have done. Our fearless leader Raul planned everything and it was an absolutely perfect region.

Iguazu falls is in the province called Misiones in the extreme Northeast of Argentina. The area is very tropical, with numerous major rivers and rainforest throughout the province. It borders Brazil to the East and Paraguay to the West. To get there, we took at bus ride for about 18 hours each way. The trip was long, but most of it was overnight so I slept through a very large portion of us. These also weren't you everyday bus seats. Our seats were recliners with foot rests, so it was easy to fall asleep.

On the way there, we stopped at a town called Posadas to meet up with our tour guide, Nacha. We first went to an Estancia (farm) where a family produced Yerba for Mate (herbs for the tea that is crazy popular here). At the farm, in addition to their Yerba plant they had a pool, cabins, lots of food, and puppies for us to relax and play with. We spent a few hours there enjoying nature and swimming in the pool, and then had Carne Asado (grilled meat) for lunch. After that we were headed to the San Ignacio ruins.

The San Ignacio mission was the largest Jesuit mission in the region. The province is called Misiones because it had dozens of missions throughout it, all run by the Jesuits. I am a little fuzzy on my history, but the Jesuits ran this missions with the native people, called the Guarani people in the 1600's to the early 1700's. If you have ever seen the movie "The Mission" starring Robert De Niro, this is exactly what the plot is about. They even filmed the movie here. Anyways, the Spanish kicked out the Jesuits from the region in the 18th century and the missions fell into disrepair. A fire later destroyed most of the area, but impressive ruins still outline the mission.

After touring the mission, we took a drive across the province to our hotel. We stayed in cabins right on the edge of the Jungle, and it was a very nice hotel. We were very tired after a long day of traveling, so we didn't do a lot Friday night.

Saturday morning we got up bright and early to head to Iguazu Falls National Park. It is a series of waterfalls fed by the Iguazu river and in the middle of the tropical rainforest. The falls are breathtakingly beautiful, and the surrounding nature only further amplifies the view. The waterfalls are not impressive due to their height, but rather for how massively wide the waterfalls are. Panoramic photos can't even capture all of the falls. I took over 200 pictures in one afternoon, and if you know me, you know that is a ton for me.

We had the opportunity to explore all over the falls. We took trails giving viewpoints from all angles, including on top of and even underneath the falls. We also took a boat adventure straight into the falls, and experienced their power firsthand. We were all soaked by the end, which felt great because of the heat, and we were all exhilarated by getting to experience such beauty.

The park itself was full of tropical animals, and we saw over a half dozen monkeys climbing trees and napping. The most pervasive animal was the Coatie, an animal very similar to a raccoon, but with a longer snout and slightly different coloring. Coatie have no fear, and I saw two of them run right up to a girl eating a pizza and grab the slice right from her hands. You have to really watch your stuff.

We left the park that evening to go look over the point where the borders of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina all meet up. It was a beautiful area, but after being spoiled with the waterfalls at Iguazu we were all a little bored with it. We then went back to the hotel to swim for a while before dinner. The pool was freezing cold, but we were determined to swim since most of us hadn't been in a pool since coming here in July.

On Sunday, we visited a Guarani reservation to learn about the indigenous population. Then, the long sad bus ride home. After 18 more hours on a bus, reality smacked us hard in the face at 8 AM Monday morning when our warm tropical paradise turned into chilly Buenos Aires. However, the weather here just took a temporary dip and should be nice and warm in a few days.

Iguazu falls was probably the most beautiful place I have ever seen in my life, and is definitely up to par with anything Hawaii has to offer in terms of scenery. This trip was definitely the adventure of a lifetime, and I had an amazing time. Now just three more weeks of classes before I go from student to full time tourist in Argentina. It is getting really difficult to motivate myself for the home stretch, but so far so good!

Thanks for reading!

Scott

PS, the internet is not cooperating with me right now, so if you would like to see more photos, please check out my facebook page.

Un Techo Para mi Pais

This past week has been very busy. Thankfully the weather suddenly became gorgeous and it is near 75 and sunny almost every day in the long range forecast. It makes it really nice to find a park to read in or just explore the city. I am also hoping not to return to the US all pale and pasty, but we will see on that one. After this week, I only have three weeks of classes left in my semester, then I have almost a month to take a final exam, travel, and just enjoy life in Argentina. Time is flying by, and I only have about a month and a half left here which is crazy to think about.

This weekend, our wonderful director, Raul, offered us all the chance to participate in a weekend activity called "Un Techo Para mi Pais." The name of the organization literally translates to "A roof for my country" and it is a non-profit that sends groups into impoverished areas to build houses for families in need. It seems very similar to habitat for humanity, although the need here is much greater.

When Raul told us about the activity, I was very excited but anxious at the same time. He told us we would be split up and probably the only Americans in our group, which I was very excited about. I knew this weekend would be an awesome chance to practice Spanish. My construction vocabulary in Spanish is lacking however, so I was a little nervous about comprehension. Thankfully I had no problems at all and was actually surprised at how easy it was to communicate with everyone there no matter the theme we were talking about. This weekend definitely improved my confidence in talking with native speakers about anything.

The second thing I was anxious for was seeing what the neighborhood was like. Up until this point, I mainly stayed in the richer parts of Buenos Aires, which are very beautiful and safe. However, this weekend we were going into the heart of the poorest neighborhoods in all of Argentina. The poverty in these areas were unlike anything I had ever seen, and it was heartbreaking to see so many young, beautiful children walking around the streets knowing that they will not have the same opportunities that I have been blessed with. At the same time, the people there were in no way depressed or mopy. On the contrary, they were eager to talk to me about anything, and even gave me the nickname "Mr. America." They were also ready to help build the house and incredibly hard working. Without them, the house wouldn't have been nearly as easy to construct.  A strange thing that I saw in the area, was that a lot of people had horses to get around. There were horses puling carts all over the place, and even kids were riding horses everywhere.

The first morning, we played an icebreaker that was rock paper scissors with rankings depending if you win or lose. Everyone starts as an amoeba, and if you win you become a crab. If you are a crab, you can only play other crabs and rock paper scissors and the winner becomes a bunny, the loser an amoeba. Next you become a gorilla, and then if you can win as a gorilla you win the game and can leave the area. No matter your rank, if you lose you become an amoeba again. Well, yours truly was the loser of a group of nearly 40, so as punishment they wrote "Ameoba" in big black letters across my forehead. Needless to say, if me being an American wasn't a conversation starter, this certainly was.

The house itself was very simple to construct. First, we dug holes for 15 wooden support pillars in the ground.

After digging 7 holes and placing the pillars we hit a minor snag; someone in the group hit a sewer line with their shovel and broke it. Thankfully the flow was very slow and the smell was fairly contained, but the idea of what was in that hole was disgusting. We lost most of the first afternoon waiting for someone to help us fix the problem before we could continue digging.

After the problem was fixed, we were back in business. We soon placed the prefabricated floor over the pillars and next we had to put up the walls. From there, we nailed everything together and then began assembling the support beams for the roof. After that, we nailed the metal roofing in, placed the windows and door, and finally painted the house.

When we were done, the family we had built it for was incredibly grateful. They were an older couple, and the wife was deaf, but she still communicated her gratitude without any problems. The family had cooked for us, helped us build, and talked with us for three days, and I have to admit it was a little sad to leave the neighborhood Monday evening.

The whole experience felt a little bit like summer camp. We slept in sleeping bags in a big gymnasium, we stayed up late playing random games, and even had a bonfire Sunday night minus the s'mores. The experience itself was truly incredible, and I feel like I got to know a completely different side of Argentina. I would highly recommend doing something like this to anyone staying in Latin America for an extended period of time.

For me, the hard working weekend is over and I get to relax this next one in the tropical rainforest near Iguazu Falls in the extreme North of Argentina. Be expecting a ridiculous amount of pictures.

Thanks for reading,

Scott

Fuerza Bruta

This Friday we went to a show called Fuerza Bruta (Brute force). We were not really sure what to to expect, but we were told it was like Cirque du Soleil combined with a rave. When we got there we were ushered into a large dark room with no seats. The crowd was gathered towards the front of the stage. The show began and honestly it is way easy to show videos of it than describe it, and thankfully I took a ton of videos. Unfortunately, the bandwidth is terrible here so I can only put up a few videos. The first one was of a man on a treadmill. They put chairs and people on it going towards him to make it look like he is going down a city street. It was really interesting to watch.

 

The next video is supposed to represent the man running on the treadmill's dreams (I think) It was really cool and I'm not sure if you can tell by the video but the women are way up in the air going along the walls. 

 

The final video is of a pool of water they lowered just above our heads and the bottom is made of clear plastic. There were 4 or 5 women above doing different things in the water to make the ripples go in different patterns. 

Honestly the videos don't do the show justice, but just know that every member of our group absolutely loved the show, and none of us were really sure what it would be like beforehand. If you are ever in Buenos Aires, I would highly recommend seeing Fuerza Bruta.

Thanks for reading!

Scott

Gaucho Ranch

Today makes the beginning of 12 weeks in Buenos Aires, and I have a little more than two months left before I go home. These past few weeks have been really busy, and it looks like it will stay that way until most of our group leaves the first week of November. By the way, busy is good. In addition to the Gaucho ranch, we also went to mate club (like always), went bike riding in the ecological reserve built on the shore of Rio de la Plata, and went to an amazing show called Fuerza Bruta. Fuerza Bruta was in some ways like Cirque de Soleil mixed with a rave, but it is very difficult to explain without seeing it. I'm going to make another blog post about it very soon with videos. It was way cooler than any of us expected it to be.

Anyways, this past Sunday we went to a gaucho ranch. A gaucho is basically the Argentine version of a cowboy, including their near mythical pop-culture status in the history of Argentina. The ranch we went to, called an "Estancia" in Spanish, was called Santa Susana Estancia and was the home of a family of gauchos. It was similar to a dude ranch in many ways.

Right when we got there, I could not help but buy myself a gaucho hat.

Next, we got to go horseback riding. We were all really excited for this part, expecting a trail ride. However, there were a ton of people there and very few horse so the trail ride was a field that we rode in a circle around, and the whole trip took at most 15 or 20 minutes. We enjoyed ourselves though, since most of us rarely get to ride a horse, but we were a little disappointed we did not get to go on a real trail ride.

After touring a tradition gaucho home (full of creepy old toys) we sat down for a huge feast. Lots of our favorite foods from Argentina, and after a salad to start the meal, we did not see a single fruit or vegetable for the rest of the meal. Choripan sandwiches, steaks, and as much wine as we wanted to drink. After the meal, there was a traditional Argentine culture show where we watched Tango and many other local dances.

33 chickens and untold cows gave their lives for the wonderful feast

Finally, the gauchos put on a horse show for everyone to end the day. They each held a wooden stick about the size of a pencil and tried to stick it through a ring hanging in the air as they rode the raced their horses down the field. The rings were tiny, about the size of a key chain ring, and after successfully getting the ring, the men would give them to a woman in the audience in exchange for a kiss. After the show, the gauchos offered a horseback ride to any of the girls that would like to join them on the horse, once again in exchange for a kiss. Argentine men are smooth, especially gauchos. I'm fairly certain at least one member of our group was wooed.

Wooed

Look for more updates to come soon. Thanks for reading!

Scott