This week Rachael, Owen and I decided to take a break from bustling Buenos Aires and fly north to the border of Argentina and Brazil to check out Iguazu falls, or as they are known here, Las Cataratas del Iguazu.
Disembarking from the plane, the air was heavy with heat, the earth red and the rest of the universe every shade of green imaginable, including me because I was a little sick from the "delicious" airline
Alfajores. We caught a cab into Puerto del Iguazu and checked into a sweet hostel; Timbo Posada, and then, as we weren't going to visit the falls until the following day, I decided to explore our suroundings.
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| The natives here are strange |
Puerto del Iguazu is purported in all the guide books to be a one horse town, but I walked for hours and I never saw a single one so they must've been grazing elsewhere. What I did see was street after red cobblestoned street of old crumbling buildings engulfed in greenery. Puerto del Iguazu is situated in the tropical rainforest on the river Parana, across from Paraquay and Brazil. It is the closest town to Iquazu National Park where the falls are located, and so its economy is based on tourism, which translates into more hostels then homes on every block.
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| Its tough to be a skater in Puerto del Iguazu |
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| Sidewalk |
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| What happens when the gardener takes a day off |
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| Even the "keep out" warnings are pretty |
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| Rachael and Owen contemplate swimming to Paraguay... | |
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| ...or they could just take a boat. |
Our hostel is built around a jungley courtyard complete with a banana tree (and a bunch of bananas) a hammock and a small swimming pool which overflows each afternoon during the torrential rainstorms. There is a covered patio overlooking the courtyard where we lounge during the storms so we can watch without getting struck by lightning and each evening we are seranaded by a chorus ( ? ) of howler monkeys who must be nesting just beyond our yard.
There is also the incessant roar of the buzz saw bugs. I don't actually know what they are officially called but I am sure its something close to that. They are so loud we have to raise our voices to be heard above the sound of their machinery. They seem to have unionized with the huge carpenter ants and are either keeping the rainforest from encroaching further or are buiilding yet another hostel. The nights are lovely here if a little noisy.
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| Passage in the posada |
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| Where bananas come from |
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| BIG slug! |
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| BIGGER spider! |
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| Dinner guest |
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| Brunch guest |
Rachael and Owen noted that many of the indigenous plants seemed familiar, and we realized that here under the rainforest canopy the climate is probably exactly the same as any average North American bathroom in a household with teenage girls (think incessant showers, those of you who are childless). Basically this is where all of our houseplants are born, except we only get the runts of the litter up there in the north, as a philedrendon leaf here could easily gift wrap your SUV with room to spare (and probably would if you parked it overnight as everything grows at a rampant rate).
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| Leafy greens |
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| Watching things grow from our hostel kitchen window |
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| A common garden weed |
Every evening we continue to hunt and gather, but since this is a tourist town the basic neccesities are a little more at hand. We could easily live off the fallen mangos and guavas and figs that litter the neighborhoods but there are also plenty of cafes and restaurants, all open late into the night with covered seating along the sidewalks so we stroll through the diners as we wander. Last night we passed through a parilla (a steak house) that was showing a nature show on a tv set up amidst the tables. I was enthralled to see a flock of vultures disembowling something unfortunate on the big screen. Talk about ambiance!
Well tomorrow we are going to try and get an early start so we can spend the day at Iquazu falls and since its already 2:00 a.m. I suppose I'd better blog off, so ciao for now,
J
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Iguazu Falls - Argentina / Brasil / Paraguay
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