Back to happy talk.
This weekend I went to Iguazú Falls with the group and it was quite possibly one of the best weekends ever! Unfortunately I lost the good files of all my photos from the weekend in the robbery, so the facebook versions will have to do.
On Friday morning we left for Iguazú and of course, it was raining like it always is in Buenos Aires. We boarded our morning flight and made it to Iguazú before noon, and eventually headed to our hostel. Originally we were told we would be staying in a four star hotel, so we were all kind of upset to find out it was a hostel, but it turned out to be a really nice place besides the rooms we stayed in. The hostel had a huge pool and a restaurant and bar as well! On the bus on the way to the hostel a representative from an excursion company gave us brochures and we decided to do one of the packages that afternoon! It was pretty inexpensive, and we would be zip-lining, hiking, and wet-rapelling a waterfall! After we got to the hostel, we got ourselves situated and then headed out on our adventure. 
We started by getting into an open air vehicle, and our guide Andres showed us some of the more rural parts of the town on our way into the park. We were in a group with people from all over South America, which was pretty awesome. Andres told us about Puerto Iguazú, and also informed us that zip-lining (or canoping, as they call it) would be our first activity of the day! We arrived at the location for zip-lining and I was beyond excited. Zip-lining has been on my bucket list, and what better place to do it for the first time than in the jungles of Argentina! The entire length of the line was 800m split up over three sections, one longer, and two faster. I wasn't nervous at all, and it was an absolute blast!
 |
| When I ended up in the falls... |
After zip-lining they told us to keep our harnesses on for our little hike, which turned out to be a leisurely walk to the wet-rapelling location. I was really excited for wet-rapelling, but as it turns out I was absolutely terrible at it. The waterfall itself was 14m high, and it looked like it wouldn't be that hard. Unfortunately when it came to be my turn, I slipped before I could even take a real step and managed to body slam the waterfall rocks. Once I finally got a footing I slipped again and ended up right in the waterfall instead of on the side. My knees took a beating from body slamming the rocks, but eventually I made it to the bottom to the laughter and applause of everyone watching...
Wet-rapelling concluded our adventure for the day, and we climbed the stairs back up to our ride which took us home. After that we all got in the pool and swam until it started thundering, so we headed to our rooms and siesta-d for a bit. We were told that dinner would be provided for us, so we headed to the common area of the hostel where we got some drinks and passed the time before dinner! Overall the milanesa dinner was really good, and we had a great night. We met some obnoxious guys from Australia that tried to get us to hang out with them and kept telling us stories about the "Drop Bear." Google it.
Saturday was the day I had been looking forward to on this entire trip, and unfortunately it was a little chilly an rainy. I'm not going to lie, I was an absolute debbie downer all morning because of not having a jacket or anything, and I was dreading every time it would rain. So for the morning I put on a brave face and went with it. We took a bus into the park where we met our tour guide, Carlos. Carlos took the entire group to the train that would take us to the largest waterfall in their system: La Garganta del Diablo (The Devil's Throat). Once we got off the train we walked along a bridge which crossed over a river and eventually we made it. I have no true words to describe just how incredibly massive this waterfall was, but let me just say that niagra looks like a faucet. We spent about a half our or so just appreciating the falls and the view that we have, and despite it being overcast and raining, the view was spectacular. 
We re-boarded the train and it began to rain again, and then we did some more walking through areas of the park. We took a break for lunch and to dry off and then finally the rain let up! We continued to walk and see some of the other amazing waterfalls along the paths, and the sheer magnitude of how many falls there were is just incredible. Every stop seemed picture perfect, and my day really started to pick up then. We eventually got to the bottom of one of the falls, and we saw all the people in ponchos because of the spray at the bottom of the platform. Naturally, we didn't have ponchos, so we all went to the edge and just played in the water and took silly pictures and laughed and it was wonderful. By that point, I didn't care about being cold or wet anymore, and it only made me more excited for what we'd do next...
The boat ride. We had an excursion paid for that would take us under the falls in a speed boat, and we were all extremely excited. We made our way down the path to the boat, where they gave us rubber bags to store anything we needed to keep dry, and we were given life-vests and got on the boat! I don't think any of us realized how soaked we were going to get, but it was beyond anything we thought. First the boat took us to the bottom of a smaller set of falls, where we were able to take pictures until they told us to put our cameras away (I had a waterproof case). They got really close to the bottom and the water poured in the boat and we all just screamed and laughed. They then sped out of that area and started towards a HUGE set of falls, where they did the same thing until we were so close to the fast moving water that the boat was spinning and rocking like crazy! We were literally soaking wet with water, hair dripping not caring whatsoever about it.  |
| The view |
The boat then continued back to the original waterfall for some more fun, and then down the river to our drop-off point. We were able to see Brazil, and then we got off the boat for our "jungle tour" which was basically just a time to get us back to our tour guides. We were all wringing out our clothing and we stopped at a little market before we re-boarde the bus. After this adventure we headed back to the hostel where there was an asado!
 |
| Attractive |
For dinner there was different kinds of meats, along with some free drinks and salads, so we had a great night! We spent the night playing games and talking, and eventually we all made it to bed. Sunday we didn't have much planned so we headed to a precious stones store in the town, but then just hung around the hostel for the rest of the day. Our flight was in the evening so we got back to Buenos Aires around 8 ish, and I was back in my apartment by 9. Overall, it has to be one of my favorite weekends of the trip. If you ever have the opportunity to go, I absolutely recommend it! It's one of the NEW 7 Wonders of the World!
So yeah, I'm not going to let the absolute let down of being robbed of something as valuable as my laptop get me down. I've accepted the fact that it's gone and I've done everything in my power to keep myself secure, like changing passwords and wiping the computer itself with find my iphone. Things like this happen, and I literally have less than three weeks here. A little lack of computer never hurt anyone....
As always, I can't wait to see everyone! Until next time...
- Meagan
No comments:
Post a Comment