Tuesday and Wednesday were spent doing homework, running errands and getting ready to leave again Wednesday night. Monday night, I went to my program director’s house for a useless dinner about our progress in the program and life in general.
Sierra and I left Wednesday night at 9:15 to head to Esteros de Iberá (esteros are wetlands/swamps). We arrived in Mercedes, Corrientes, Argentina at 5:30 AM Thursday and tried to find a bus to Colonia Carlos Pelligrini (where the Esteros are located). We were told about the possibility of four different buses (we’re not really sure if any existed) at 7 AM, 11 AM, 12 PM, and 1 PM. We finally decided to share a 4x4 (small pick-up truck) with an older Argentine couple for the two hour, 120 km drive. The dirt road from Mercedes to the Esteros is not that bad of a drive and we were really tired, so I don’t really remember it to well. Once we got there, we realized it would not be that easy to get back or onward to Posadas so we wandered around town with our driver trying to figure out what we should do. We didn’t know if we should take a boat launch and then return to Mercedes or explore more or stay the night. We finally found a man who had a couple staying at his house who were also trying to get to Posadas. We went to the inn/house/ranch and met them and found out that it was possible to get to Posadas the next morning.
We spent Thursday walking around the nature reserve. We met the people who were going to drive us to Posadas; a couple who ran a safari/excursion company in Colonia Carlos Pelligrini. The wife, a 30-something Japanese woman named Akari, informed us that her English (after a few years of living in Canada) was better than her Spanish. We hung out with her and her 17-year old Argentine brother-in-law who didn’t speak English for some of the afternoon looking at monkey and caimen. She took us on a walk to the part of the jungle where the monkeys live. We saw four monkeys (two female adults and two babies). Caimen are like crocodiles and there was a family of them in the water right near the road (aka 20 feet away from where I was standing). We also saw some birds near the water. Then while Akari was in the ranger station, the brother-in-law, Sierra, and I went into the woods and saw a lizard thing. It was kinda scary because we weren’t on the path, but we only really saw its tail (it looked like a humongous gecko). Then, Sierra and I returned to the inn and met the British couple, Henry and Jo. We tried to find the boa constrictor they had seen the day before (it hangs out near the rocks on the side of the road in the afternoon sun). Henry spotted the tail end of the snake as it went back under the rocks, but none of us girls saw it. After that, the four of us walked around “town,” went to the central square and an artist’s house.
We ate dinner together at this family house/restaurant. Then we went on a night safari. This time, the husband, wife, and brother-in-law took us in their Land Rover. The husband, Gaston, an Argentine with a pony-tail and camouflage jacket, was a DJ in Spain when he and Akari met two years ago (she was there studying), which meant that his iPod video accompanied various parts of our safari. He took us back down the road towards Mercedes where we saw an armadillo, capybara (including babies), swamp deer, raccoons, fox, and even caught a glimpse of these little rodents that can only be found in this part of Argentina. The best part was when we stopped at one point to look at the stars. We were so far out in the middle of nowhere, with no light for at least 20-30 km, that the sky looked like we were inside a planetarium. It was practically a perfect bubble with stars literally all around us. The only other time I’d seen stars like this were on the ferry between Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod. It was surreal to be standing in South America looking at this bubble of stars including shooting stars.
The next morning we woke up and had the standard Argentine breakfast: tea and toast, with marmalade or dulce de leche. However, it included veggie marmite (courtesy of the British), which I will never eat again. It was sort of this and somewhat/very disgusting, but I guess could grow on you….or not. Then, Gaston, his brother, and Akari arrived with the Land Rover. We put our backpacks on top and piled in for the 3 hour, 210km dirt road to Posadas. Henry and Jo were on their way to Iguazú and Sierra and I were going to see Jesuit ruins. This was the first week of Henry and Jo’s 9 month tour around the world (they’ve done several big trips and been to many incredible places before). They started in Buenos Aires, then went to the Esteros, then Iguazú, then are continuing down through Argentina to Patagonia and up Chile before they fly to Easter Island for a week, then Fiji (I think) and then New Zealand and Australia. (I think there might Thailand and something else in southeastern Asia in there also). They were super interesting and nice people with a lot of travel tips and ideas.
We finally got to Posadas, it was weird to be in a city again (not that Posadas is really a city). We went first to an ATM so we could pay for our ride (everything turned out to be more expensive than we thought and Sierra had forgotten her money in Recoleta (BsAs)). Then, the four of us found the colectivo to get to the bus terminal. Henry and Jo bought tickets while all of us rushed to find buses which were leaving in two minutes. We thought we were going on different buses because we were at different ticket windows so we said good-bye and ran (Sierra and I could buy tickets on the bus because we were getting off very soon). We wound up on the same bus, Sierra freaked a little because we got on without paying…I have a bit more bus experience to know that you can pay once on the bus and still get off at your stop. We ate a milanesa sandwich on the bus (milanesa is a piece of breaded and fried meat, eaten hot or cold, with lettuce and tomato….i would never eat this in the US, but it only costs a peso or two and is the quickest, most abundant food in the entire country…it also never contains anything I’m allergic to).
We arrived in San Ignacio and headed for the Jesuit ruins. We left our backpacks with the gate people for free, which would never happen in the US, because there you have to pay for everything and entered the ruins. We didn’t take a free tour because the groups were ridiculously large and our choices were teenagers or old people, neither of which excited us. We wandered around the living spaces, jail, school, church, cemetery, and government building in the ruins. Some parts were especially nice, but I decided that I am completely jaded by Macchu Picchu and no ruins will be able to compare. Then, we tried to find Horatio Quiroga’s house (Uruguayan born Argentine writer). We realized it was too far on foot and were way to tired to try to find the remise (taxi). While waiting for the colectivo, I talked to an Argentine girl who was about to finish colegio (meaning she was about 17 or so). She was completely impressed that Sierra and I had taken the time to come to her part of the world to see these ruins and that we were from the US and living in Buenos Aires (she had never been to the city, but hopes to go after graduation). It made me think how lucky we are to have the opportunity to travel and see the world.
Upon arrival in Posadas, Sierra and I determined that spending the night there was the best plan. We found a hotel in the center of the city for $35 pesos a night ($12 dollars US), which is a fantastic price. We left our stuff and walked around for a little while: saw the center with the church (standard south America). Then we went to find food for dinner. We found a few bar/restaurants with outdoor seating (Posadas is up north where its warmer). We had hamburgers and fries while people watching and chatting. I tried to order a martini which was $4.5 pesos on the menu (really cheap for a mixed drink), but it turned out to be a bottle of alcohol (we’re not really sure what it was, but I refused it when the waiter came). That price for a bottle of almost any kind (not Quilmes, the local beer), is really incredible and really shocked us. Then we went across the street for ice cream, which by the way is so much better than in the states because its more like gelato and all of the fruit flavors are made with water, not milk. Luckily they had my absolute favorite, grapefruit!!! We ate our ice cream while walking around the plaza, then returned to our hotel, showered, and went to bed.
Saturday morning we left Posadas for Resistencia (another city 5 hours away). We arrived in Resistencia at 2ish and left our bags at the bus terminal (this time we had to pay 2 pesos each…boooo). We walked around town trying to find as many sculptures as possible. Resistencia is a city which considers itself an open-air museum. There are more than 200 or so sculptures all over the city (they are more frequent than traffic lights). We got a map from the tourist booth (the woman was so happy to see us, I think we were some of the only tourists that day). We spent the day walking around. The city is really interesting. For some reason, there are immigrants there from all over the world. The plazas are named for the different countries, like Ukraine and Bulgaria. It’s really bizarre because Resistencia is the provincial capital of Chaco, which contains a region called chaco, which is a brutally hot, dry area. The locals told us we were lucky because we arrived on a day that wasn’t hot, it was about 80ºF. we had lunch at another outdoor café, while trying to plan our travels for this summer. We did a little shopping in the central plaza where stands were set up by local indigenous people. Very few indigenous people remain in Argentina, they were pushed out when the Spaniards settled the country. The remaining groups live in the north, near Posadas and Resistencia, and also in the northwestern provinces of Salta, Tucumán, and Jujuy.
Then, we headed for the bus station to get our 12 hour bus to Buenos Aires. Bus travel in Argentina is actually fantastic. It beats bus travel in the US, Britain, and the Balkans and plane travel anywhere. When your bus arrives, you check your bags and are given a claim ticket, which is really important because you must have the ticket to get your bag back. You get on the bus where the seats go back a lot more than in the US and you have a leg thing which supports your thighs and acts as a foot rest at the same time. There are movies (mostly American, with subtitles and sometimes sound in Spanish or in our case, Portuguese). The bus company provides you with unlimited coffee and hot water and they feed you. We had ham and cheese sandwiches, muffins and cookies at night, then biscuit/cookies for breakfast. The buses are comfortable and everyone sleeps.
We arrived in Buenos Aires Sunday morning and went home. My host mom wasn’t home because she had gone to her beach apartment for the weekend (when she heard I was going out of town, she decided to also). I was supposed to come back on Tuesday, but we decided we didn’t need a day in Posadas and we didn’t really want to go to Corrientes (city). I spent the day working on my History of the US paper, grocery shopping and organizing my laundry.
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