The falls, Posadas, the heat and Buenos Aires. And it hasn’t rained for the past four days. This week just keeps getting better. Iguazu falls meet with all the superlatives. I won’t even try to describe them. Scenes that I had previously thought were a photo-shopped collage appear before you. The heat was incredible, we had a lovely bright day with fluffy clouds skidding across blue skies. Kizzy pointed out at the first sight that it was very different from Niagara Falls. Although the Iguazu falls extend a long way from one side to the other, the volume of water you see in the first glimpse from the Brazillian side seems a little underwhelming. Then you round the bend and the sheer volume and spectacle take your breath away. It was stunning, see the photos. 
We had been to the Itaipu dam the previous evening (the biggest dam in the world for a brief time) but Kizzy was not impressed. She was still reeling from “the most amazing ice cream in the world” and for only 80p, that she had discovered at the bus station that afternoon. It was pretty amazing – the ice cream was taller than the cone - but in 37 degree heat we had to eat it quick and missed the photo op.
We ventured over to the Argentinian side of the falls on Tuesday and around the time we were passing through Brasillian border control the heavens opened with monsoonal rain … that continued for the next 6 hours. We decided to wait it out in our hostel. A friend of ours went to the falls that day and came back utterly bedraggled and with his camera completely waterlogged and now completely unresponsive. The next day the clouds were still threatening so we took the bus 5 hours south to Posadas, in the Missiones region, in order to make the quick dash across to Encarnacion, Paraguay, and the ruins of the Jesuit mission at Trinidad the following morning. We met a chap from Derry, Sean, coming off the bus and together navigated to the only hostel in town. Posadas was a revelation. We were only there for a stopover and yet we found a truly lovely little city. A pleasant and well-ordered grid system. Some nice bars and restaurants. A wonderful hostel with a friendly manager. And a pleasant and well-used waterfront, crowded with restaurants and people jogging and power-walking. It helped that this was the first day in South America that we didn’t get rained on. We had a pleasant dinner out with Sean, a few beers, and then the next morning the three of us hopped across the Rio Parana to Paraguay. Sean to get a new camera and Kizzy and I to find the missions.
Encarnacion was startlingly different from Posadas. In Paraguay it is known as the Pearl of the South. It was hard to see why: it’s fairly dusty and run down. I was a little overcome by the heat and left Kizzy and Sean to struggle with the exchange rate (about P$7,000 to £1). After a leisurely brunch in the main square we caught a bus about 30km north to the mission site, taking something of a risk as we needed to get back to Encarnacion, back into Argentina, across town to our hostel for our bags, and out of town to the bus terminal in time to catch our (quite pricey) 8:40 bus to Buenos Aires overnight. We made it in the end, but cut it a little fine as it took us an hour and 10 minutes to cross the 600m bridge between Paraguayan and Argentinian border control.
Waiting around in Paraguay was another cultural experience. Men with guns patrolled all the banks and public spaces. Lots of men and women spent their time wandering around trying to sell the most random collection of unwanted household consumables. A general sense of aimlessness made its way across the faces of most of the locals, although perhaps that was just the dry heat. Then again, at the bus station there were all sorts of games going on between the drivers and the hawkers, some of them not at all pleasantly conducted. One of the hawkers was allowed to sell on our bus on the provision that he kept all the other hawkers off. He took that as an opportunity to nip out of the bus and clatter a smaller bloke over the back of the head before dashing back onto the bus and out of reach of retribution, laughing all the while at his fine joke. Kizzy remarked that it had the feel of a developing country, but I’m not sure there was that much development going on. I believe there are proposals to redirect the river course meaning that a good chunk of the Zona Baja region will be flooded and this seems to have halted any repair and restoration activity in the whole town.
The Trinidad mission was an impressive and well-maintained site. There was no information in English, but having really loved the movie “The Mission” I felt like I had the right soundtrack to pick through the ruins. The day remained glorious and sunny and thankfully we made it back to our bags and our bus on time, although not without making Kizzy run pretty much all the way from border control to our hostel!
We’ve now been in Buenos Aires for two days and Kizzy is in love with our new home. Two weeks here will be perfect to relax and settle down. We start Spanish classes tomorrow and I’m looking forward to getting some communication skills – Brazil and Portuguese was a very big challenge for me. Buenos Aires is beautiful and handsome and displays it particularly well in the sunshine. Everywhere you look are attractive art-deco and colonial exteriors. The public buildings are grand and set in spacious plazas dotted with public art and monuments. The fine art gallery has free entry, as does the Recoletta cemetery (the eternal real estate of choice for BA’s finest) and there are extensive well maintained parks to the north of the city centre. The climate and the scenery remind me a lot of Melbourne, where I grew up, but the buildings in the city centre are less conservative and it is all the more pleasing for it. This sense of familiarity has served to emphasise some of the differences. As we wandered through town on the first day we passed some of the central green spaces, small plazas and garden squares and the like, and there tents and other shelters dotted around them, under trees or in some out of the way corner. One of them had a child’s tricycle. In front of another was a boy of three or four sitting calmly on a mattress, watching us pass. And elsewhere a young girl, five years old perhaps, was washing in a fountain.
It’s now Sunday afternoon, and we’re off to see the city on its day of rest, picnic lunch packed and with lush parks awaiting us. School starts tomorrow – we have to leave home at 8am. We’re also into serious budget mode with school fees replacing long distance bus travel as our number one cost. We’re hoping to meet some new friends in class and perhaps some of those we met further north will join us in BA in the next week.
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