Iguazú

This weekend, Katherine and I went on an adventure. The plan: Iguazú falls. These are famous waterfalls on the river that creates the border between Brazil and Argentina. The bus that goes there from Asuncion takes you all the way to the Brazil side, but Kat didn't have a visa for Brazil, so we were told we had to get off in Ciudad del Este, the city just on the Paraguay side of the border.

So, we followed the rules and got off of our bus at the bus terminal in Ciudad del Este though I'm pretty sure no one would have cared if we just stayed on...where we proceeded to wait for another bus that would take us to the Argentina side of the falls, where you don't need a visa to get in and we would be able to spend the night. The bus never came. (The lesson: don't get off your bus unless someone makes you.)

So, instead we just found dinner and a hotel in Ciudad del Este, drank some wine...

                           ate some chocolate...

                            played some cards....

and talked about life. Sorry, no pictures of that.

And then I asked Kat to throw cards in the air for me. I know I've found a good friend when I find one who will indulge my photographic whims with a smile...

And then we slept. In beds much more comfortable than the one I've been sleeping in for the past two months. Wonderful. We woke up bright and early Sunday morning, drank some cocido and ate some bread in true Paraguayan fashion, and decided to hop a bus into Brazil, having heard that you don't need a visa to go just for the day.

So we got on the bus and kindly asked the bus driver to drop us off at immigration, which he did. But the border people weren't too keen on letting visa-less Katherine into their country. The lesson: don't get off your bus unless someone makes you. Are you noticing a pattern here? Well, we're either slow learners, or else someone has drilled it into our heads far too many times that rules need to be followed, at least when it comes to immigration.

What do you do when one country won't take you? Go to another, of course. So we walked across no-man's-land and right back into Paraguay...

...where we hopped a bus to Argentina instead. By this time we'd learned our lesson: don't get off your bus unless someone makes you. Well, this time someone made us. But Argentina was happy to let us into their country. Thank you, Argentina.

Unfortunately, the gray and gloomy weather didn't seem to scare off the other hoards of people. As hypocritical as it may be, just because I'm an English-speaking, camera-toting white girl, doesn't mean I want to hang out with other English-speaking, camera-toting (poncho-wearing) white people. Okay, so a good number of them were from Argentina, but the point remains: tourists.

But anyway. Then we saw some waterfalls. And they were beautiful.

And then we got on a bus that drove us through Brazil  to get back to Paraguay, and five-billion more buses (I exaggerate) to get back to Asuncion. But everything worked like clockwork this time. Buses even came when people said they would. Which, quite frankly, is a miracle. It turned out to be a good adventure.