Iguazu Falls!!!

Fantastic weekend to Iguazu Falls. A group of 6 of us, which turned into a group of 9, spent the weekend visiting Iguazu Falls. I learned a lot from this weekend, especially about with who and how I like to travel. Iguazu is about a 2 hour flight from Buenos Aires, or a 18 hour bus ride. Taking buses places is really popular in Argentina. We decided to take a bus because it was only $150 round trip instead of $300 round trip. On Friday, Kelsey and I told our group to meet at the Pepperdine house at 1:00 pm to get to the bus station by 2:10 pm. One person wanted to meet us there, another forgot her passport, another forgot his credit card, two others decided they wanted to make a last minute grocery store stop (I know that doesn't add up to 9, but others went with the people who forgot stuff). So Kelsey and I were left just the two of us and it was 1:30 pm by the time everyone had shown up and left to do their separate errands. We made our way to the bus station, which was so huge. There were over 150 desks of different bus companies, similar to checking in at an airport. Our tickets were at desk #121. The attendants pretended they didn't speak English, so I made a complete fool out of myself trying to explain that I was here to pick up tickets. We got on the bus and ran into another group of Pepperdine students doing the same trip we were. Altogether there were 14 of us on the bus. I'm sure everyone else hated us. The bus ride was actually not that bad for being 18 hours long. We left at 3:00PM and stopped many times to pick up more people along the way before arriving in Puerto Iguazu at 9:30AM on Saturday. The food on the bus was disgusting, but the boys were very appreciative to take Kelsey and my meals. Everyone was jealous when Kelsey and I took out Peanut Butter for dinner. For the most part, we all slept well. Our seats only reclined a little bit, but somehow I managed to fall asleep.

Once we were in Iguazu, we went to our hostel, Hostel-Inn, to drop of our bags. The hostel is probably the biggest hostel I will ever see. It had a huge eating area, lounge area, swimming pool, ping pong, pool tables, someone to help with activities, bbqs, free brazilian dance show, and more. We dropped our bags and made it to the falls. The whole morning was very slow because everyone had their own agenda of what needed to be done before getting to the falls. Once at the park, we first went on the lower falls circuit where we got on a boat to get close to the bottom of the falls. We took off our shirts and put on life vests and got on the boat. They drove us around the bottom of the two different falls and then drove us under a tiny fall coming off the island in between the two huge ones. Kelsey and I thought the ride was over, but they started driving towards the smaller of the two huge falls. All of a sudden, we were driving straight into the falls. It was so scary, I was under Iguazu Falls. The Iguazu Water Falls actually were falling on top of me. After coming out from under the falls, we were completely soaked, shorts, tennis shoes, socks, and all. Then, the driver took us under again. Kelsey and I thought that one time was enough....it was so scary. After the boat, Kelsey and I wanted to take the train to the falls called Devil's Throat. The train closed early, so we wanted to make sure we spent lots of time at Devil's Throat because it is the highlight of the park. The rest of the group wanted to explore the island between the water falls, so we split up. The whole group didn't understand why Kelsey and I wanted to do our own thing, but we were both tired of having to stop and wait for everyone to be able to move on. We stopped to have a cookie break, where Cotis, a native animal, attacked Kelsey and stole our cookies. A park ranger had to get the cookies back from us. We went on the train and then to the Devil's throat. The view and sound was amazing. It was something that you can't take a picture of or describe adequately enough. You have to be there to truly experience it's beauty. We spent a long time just staring at the water falls. You can see Brazil from where we were looking, but the Argentina side seemed better than the Brazil side. We saw the other group going out when we took the train back in. Kelsey and I stopped for a pizza and beer lunch for $3 each....everything is so cheap in Argentina. It started getting cold and rainy, so Kelsey and I relaxed at the Havanna coffee shop, sipping chocolatada (hot chocolate) until our group was ready to leave. Overall, it was an amazing day.

We returned to the hostel, were we fit 9 people in 6 twin beds. The boys complained how expensive the hostel was...40 pesos or $13.... so they tried to sell their beds or half of their bed to the part of our group who didn't have one. The boys also didn't want to spend any money on dinner so bought pasta and cooked it and ate left-over ham and cheese sandwiches from the bus. The girls decided to go into town where we went to a artisan pasta shop and got 1 kilo of pasta, 1 liter of sauce, and 2 liters of drinks for 9 pesos each or $3. Generally, people take dry pasta to go, but they are willing to cook it for you. 1 kilo of pasta is more pasta than you can imagine. When they brought the plates out, we thought that 1 plate would be enough for 2 or 3 people and 1 plate was actually for 1 person. The next morning we woke up and got back on the bus to take another 18 bus ride home. There was a baby and snoring, which made this ride less plesant. Also at one of the bus stops, there was a doctor giving yellow fever shots for free. Kelsey and I were kind of creeped out by the whole thing, but almost half of our bus got of and got shots before continuing, including at least 5 pepperdine students. We got home at 6 am and had class at 9 am. Overall, very good weekend.

My parents and Hilary are now here to visit and we are leaving on Thursday to go to Bariloche, which is the Lake District.