Friday was the last day at school. Jipeee, vacation!!! I have to say, the lessons really got to me... Languages aren't really my strong suite as my colleagues may tell you. Well, it was definitely fun. This was due to the great group we were, including our teacher.
After school I went for lunch and then back to the hostel to pack my backpacks... I really have to get rid of some things but am reluctant to do so. After that I took a taxi to Retiro. It's a huge bus station. It's kind of like an airport terminal only for buses leaving the capital in every direction.
Here you can see the back third! Busses arrive here every minute and just like in an airport are displayed on screens.
Then, after some minutes delay my bus operated by "Crucero del Norte" arrived. In these busses you can select between three categories (by the way, Cama is Spanish for bed):
- Semi Cama (the cheapest one, similar to Greyhound I guess),
- Cama Ejecutivo (seats as you find them in business class in an airplane, reclineable to 160° including food and beverages) and last but not least
- Cama Suite (basically first class with all the bells and whistles).
The bus chosen by me only offered Cama Ejecutivo. And just as in a plane there was a, well, bus attendent who attended to our needs.
The jung lady just about 160cm tall, but 170cm with shoes, I'm really not exagerating. I really feared that she would break a leg. Well, as she was serving food she'd slipped into shoes without heels. Respect to the jung lady and how she handeled it all by herself.
Before dinner she served Whisky, if you wanted one. Followed by food similar to that in planes and just as tasty :-| Followed by champagne or wine or whatever if you liked. In my case a can of beer along with my meal :-) With the seats and the food I was able to pass the 18h quite comfortably. They also had movies but the plug in my seat was defective so I had no sound and the Internet access didn't work as well.
The great thing about travelling by bus is that you see so much of the country side. You see all the ground where the jungle was rooted-out. Now there are monocultures of pine trees used for phone masts or paper. The road is, how can I describe this, rather bumpy. Close to the city it's like any good highway but the rest is rather very bumpy. Also as soon as you leave the city the villages and houses get more basic and often times the roofs are made of corrugated sheet metal.
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Saturday, 02. December 2017
Around 01:45 p.m. I arrived in Puerto Iguazu. Getting out of the bus I walked into a wall. 30° and a guesstimated 70-80% humidity, wow.
But I'm staying in a nice hotel in the middle of the rainforest. Here you even have lizards crossing your path, the young ones bein already 30cm long, cool :-) There's also a pool but I haven't used it yet as I'm quite stressed out. As sayed, I was in the hotel around 02:30 p.m. and had some lunch after that. Then the guy from the travel agency showed up and I booked the full moon tour for the same day, departure 07:30 p.m. In hindsight this may have been a little optimistic to start of my first day like that. I have a tour also on Sunday.
Unfortunatedly they only had a place for the third and latest tour available. That was not ideal as the moon was already rather high by that time and I wasn't able to get it on the picture any more. It's certainly a great view and a wet one at that... Unfortunately I wasn't that well prepared and you only have about 30min before you have to return. Anyhow, it was a great evening. Around midnight I was back at the hotel.
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Sunday, 03. December 2017
06:45 a.m. my alarm goes off. Are they crazy?! Just a few more minutes, it's forever until 07:45 a.m. Damn, 07:05, what happend to the time? Now quickly, getting dressed and putting one sunscreen. That's just enough time for a quick breakfast until they pick me up for the day tour to the waterfalls.
Together with 10 others (Italians, Brazilians and Argentinians) I go back to the park. However, today I have to pay $500 entrance fee to the park. Wow, they sure know how to make money...
Just as the night before we take the little train to the main attraction, "Gargnata del Diablo" or the "Devils Throat". In the little train you're sitting like sardines. On an average day they have about 3500 visitors here. In 2016 they had round about 1.3 million visitors. This makes the park the biggest attraction in Argentina and an important economic factor. Visitor numbers continue to grow by about 5-7 percent anually if I've understood this correctly.
This is how "Garganta del Diablo" looks at day and this time I was prepared. However, it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been 12h earlier. To get there you have to walk about 1 km on elevated paths. They are about 1.5m - 2m above the water level. About 3 years ago there was a huge flood and the paths were submerged by about 2m! The park had to be closed for 6 months. Here's a picture of the remains.
What you see a lot are coatis. Big, small, jung, old and whole families of them. Smart as they are they have come to acknowledge that tourists often cary food. So they gladly mount tables and benches to step into your plate or rumage through your backpack. If you then make the mistake and try to take it away things get bloody quickly. Well, their teeth are quite long but nothing a few stichers can't fix...
For the first time I've seen monkeys in the wild, cool.
Due to a lot of rain in Brazil the water level is quite high and out of many small waterfalls became a few big ones, impressive.
At the end we had a tour with a boat directly to the waterfalls. With temperatures like that it was very welcome and the captains made sure no one stayed dry :-)
The Spanish word for rainjacket is "impermeable", what can I say, nothing was "impermeable" here. At the end we were all wet to our undis, what a great day :-D
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