Into Argentina

Salta was our first stop in Argentina. It´s a bustling city, full of students and business people and old colonial buildings. To my delight, they observe the siesta too, so from 1 to 5 men sit around cafes drinking coffee and smoking and looking through papers. Since it was just a stopover point, we did not stick around for long but I did get to take the teleferico (cable car) to the top of a big hill, which was empty and felt like a resort town in winter. The weather has finally evened out now that we are at a lower altitude - Salta smelled wintery and wistful.

From Salta we took a whopping 23-hour bus to Puerto Iguazu on the Brazilian border. Argentine buses are the stuff of legends, so we were all giddy with anticipation for this one. There was an attendant who served us three meals, including wine with dinner, and played shitty American movies. The seat reclined about 150 degrees and was wide enough to sleep on my side. Aah..

Puerto Iguazu is the town closest to Iguazu falls on the Argentine side, so we were expecting a tourist trap with nothing much going for it. But somehow the town manages to accommodate tons of visitors and still keep doing its chill pretty thing. It sits on the intersection of two big rivers, Iguazu and Parana. This intersection, called Tres Fronteras, is the meeting point of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Our first night there, I took a walk along the river over to the lookout to watch the sunset. As it happened, this was the day of the first Argentina game in the World Cup, and the road was lined with groups of people in jerseys pumping music and drinking mate. Everyone, and I mean everyone, had a mate gourd in hand.

It was warm enough to go swimming, so I spent two afternoons at the pool of the fancy hotel in town. And one of the evenings, we stumbled upon an outdoor market selling nothing but cheese, salami, olives, and wine - as we found out, these make up a picada, which is served with crackers and is a typical Argentine snack. There were tables there, so we had a dinner of ham and cheese and salami and chilled red wine.

I've been tiptoeing around the subject of Iguazu Falls, which was of course the whole reason we were to Puerto Iguazu in the first place. That´s because they are difficult to talk about. What I did not realize before I came there was the sheer expanse of the park, and how easy it is to spend a whole day there. You can visit the falls on the Brazil side, where you get to look at them, or the Argentine side, were you get to walk around and up to them and try to wrap your head around what all that power must feel like. They stretch for miles and are surrounded by a lush green forest, which was filled with these amazing creatures. Here again, people were right to insist that it´s a must-see.

It´s been fun being here for the World Cup. The hostels are filled with Europeans sitting around tv´s. Cabbies always want to talk about how the U.S. is doing. There's a big screen set up in one of the squares in Buenos Aires, and people get together to watch matches. Everyone sort of slows down when Argentina is playing, and watching the games is a legitimate excuse to skip work or miss homework.