Misiones and BsAs with the family

Warning: this one will probably be kind of long.



My family came to visit over Easter and it was sooo fun. Mom's cousin, Mary, and her husband, Miguel, were kind enough to share their wealth of knowledge about the city and the country with us as we traveled to the Misiones province in the northwestern part of Argentina between Paraguay and Brazil. We flew into Iguazú and drove to our really cool hotel where Johnny and I shared a reeeally nice room (he was excited). That day we went to the Wanda mines and Johnny thoroughly enjoyed seeing the various types of precious stones and buying piles of them to take home. We also got to see lots of things growing in their natural habitat, such as pineapple, starfruit, yerba mate, and palm hearts, near our hotel on the way to the chapel that overlooks Paraguay.


The following day we went to a little zoo to see the usual zoo animals plus some local ones like the condor and the caotí. Next were the impressive ruins of the Jesuit Mission (hence, Misiones), where 4,500 people lived along with one priest. The stone structures were incredible and the common spaces were enormous; I can only imagine it full of a few thousand people living and working. After nearly melting during the tour of the riuns, we were ready to get back in the car again and stop at Horacio Quiroga's house before finding our cabin in the jungle. I realized, much to my surprise, that I actually like my major (which usually is too much Hispanic literature for me) and was more interested than expected in the incredibly tragic life of Quiroga. I read every word of the information and took pictures of the short story/comic that I had studied before that was featured on the wall of one of the rooms... I really didn't realize that I was interested that much. It was a nice surprise. After finally finishing wandering around there we went into the jungle to find our really cool cabin/hotel place where we all stayed in a literal cabin in the jungle and ate meals in a different cabin with everyone else who was there at the time. It was right in the forest, which was, needless to say, awesome.

Since we were in the forest, the most logical thing to do was obviously to go repelling down a waterfall. Unfortunately, since there hadn't been much rain up there recently, the waterfall was more of a cliff/rockface, but dad and I enjoyed it enough to do it twice, anyway. We finished up the hike from the repelling and ate lunch before another little jungle excursion to see some of the various plant and tree-life that constitute the forest. Unfortunately, and expectedly, I remember not one of the names of the huge trees in English, Spanish, or the native language of Guaraní; I promise that they were really interesting. Dinner was once again delicious, and I should mention (since it was Easter) that, yes, the Easter Bunny did make it to northern Argentina so Johnny and the rest of us had unhealthy amounts of chocolate to eat for dessert.

The day after that we had to get up really early (for me, at least); however, it was definitely my favorite day of the trip because we saw Macona Falls, the world's largest sideways waterfalls via a soaking wet boat ride that took us within about two feet of the wall of the falls. How was it sideways? Well, since dad is really into physics (weird, yes), it was the talk of the day... since the Argentine side of the river is higher, there is a rock face parallel to the flow of the river that let's water fall not with but perpendicular to the flow, making it fall sidways into the lower part on the Brazilian side. The best part was that it isn't commercialized like Iguazú (yet) because not as many people know about it and it's harder to get to/Brazil doesn't want people all over their National Park, so the only way to see it is on one tiny outlook point in Argentina or from very few boat tour places (like the one we used) to drive up the Brazilian side of the river. It was THE COOLEST THING EVER, at least since Patagonia and until the next time something impresses me a lot. I have a million pictures, surprise! I'll put them up after I survive midterms. After the falls we ate and drove all the way back up to Iguazú to check into our hotel, complete with view of Paraguay and Brazil from Johnny's and my balcony, and had a really nice dinner to a Paraguayan harp serenade. It was very pretty.

Speaking of pretty, the next day we saw the enormous and incredible Iguazú falls from an extensive stretch of boardwalks (even one that went right up near the top of the falls from above) as well as another boat ride that got us soaking wet near some of the falls and took us through the rapids below. There were a ton of butterflies everywhere, definitely more than I have seen in one place in my life, and we saw plenty of scavenging coatíes (which are essentially racoons but even cuter and more nosy). The whole park and the falls themselves were awesome and enough to make me ignore how obnoxiously sick I was that day. We then went to the airport to fly home, just in time to make soccer practice and (not) prepare for class the next day.

After our amazing trip, we had dinner with some of my friends so they could all meet each other and then mom, dad, and Johnny spent some time wandering Calle Florida while I had class the following day. We went to an absolutely astounding tango show at Señor Tango with Mary and Miguel, which was complete with incredible dancers, horses on stage in the beginning of the show, and Gloria Estefan in the audience... although it was her fault that the show started late. Johnny got to hang out with Catherine at the hotel and watch TV with room service all night, so we all had a nice evening. The following day we spent cruising the delta in Tigre in Miguel's cousin's really nice boat; it was quite a bit nicer than kayaking around like last time. It was great to be on a boat since I won't be spending this summer on the water for the first time in about ten years, and the weather was perfect. The final day of their visit we had an asado at Mary and Miguel's, which was definitely the best I've had here and included the best panqueques de dulce de leche, my dessert of preference, made by Mary.

Fun fact: the empanada/pizza place across the street from our apartment is so good and we are too lazy to cook often enough that the family that runs it knows us by face and accent. I have seen one of the women nursing her child more times than I would like, and we always see them sitting around drinking mate together as we walk in and out or pass by on the way home. We often invite people over to study for the express purpose of using them as an excuse to order food, and some of our friends are equally addicted and will make similar excuses to come over and order from there. My goal is to walk in one day and they will know which kind of empanadas I want already or have a margarita pizza in the oven before I even ask for it. It's a long shot, but I'm working on it...