He has shown you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: to walk justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8

Monday, June 15, 2009

Iguazu Waterfalls- Argentina


I don't know where to begin in my description of my incredibly crazy fabulous weekend in Argentina. The Iguazu Falls are the largest waterfalls in the world- not the highest, but the most water flowing over them. The "Garganta del Diablo" or the "Devil's Throat" is the most powerful, beautiful, amazing creation of God that I've ever seen in my life. Here's a little run-down of my weekend with Ashley.


  • Thursday night- we catch a bus leaving for Encarnacion, Paraguay at 1:30 AM. 5 hours later, we arrive in Encarnacion, and hop on another bus to take us accross the Argentinian boarder (a bridge --about 10 minutes).

  • Argentina says, "You left Paraguay without an exit stamp. Go back and get it." So we go back to Paraguay and ask to leave. They stamp us and we go BACK to Argentina.
  • Argentina: we take a taxi to the bus terminal and hop on another bus that brings us the next 5 hours to Puerto Iguazu where the waterfalls are located. THIS bus, by the way, was the nicest bus i've ever been on in my life- seats layed almost all the way down with comfortable pillows and coffee and snacks. We were on the 2nd level too! very fun.
  • Next comes the hotel/hostel search. After a quick look at a skeevy place, we found a nice looking hostel for CHEAP and booked a private room for 2 nights. The cross-eyed, but amazingly helpful and nice hostel man told us where to change our money, and what to do on our first night in Puerto Iguazu.

  • We went to a crazy tree museum thing- very fun! then we went to Tres Fronteras (3 Frontiers) where Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil all meet in the same corner.

  • Next, yummy yummy italian dinner, booked jungle adventure tour for the next morning and hit the beds.



  • Wake up! Iguazu Falls time! Jungle 4x4 tour was fun, yet no monkey sightings. Next motor boat ride into the falls. Ashley and I were prepared with plastic bags for everything, extra shoes, and heavy duty ponchos. We were the only non-soaked passengers on that boat. (Let me remind you that it is WINTER down here in South America...)




  • Now time to explore on foot. Well, kinda. We found a natural bathroom. Then we explored the island in between Brazil and Argentina. We were stalked by two Brazilian men who turned out to be a famous Brazilian soccer player and his agent. We exercised the gift of tongues and actually understood their Portugese better than they understood our Spanish. Ahsley told them about Jesus and we subsequently lost them in the jungle.

  • The waterfalls were absolutely amazing. I can't describe them.
  • Back to our hostel at night. We walked around the town, meeting more Brazilians, understanding Portugese (WHAT?! yes! true!), eating more yummy yummy food and then went to bed.


  • We left Argentina at 7:30am and arrived home at 9:00pm. Argentina-Paraguay bus was lovely and beautiful (5 hours). Paraguay bus... well, let's just say that our frugality surfaced, and when we found a cheap bus was leaving immediately, we jumped on it. The 6 hour ride was.... umm not as comfortable: weird man stared at us for an obsene amount of time and the bus filled up with fat men who stuck their bellies in Ahsley's face for a few hours (she was on the asile and handled it with patience and grace!)

And that was my weekend! It's hard to believe that I've been to another country and back in just a few days. I really loved Argentina. The people were incredibly helpful and nice. We had no trouble communicating with anyone and I highly reccommend a trip to Iguazu Falls!


4 comments:

jm said...

I don't know what to say except WOW. I am impressed!! You not only navigated around the country well, but had a great time! I love the pictures!!
Glad you and Ashley are having fun together -- been praying for both of you.

ps - Natural Bathroom?? I'm cracking up.

Rob said...

Wow! Sounds like a blast! A friend of mine is headed to Paraguay. I told her to look for ya. :-)

Jim said...

Looks and sounds like an awesome trip! You always do fun crazy stuff. Sounds like you and ashley are great travel buddies. And I couldn't help but smile at the similarities between your bus ride home and the NYC subway during rush hour. Oh those creepy guys...

Miss Hannah said...

Hey, Erin...that's quite an adventure. Glad to read you are taking time to have some fun! Praying for you : )