En Vuelta (pt. 3)

The Asuncion terminal was a little bigger than Santa Cruz terminal. It wasn´t nearly as busy though, which may have been due to the fact that it was near midnight. Like I mentioned before, there was a good number of people, like 6 or 7 of us making the connection. Most of the others were heading into Brasil, Sau Paulo or Brasilia. I only had five more hours to ciudad del este; they had more than twenty until they arrived to their destination.

Anyway, the Bolivian boy, Victoria, my twin, some others, and I waited for not more than fifteen minutes outside at the terminal before boarding the next bus. The leader stayed with us until we safely boarded, taking it upon himself to make sure that we made the connection. He seemed to be friends with a lot of people in the terminal, as I saw him run into two terminal workers who were his friends.

I also bought some bottled water for my traveling companions. Oh, I forgot to mention that the leader was pretty drunk. At the last rest stop, he had purchased a liter of beer. He slowly finished the beer as we approached Asuncion, and therefore became slowly more drunk toward the end of the trip. I offered him one of the bottles I bought, but he turned it down, saying that it would have an undesired effect on him.

So we boarded the bus. Sitting in front of me there was a guy about my age who had actually been sitting in front of me in the last bus. But for some reason, we hadn´t really talked at all. So we talked for about twenty minutes. He told me that he had started his trip in Lima, Peru, where he had lived for a while even though he was born in Asuncion, and that he was continuing on to see his father in Sao Paulo. He would be on a bus for almost three and a half days straight. I forget his name but I´m sure that it began with an ¨n¨. He was twenty one years old, and was working as an auto mechanic in Lima before traveling. He was looking forward to seeing many, dark-skinned women in Brazil. I couldn´t blame him.

We stopped talking as soon as the bus left the station. I slept for the rest of the trip.

I was awoken by the azafata a few minutes before we arrived in ciudad del este. I mentioned before that there was a guy I´d met who was traveling to Puerto Iguazu from ciudad del este. Once I got off the bus in ciudad del este (at a street corner- there was nothing resembling a bus terminal), I could not find this man. Great. I would have to fend for myself. Luckily, this was not too difficult.

A man standing on the street corner told me that I could take cab across the corner. And there was a cab less than 20 meters from where I was standing. Easy. I hopped in the cab. I realized that in my wallet, I had a 50 dollar bill, and a small amount of pesos, bolivianos, and guarinis. I wasn´t sure that I´d be able to pay him with this money, so I told him we may have to stop by an ATM at some point, especially considering that I wasn´t sure if there would be any fees at Paraguay or Argentina immigration. We stopped at two ATMs in ciudad del este, only to find that both only accepted mastercard bank cards. I have a visa. I decided to risk it and told the cab driver, Enrique to push forward across the border, hoping that if I had insufficient funds after immigration, that we could stop at an ATM in Argentina.

Oh, I should mention something about ciudad del este. I didn´t know this before traveling there, but my spanish teacher informed me that ciudad del este is very dangerous. It is know for two things, both of which are kinda connected. The first is that many Argentinians will go to ciudad del este to get good bargains on dvds, electronics, and such. The reason for the this is that these goods were stolen, which brings me to the other interesting fact. Apparently, there are strongholds for Hezbollah and al Qaeda in ciudad del este. There were some bombings on a Jewish building in Argentina in 1994. It is believed that a lot of the logistical support for these terrorist attacks came from groups in ciudad del este.

So we make our way to Paraguay immigration. This takes about a minute. It would have taken less time, but the dude who stamps my passport stamps the wrong date at first (July 21st instead of July 12th). So he has to cancel a stamp and apply the correct one.

Don´t have to pay anything. Nice. We drive through Brazil, which you have to do to get to the Argentinian border. So I was in Brazil for a little while even though I don´t have the passport stamp to prove it. Getting into Argentina turns out to just as easy getting out of Paraguay. And minutes later, Enrique and I are cruising through Puerto Iguazu, which is Argetina´s version of a tourist town. We arrive at the bus terminal- I want to buy my ticket home to BsAs before I see the cataratas. Unfortunately, I don´t have money to pay Enrique. He would have accepted the 50 dollar bill, but then I would be losing a lot of money. So we look for another ATM, which turns out to be very close to the bus terminal. Luckily, this one is functional. I take out some money, pay Enrique, and he drives off. I then walk back to the bus terminal, buy my ticket for a bus that leaves at 2 PM. It´s a cochecama. I´m pretty excited for this because it seems as though it will be my most luxurious travel experience during the return.

It´s 7 in the morning at this point. The park opens at 8. I stop off at a cafe, enjoy a cafe con leche and a tostado (ham and cheese melted on toast). I then find a cab to the park. My cabbie is nice enough to walk me into the park.

I had the impression that I could just walk around the park for a little while. Well, when I get there, I find that there are tours, one of which takes you on a boat into one of the waterfalls. Having spent so much time traveling, I have the attitude of what the hell, I´m here so I might as well go all out. So I take the boat tour. This turns out to be pretty awesome. The motor boat is really fast. Going into the falls is quite exciting. A bunch of my clothes get soaked, but that´s no big deal. And I´m able to get some good pictures

The falls are pretty incredible. Very beautiful. Words won´t really do them justice. So I hope that anyone reading this gets a chance to see my pictures when I return. After the boat tour, I walk around the park a little more. I take this little train to a set of falls called garganta del diablo. It´s pretty awesome.

At one oclock, I take a cab from the park to the bus terminal. It turns out that our first bus is not a cochecama, but that we will board a cochecama after four hours on this normal bus. I´´m a little upset since I was under the impression that I was buying a ticket for a 16 hours trip on a cochecama. I think about trying to get a little money back from the bus company, but decide that my Spanish is probably not good enough to argue. And I would probably only be able to get back 10 pesos or so, so three dollars didn´t really seem like it was worth it.

The trip back was incredibly uneventful. The time in the cochecama was nice. I was able to lay nearly horinzontal, and I drank wine with dinner which was adequate though not as good as what I expected based on the stories I´d heard from others. I didn´t really talk to anybody because I was sitting in a row of single seats. I was actually sitting in the last seat on the second floor (it was a double decker). If you even get the chance to take a cochecama, do not take seats toward the back of the bus. The engine is very loud, which makes it impossible to hear the movie which was playing. On our bus, they showed the Da Vinci Code, which I wanted to see but was not able to due to the noise.

So the bus ride turned out to be 18 instead of 16. But I arrived back in Retiro at 8 in the morning last Thursday and was able to make it to class by 9. All in all, a great trip. An experience I will not forget. Hope you all enjoyed the stories from it.