Well my loverly readers, lot's has happened since the last time I posted. Last week (Jan 19) was exactly halfway through this school year. It's been 19 weeks of 36 and there's still a lot to do between now and the end of May.
The most exciting thing in the last two weeks has been our trip to Iguazu Falls (pictures coming soon). We left at 11 pm on January 19 and arrived in Misiones (northern province literally squished between Brazil and Paraguay) around 3pm the following day. It was a little more than 15 hours there. I slept a little but it was pretty uncomfortable so I took a nap before dinner once we arrived at our hotel. Monday we spent the entire day walking around the falls.
Iguazu Falls is off the Uruguay River and is split between Brazil and Argentina, similar to how Niagra Falls is between Canada and America. It was really pretty. The first thing we did was walk/ride a mini train up to La Garganta del Diablo (the Devil's Throat). It's a gorgeous view of the biggest section of the waterfalls, you can see the Brazilian viewing area from there as well.
We ate lunch at the park's restaurant, La Selva, which was an AMAZING buffet. It was so good, I ate SO much food.
After lunch we walked A LOT. There are paths that allow you to view the falls from various view points. We walked through all the paths for quite a while, taking pictures. Finally we got to the bottom and then realized we had to climb down a billion stairs to where we were going to get on a boat.
Have you head of Maid of the Mist? It's a tour boat company that takes you into Niagra Falls. These boats are not like the ones at Niagra. They are smaller and the drivers take you MUCH closer to the water. We were drenched.
After boating around for a little bit, chancing some pictures when the spray wasn't too much, the driver drove us down stream to where we got out. We dried off, I changed my shoes, some of the group changed clothes, and then we climbed up a bunch of stairs to where we went on a "safari."
Personally, I thought the safari was pretty lame. We were in the rain forest of Argentina so it would make sense to have a safari and see some animals right? Wrong. We saw giant spiders and that's it. Actually, that's not entirely true, the guide pointed out a giant tree that's now protected by law and we saw a toucan when we were unloading. All in all it was a really gorgeous experience. The weather wasn't too hot or humid, it didnt rain at all while we were there. There was LOTS of walking but it was worth it.
Megan is coming in March to visit me during my spring break. She's wanting to go to the falls and I'm looking forward to going back and being able to take better pictures with my nicer camera. I took a really cheap point and shoot camera with me because i wasn't sure if I'd be able to protect my nice camera when we went on the boat ride. Now that I know how everything works and that we get waterproof bags I'm more comfortable taking it with me.
In 2 weeks we have midterms, in three weeks we're going to Peru. This quarter is already pretty much half over. And we have a feriado (holiday) next Thursday. :-)
