Julia and Josh's Adventures Abroad : cute animals

Ok, so maybe it's not that cold.

At long last, cooler winds have descended upon Buenos Aires and Casa Cochabamba. The cold, rainy weather we had heard would come months ago finally came, and quite honestly, I'm not thrilled. Early mornings, however relatively few they may be, have become unbearable. Even with a now-functioning hot water heater and radiator, I emerge from my shower around 7:30 AM needing a jacket to keep from shivering all the way to my room, where the pain of getting dressed is akin to a rite of passage that rhymes with reenrage smirkskumskission (read: painful). A sweater or jacket is now necessary for the full day, not just when leaving the house. (Brief aside: My work wardrobe screams "business casual", usually consisting of jeans or khakis, occasionally donning some nice gray slacks, with at least a polo shirt, but usually a long-sleeve button-down shirt that would be appropriate for any night jaggerbombs. One building requires an access card, while I can walk in and out of others without so much as an odd look. True, there are plenty of suits coming and going, but the majority of workers remain informal, so I usually fit right in. Except one brisk day, when I decided to wear a track jacket instead of a sweater - I didn't even make it half way to the elevator before the security guard asked me where I was going. Maybe it's time to find a more professional coat option...) Last week, we had multiple days in a row of cold, dreary weather that made me long for spring in New England. I'm not saying it's unbearable by any means, but rather, my previously held dreams of evading winter's icy breath for more than a year may be of the pipe persuasion.

No, not that kind of pipe.

Luckily, it wasn't too cold last Friday night when I lit up the parrilla in my first bout as head griller of a grand asado in honor of Jess's last weekend in Buenos Aires. I can't take all the credit - Ulises and Nick provided much needed support. But by and large I was in charge of cooking meat for the masses, and masses there were. I would say the head count topped off at 50 when the house was at it's most crowded, and thanks again to the fact that the rooftop was a bearable locale, all those people were spread between both floors so it wasn't too crowded. Granted, when the food was out on the table and those greedy pigs surrounded it like pigeons landing on an old man handing out bread crumbs, the bottom floor resembled a boliche. Luckily for me, as the first person to see the cooked bits of beef, pork, chicken, and sausage, I could reserve specific morsels of juicy goodness and only had to push through the artery-block of people to gain access to the fixings (shout out to Phil who made a delicious red-pepper sauce that really hit my spicy taste buds). Once people dispersed from the table area, which of course coincided with the end of my tour of duty on the parrilla, the downstairs cleared out a little bit, more people migrated upstairs (for space and a spot next to the heat producing parrilla) and speakers started blasting electronic music (louder than it should have) on both floors.

Well, maybe not that crowded.

We decided to start politely ushering people once five-thirty rolled around, tired from more than seven hours of cooking, hosting, and general revelry. Everyone seemed to have a great time, most important of which was the guest of honor and the fiesta's raison d'être, Jessica. She departed lovely Buenos Aires to return back to Foggy London Town on Monday after spending nearly a full year in our fair city. When all is said and done, she definitely will be nominated for "Best Supporting Actress in Our Blog", and who knows, she may walk away with the award. Her resume includes (sorry if this reads like a biography from a high school Shakespeare production, I swear it's not what I intended): being the reason why we live in Casa Cochabamba, my most consistent Lexulous nemesis and first friend from England, the titles "Bringer of Cheer and Merriment", "Official Supplier of Marmite", "Fastest Speaker Known To Man", and "Guvna' of The House", member of Super Hands, champions of the Monte Hermoso Beach Ultimate 2009, devoted Cadillac, dance instructor to Santi, volunteer at ACORN, and newsletter writer at WIKD. She is an enthusiast of pesto, dancing til the wee hours of the mourning, and buena onda. She will be sorely missed at Cochabamba 478, and I genuinely hope that we cross paths somewhere down the line. We got a new female roommate, and while she is incredibly cute, she will ultimately fail to fill the void left by Jessica. But onward and upward, chin up guvna'.

Governor? Yes, for now. Guvna'? No way.

Not So Quick Post Script: You know what is the problem with commencing the writing process 4 days ago? First, it gives Julia time to write 10 million posts in the meantime, while mine is buried at the bottom since it's published by the date I started writing. Secondly, it gives conditions on the ground time to change; the past two days in Buenos Aires have resembled summer with plus 25 degree Celsius weather - that's above 75 degrees Ferienheit for all you out there unfamiliar with Celsius.

What's funnier is that my blog-posting gaffes are nothing compared to the upcoming midterm elections in Argentina, which have been moved up to late June instead of late October due to the crisis. However, the representatives-elect will still talk office in December, just as if the elections had taken place in October. Amazing, right? Doesn't it make more sense to get these newly elected public officials into office on an equally expedited schedule, seeing as the elections were moved up in order to combat the current state of affairs (or so they say), instead of heeding the traditional one that was trumped in the first place by, no less, the wife of the very President that banned the moving-up of elections in the first place? Doesn't that defeat the so-called purpose of holding early elections? Does any of this make any sense? Who are they trying to fool with these games? Can you imagine if that were the case in the US, especially with this last election? If the election had taken place in late August, much less July - I know, at both of these points neither party had held their conventions and thereby had yet to officially put forth a candidate, but bear with me - there is a very strong chance that John McCain would be President right now and (gulp) Sarah Palin would be Vice-President. Without the economic crisis hitting hard in September, and John McCain's subsequent mismanaging/playing politics with the situation, he could very well have emerged victorious. What a thought. Even though the US electoral system has it's shady attributes (easily hackable electronic voting machines, all types of voter fraud, etc), I think we've got this one right.

The weather may turn back to the cold we experienced earlier this week, for the forecast predicts rain alllllll weekend, which reminds me, Happy Memorial Day everyone! We, too, have a three day weekend, thanks to one-half of the two-part Argentine independence, because let's face it, one day just isn't enough. We need a Constitution Day, End of the Revolutionary War Day, or We Burned The South To The Ground, Stunted Their Economic Growth For Decades To Come, And Left Blacks Out To Dry By Failing To Enforce The Reconstruction Acts But Preserved The Union Day, or something like that. Let's make this happen people, YES WE CAN!

Also, I will not go all Maureen Dowd on you and not give credit where credit is due, and admit that my photos and captions were very much inspired by those included in our friend Andrew's blog posts reviewing the new Star Trek movie. If you haven't read his blog yet, please do (if for no other reason that it's his birthday), he's much better at this stuff than we are. Also, I used this same joke (Maureen Dowd and plagiarism) in commenting on one of his three blogs, so you can see how uncreative I am. Beat that joke to death, baby, no mercy!

The titles may not match, but the scenery looks quite similar

I pose you all a question: what would inspire you to travel from St. Louis to Boston, by bus, only to return just one and a half days later, no matter how nice the bus may be? 19 hours, each way, for a less than 36 hours of fun? We answered that question for ourselves before we departed Buenos Aires for Puerto Iguazú last Friday, confident that our bus-residency would pay off in a

wealth of incredible experiences. Before I even arrived in Buenos Aires, one of my friends from home advised me that I could not leave Argentina without seeing Iguazú Falls, so I had been looking forward to this opportunity for almost a year. Julia, as I'm guessing she will mention in the second half our this two part coverage, had also been excited at the prospect of sitting for nearly one day to see some waterfalls. We were joined by two other characters: Dan, who we met here but knows our previous guest and steadfast blog follower, Alex, from Chicago; and Megan from GW, who had arrived but a few hours earlier after traveling umpteen hours from Washington DC. Megan provided the impetus for making the trek up north and Dan jumped at the opportunity to see the mammoth falls that straddle the Argentina-Brazil border, so the four of us embarked on an epic journey with a thermos of hot water, a tin of yerba de maté, some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (gracias a Megan for the PB), plenty of sunscreen (or, as Julia now calls it after hangi ng around Jessica so much, suncream), and a whole lot of excitement.

Besides giving me time to get to know Dan better, eat some wondefully mediocre bus food (which, along with plane food, is an admitted guilty pleasure of Dan and myself - what can I say, I'm a sucker for mystery meat cubes, lasagna filled with highly processed cheese, and miniature apple tarts), and catch up on podcasts, the bus also gave me the opportunity to c

atch up on some spectacular international cinema: The Transporter 3. You can see from the trailer that this movie has everything: an unattractive female lead who is supposed to be smoking hot, a car that can balance on two wheels while speeding between tractor-trailer trucks, glib retorts to equally glib ultimatums, and Jason Statham with his shirt off. All signs pointed towards this being a must miss, and it most definitely didn't disappoint. Yet, like bus and plane food, it was strangely entertaining and I watched the whole thing, even though I had just watched a really good movie in The Green Mile beforehand. All in all, it was a fantastic afternoon and early evening of movies, and I fell asleep with the assurance that I would wake up to the reincarnation of Eden, just with tourists.

Multiple stops and 7 hours later, I woke up in the meat cooler known as a Via Bariloche bus just outside of Puerto Iguazú, the nearest city to the park. As advertised, our hostel was within blocks of the bus station and many restaurants and boliches. In fact, it was just 50 meters or so from the very boliche in which Nick suggested we dance the night away, Cuba Libre. For those of you who don't know, Cuba Libre has two meanings: the literal meaning is "Cuba Free", which was represented by an illustrated Cuban flag dissipating as it reached it's end. Cuba Libre is also the name of a popular cocktail known as a "Rum and Coke" in English speaking countries. I love clubs whose names are double entendres. Forgive me, I digress. So we got into the city at 8am

and got to the park by 10am, ready to spend a day walking in wonder, pulling along our jaws dragging along the ground behi

nd us. Our lovely hostel conci erage Richard helped arrange a Nautical Adventure (see picture to the left), which consisted of getting in a boat and subjecting ourselves to hundreds of gallons of cascading water, which was a welcome repose after walking around for a few hours with the subtropical sun bearing down on us. After tackling the entire upper circuit, a system of paths and platforms that exposed us to the falls from a higher vantage point, and most of the lower circuit, which included smaller falls, plenty of walking along the river and through the woods, and views from below some of the bigger falls, a massive shower of

cool water sounded great. We got dumped on be some pretty magnificent falls, one of them being the gigantic San Martín Falls (see picture below left) that dominates of

side of the park. Our boat did not go directly under this fall as it did with a smaller one, but we definitely felt strong gusts of water-saturated air from where the falling water met the river. Three times. By the end of the boat ride we were all thoroughly soaked and clapping in appreciation of our noble, raingear wearing conductor, annou ncer, and cameraman. The maze-like portion of our adventure ended with an incredible view of the Bossetti Falls, which sported a permanent rainbow thanks to the mist spraying off it, and a bagged lunch in at the outdoor food vendor.

By now, we are all too used to pigeons harassing us whenever we eat outside. The pigeons in this city are unusually dirty and cheeky, showing less fear than any city pigeon that I've ever known.

We've actually bumped into the on several occasions without intending to. At the National Park, we encountered an entirely different yet equally annoying monster: the coati. These raccoon, aardvark, squirrel, rat like creatures initially made me saw "aww" when we witnessed a clan of coatíes crossing the railroad tracks for the train that brings you to La Garganta del Diablo (The Devil's Thr oat - much more on that later). They are quite furry and awkward looking, which obviously tugs at the heart strings. To boot, many of them looked like babies, another endearing trait of

animals (I mean seriously, who hates puppies? Kittens? Baby pandas?). More than anything, I thought that we were observing a wild creatures interacting with the man made world imposed up them, a romantic notion influenced by our jungle like surroundings. It didn't take me very long to tell myself I should have known better - these cute, cuddly coatíes were merely furry, earthbound pigeons unfazed by humans. They would approach people eating their lunches outside looking for morsels to munch on, never appearing to be threatening, just very annoying. In spite of the many signs advising otherwise, people continued to feed these beggars their scraps of food, probably thanks to the novelty of having a "wild" animal eat from their hands. Fortunately for us, we were in a less than desirable position (directly in the sun) so they refrained from badgering us too much.

We emerged from our lunch break dried, full of PB & J, rested, and sick of coatíes and proceeded to head back up the path towards the mini-train that would bring us to the grand finale of our day: La Garganta del Diablo. We disembarked the train and walked a kilometer of elevated steel walkways that passed over part of the river that feeds into the mighty falls. After baking on the

unshaded metal, we began to hear the thunderous rush of water plunging into the gorge just ahead of us. The first glimpse we got was the initial cascades from the riverbed to the final descent, with a thick mist extending to its left. Slowly but surely, the sound level increased as the temperature cooled, building the kind of true suspense and excitement Jerry Bruckheimer only dreams could. We finally reached the viewing platform that resided just above the right extreme of La Garganta and we were speechless. A concave wall of water nearly a football field-tall and even more wide lay before us

, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per second plummeting to the river below. Certain portions looked more green than blue or white before falling, surely thanks to the vegetation suffering the pulverizing force of the water's rage. To it's side were smaller yet still impressive falls, also reflecting the green surface beneath them but eventually turning to a frothy white as they fell towards the river. Not to sound cliche (and for what it's worth, my editor [read: I] decided to cut out a whole tangent about cliches and how we use them and their worth, or lack there of, in communication. So you're welcome for not wasting a few minutes of your prescious time), but to be in the presence of such natural power and beauty is a humbling experience, one that makes you feel even more diminutive than you may be. An equally cliched sentiment commonly expressed is that such majestic sights inspire a sense of surreality, that you cannot believe that you are where you are, seeing what you're seeing, and I had the exact opposite experience. It was one of those times when I really felt in the moment, taking in every detail in

case I never got the experience again. Unlike other impressive beauties, La Garganta del Diablo is a mulit-sensory experience. As I took in the massive falls with my eyes, focusing in on a single drop and trying to follow it on its rapid descent, I could taste the fresh water since my mouth was open in amazement, goosebumps rose on my bronzing skin thanks to the steady, cool mist bombarding me, even though the sun shone down with great intensity, and the churning of the water impeded conversation at a normal volume. The view of the falls is what I will remember most, for sure, but I'll never forget the full body experience of it. This sight, and the whole park in general, definitely ranks in the top 10, maybe even top 5, of my lifetime experiences, and I only hope that I can continue to make each spot in those lists at competitive as possible by being witness to and taking part in such magnificent wonders.

An hour later we were back in our hostel, napping in a dark room with 8 beds, completely exhausted from our day of walking and previous night of non-horizontal sleep. Dan and I went on a mini excursion for empanadas and a possible spot for dinner that night, and we found a splendid outdoor parilla that served up some delicious asado de tira and vacío, which we devoured without hesistation. (Note: As I write this last section, I am mentally preparing myself for an asado on our roof this evening. We are spoiling Megan, as future blog posts will surely indicate.) It was a fine first example of Argentinian beef for Megan, and we followed one good first with another by hitting up Cuba Libre until 5:00 AM or so. Thanks to Dan for keeping up our Saturday night custom of drinking sweet, bubbly wine at bars, we really appreciated it, even if the tradition will die tomorrow night. We ended our evening at the ice cream shop across the street which sold cones at an unheard of price of 2 pesos for one scoop (Puerto Iguazú, I love you) and the hamburger stand close by. I did not indulge in one, but as pictures will show, Julia did so without shame.

We woke up the next morning and headed out to the Tres Fronteras, or corner of the city where you find yourself at the crux of three borders: Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil (see picture below: Argentina in the foreground, Paraguay to the left, Brazil to the right). It was pleasant and relaxing, even if our tereré did not work out as well as we could have hoped on such a hot

day. The aforementioned Richard suggested we take the scenic route along the river back to the hostel, and it was the one time it may have been wise to not listen to him. Besides some mildly interesting wall art at one point of our walk, we basically saw a lot of the same side of Brazil (so many trees), had little shade to walk in, and ended up having to ascend a steep hill to make our way back into the town. It was definitely more physical activity than I was ready for, but kept going because in the back of my mind I knew I would soon have the luxury of sleeping on our Super Cama bus back home. One of the selling points of traveling so long for so little time was the prospect of riding back to Buenos Aires in style, well rested and revived from our tiring weekend. Even better, since we were sitting on the bottom of the bus, we paid 30 pesos less than the top of the bus! All around, it seemed like a stellar deal and we couldn't wait to lay back and relax...for 20 hours. We patiently waiting at the bus station as 2 other Via Bariloche buses pulled in and subsequently left (there were buses at 3:05, 3:12, and 3:20...very strange), and finally hopped on the last one. We were correct in that our discount was definitely because we were sitting on the bottom floor. What we didn't expect was that the bottom floor would NOT be Super Cama, but regular Cama instead. Granted, the seats were slightly bigger than our trip to Iguazú, but they were not the fully reclining, plush seats we had hoped for. We were genuinely disappointed with our bad fortune, but quickly got over it and settled into a deep sleep until early evening. And after inhaling another deliciously bad bus-dinner, we had both sleeping pills and one of Robin Williams' finest to put us to sleep and we awoke the next morning back in Buenos Aires, albeit 2 and a half hours late.

So looking back, especially after our failed bus expectations, was it worth it? Was it all it was cracked up to be, worthy of being one of the New 7 Wonders of the World? Without a doubt. It did not look markedly different than in pictures, but seeing it in person was an absolute thrill, and I urge anyone who has the chance or ganas (will) to get there to do so, you will not regret it, I assure you. I'm not saying I would do the same trip under the same time restraints next weekend, but I would love to get back up there at some point, time and money permitting. Despite the fact that I was surrounded by other tourists doing the same thing as I was, I still felt I had a very unique, personal experience with the falls, and my senses are still tingling from it.

Here are some additional pictures that I could not skillfully integrate into the text of the post. Feast your eyes on these beauties and try not to drool all over your keyboard. Double click on the photos if you want a larger view, I accidentally imported the pictures on Julia's computer since mine (bless her soul) no longer uploads pictures or supports attachments.
Have a great weekend!