Iguazú Falls and the End of the World (day 4-8)
Day 4 - 8 (18th - 22nd January)
Argentina: Puerto Iguazú, Buenos Aires, Ushuaia
My alarm buzzed at 05:30, I had 30 minutes to get up and bundle into an uber so I could be at the airport with enough time to check-in for my 08:30 flight. I had a quick scan of my emails and paused a minute as I copied the contents of an email from FlyBondi into Google Translate. The flight had been rescheduled to 14:30, the time of the email was 04:22. With just over 4 hours until take-off the flight had been delayed by 6 hours, which crushed my day into a fairly useless period of time in Iguazu, as my return flight was now just over 24 hours later - FlyBondi were keen to maintain their reputation it seems. I went back to sleep for an hour then got up and had another portion of yesterday's melon for breakfast. The morning slipped by without much of an event, but I made my way to the airport by Uber a little earlier than I needed so I could talk to the folk at the desk about my delayed/rescheduled flight.
I had crammed two days worth of tricks into my day-pack which covered lunch, a change of clothes, coat, swim shorts and towel for the pool at the next hostel, my camera and travel book. The shoulder straps of the bag weren't really intended for any weight, and were cutting into my shoulders a fair bit. I kicked myself for having not bought the daypack I intended to compliment my main travel bag and spent a bit of time online hunting for outdoor shops in Buenos Aires to see if I could find one to pick up in a few days as I wanted to do some full day hikes during my time in South America and needed something more comfortable longer term on this trip. Once I was at the airport I found the FlyBondi desk which had quite a queue now it was the middle of the day and they make a habit from disrupting their schedule, as apposed to the previous night when it was all but deserted. I got a new boarding pass printed for my new departure time and figured that as I had a maximum of 26 hours between flights, I would see if I could change my return flight to a day later and give myself the chance to actually see the national park properly (conscious they could also mess my return flight around and delete any value from this side-quest). I managed to change my return flight to the following morning, went through security (amused by the lack of concern they had with flasks of hot water and mate but scrutinising everything else so carefully), and eventually boarded the 2 hour flight north.
I think the last time I was on a flight where the passengers clapped the landing of the pilot was a Ryanair flight to Ireland 12 years ago, so it tickled me that they clapped as we pulled up on the runway at the edge of the jungle 1300km north of Buenos Aires. As I thought about it, the company, their practices and the general experience I've had of dealing with them, it occured to me that it was probably genuine relief the 150 passengers were alive - nothing is a given afterall.
I got the bus from airport to the town of Puerto Iguazu and watched hungrily from the window of the bus at the first rainforest/jungle I've seen pass by outside. The rich red earth, the dense forest, monkey crossings (ropes) suspended above the road, home to Baloo, Shere Khan, Bagheera, King Louie and everyone in between. We arrived at the bus terminal and the town felt much closer to my memory of Africa than I'd anticipated, a stifling heat, simple stores and locals pottering about or chilling out, a haze in the air. I walked to the hostel and checked in, requesting to extend my stay to two nights having nudged my return flight back a day. It was possible, there was space, but the hostel was cash only, as was the bus to town from the airport, and the bus to the national park tomorrow, and the hard-won cash from Buenos Aires had all but burned up. There were two cash machines in town, and two Western Union outlets. I went to the cash machine first in vain hope this little town was going to be more accepting of foreign cards than the capital city - it wasn't, same limits of cash available per transaction. I tried the Western Union outlets but both were shut until Monday, it was Saturday - that wouldn't cut it either. I went back to the ATM and swallowed it, withdrawing 70,000 peso (£53) and paying 26,000 (£20) for the privilege. At least I could get to and from the National Park, and back to the airport, and pay for the hostel. When I'm back in Buenos Aires, I will sort it out. I bought the return tickets from the bus to the park, clocked my start time as 7am, then found a little cafe/restaurant which reminded me a little of the bar mlecnzy (milk bars) in Poland, a buffet style home cooked food you fill your plate with whatever you want then pay a fixed price based on the weight of the food. These are tricky things to navigate because you want the value from the food, but not overdo it with stodgy or overly rich foods. It wasn't the finest meal I've ever had but it had a view out over town with the bridge connecting Paraguay and Brazil in the distance as the sun set and the warm evening continued into dark.
I got back to the hostel with some pre-made lunch for the next day stowed in the fridge, packed my bag for the visit to the national park (basically removed things I didn't want to walk with all day) and spent an hour in the pool whilst the hostel sat in the dark from a power outage in the street.
Some time in the night the power returned and the heat of the room was dissolved by the air conditioning unit, I woke and got ready then popped into a bakery on the way to the bus for a couple of croissant. The entrance to the national park reminded me of the scene in Jurassic Park when they arrive at the front gates, and the longer I spent there the more I saw comparisons - it wouldn't have surprised me if the location scouts for the original film had been to Iguazu National Park and based the whole premise of the film off it then chucked some raptors and a 'rex in at the end when they remembered its about dino's.
Mercifully I was able to use card to pay for the entrance to the park, then I asked about boat tours, after reading a few experiences from others online about how the additional perspective of the falls added to their day here. I was in time for the first batch on the boats, so confirmed amongst other things that I am able bodied and not suffering from being too fat (a genuine criteria of access for the boat trip, presumably because they need to be able to haul people into a boat if they go overboard and those fond of pie make it more tricky to do). Whilst queuing for the 5km transfer through the jungle by flatbed truck painted yellow with seats strapped to it, a trash panda with a long nose appeared from the undergrowth and begun rooting through people's bags looking for snacks. It turns out this long nosed raccoon was called a Coati, and it looked very cute when it needed to be, the first bit of South American wildlife I've met! On the transfer to the shore of the Iguazu River, the 35+ passengers on the back of the truck were told about the inhabitants of the jungle, the ecological work the park undertakes to maintain the environment for its occupants and some information about the flora too, in both Ingles as well as Espanol, which I very much appreciated.
There was a short walk down 300 steps (another criteria of mobility for the experience) to the shore of the river where we were given BA's, a dry bag for our belongings and buckled in before we chose our seats. There were 3 or 4 boats which each had enough seats to take everyone from one of the flatbeds, plus a few extra so there was a steady stream of people queuing and fumbling the roll-top bags to preserve their sandwiches, as others disembarked having returned from their experience. The boats were meaty RIBs with two 300 HP outboard engines bolted to the back, and once settled in we had an introduction to the experience from the deckhand (I assume, as this was not bilingual) then shot off up the river, with Captain playing in the swirls and currents of the fast flowing river splashing a few of the customers to cheers and squeals. I'd chosen a seat fairly near the back because they bounce around a lot less than the front on a rib (which is ultimately attached to the water by the propellers and the very back of the hull when they're going flat-out) so was spared.
The waterfalls at Iguazu are absolutely incredible. It helps that I had the perfect weather for the day with sunshine but enough cloud to provide depth to the sky and some cover, but the park is stunning. There are approx 275 separate water falls there, depending on the flow of water, which is nominally 1,500,000 litres a second but has been as high as 17,000,000 litres a second. The national park straddles the border with Brazil, with 80% of the falls in Argentina, and three main walking routes to access the platforms built through the park for people to safely get vantage points over the main falls. The biggest collection of falls at the head of the park is called the Devil's Throat, and there is no way anything would survive there if you went over the edge from above, with the 80m drop into hundreds of meters of turbulent torrent and wash.
The boat took us pretty close to some of the falls, then continued into the heavy spray from one of the side-falls, completely soaking absolutely everyone onboard. The deckhand had subtly dressed himself in full waterproofs and stood near the back, as we returned to the spray a second time and no scrap of thread remained dry on anyone - it was a lot of fun and very welcome in the heat - becoming clear why everyone had been given a dry bag. After a close look at some of the other falls we went back down the rapids and flow of the river a few miles to the landing pad and returned our BA's and dry bags, with the water already cooking out of my clothes. By the time I had walked up the steps and back to the transfer flatbed my shorts and half my top was dry, and an hour later I was entirely dry again.
I spent the rest of the day walking round the park which was incredible. There were some fairly busy areas like the Devil's Throat boardwalk, and the queues for the free shuttle between main site and the top, but never felt too crowded as I marched around stopping to absorb the sights, sounds and scenery of the jungle and the falls. There were a few sections of the walk with gated off boardwalks which just further reminded me of Jurassic Park, I was basically living in the film set and was hopeful nothing would spit acid in my face before the end of the day.
After 8 hours I'd completed all the walkways and seen as much of the park as I could, hopped on the next bus returning to Puerto Iguazu and stopped off at Patagonia Brewing Co. for a well earned pint and give Jax a bell to catch up for a bit. I had some pretty generic food there then head back to the hostel to sort myself out for the 06:30 bus back to the airport, had another hour in the pool by starlight and showered before bed.
Much to my surprise the return FlyBondi wasn't cancelled or delayed and I was back in Buenos Aires by 10:00, stood outside the airport and waiting for my very first moto-taxi back to the hostel. At half the price of a car, and only wearing a small day-pack (albeit at capacity), I could sit on the back of a moped and wear a plastic shell of a helmet for 20 minutes just for the experience. I won't pretend I was missing a motorbike fix and thought this would do anything toward helping it, I was and still am missing my bike a lot, but sitting on the back of a moped whilst it struggles to reach 40 kph doesn't really satisfy the freedom and liberation of riding, the same way a £5 doesn't pay off your mortgage, but you still want the £5.
I had 28 hours until my flight to Ushuaia and hadn't really seen much of Buenos Aires yet, I still didn't have a meaningful volume of cash, I wanted to sort a better daypack for the rest of my time in South America, and Elena (the Spanish girl I'd met in Greece in November who was travelling South America too) had just arrived in the city today and I wanted to catch up and say hello, so I had a busy schedule of things to work through. I had some lunch in the hostel then met up with Elena, which was fun to re-meet someone on this trip that I'd met part way through a very different trip on a different continent 9 weeks previously. After a quick catch up we both needed to get cash and it had become clear to me Western Union was going to be the most useful way to do it in Argentina at least (and probably the rest of SA too). I'd never used them before, so the process was new to me, but in registering with the app, I was then able to 'buy' currency with my UK account, at a fixed exchange rate (which was actually significantly better than the rate my bank had offered in the three ATM experiences, giving me AR$1430/£ rather than AR$1200/£ my bank gave me) then go to a Western Union outlet with ID and the transaction code, and they gave me a fist full of cash. I exchanged £200 worth and got AR$290,000 in AR$1,000 notes. I was given three bricks of cash, it was more a physical weapon than it was currency.
I wanted to see the cemetery in Recoleta, some of Palermo and the colourful streets of La Boca whilst I was here. We got a taxi to the cemetery and bought tickets to enter then after about 5 minutes of walking around figured we'd get much more from the place if we had some information/a tour to explain some of it's history. There were some Spanish tours provided for ticket holders but I heard someone giving a private tour to a group of US folk, so waited until they moved to a different part of the site and asked the guide whether I could pay to join his tour. He wouldn't take money but was happy for me to follow toward the back of his group so I did just that and learned a lot more about the cemetery.
The cemetery is a collection of privately owned plots, in the same way a row of houses would be, they belong to individuals, families or groups, but are not managed by the state in any way. Most of the tombs had multiple layers going down deep into the ground, or had shelves with caskets on, or vacancies for the living, but each tomb was different. Some were really ornate and well kept, where others were much more basic, had less space in them for 'residents' and less evidence of regular maintenance and upkeep. In the UK casks are buried 6ft below ground and its a very mournful occasion to attend the funeral of someone you loved or cared for, and generally acknowledged as an important part of the grieving process to attend and be surrounded by everyone that is struggling with the same loss. It sounded as though funerals here are a much more practical affair. The body is put in a cask, which is manufactured with a metal lining to seal the body from the atmosphere, generally clad with something more ornate like stone or wood, and results in a 400kg+ mass that needs to be manipulated into a relatively small space by burly men (or women), and for that reason is not a compassionate and witnessed activity. The grieving aspect of the culture here seems to be that after the loved one has been laid to rest, family members, friends, loved ones come and spend time at the tomb, affix plaques with messages and memories or anecdotes to the tomb of the person they mourn for. You can see who was most dearly loved as the tombs with the largest number of plaques affixed to them.
Once the last of a family is laid to rest, and there is no one left to maintain the plot, it eventually starts to crumble away as any building left over time would do. There have been several instances of politically sensitive body removals over time (the theft of Eva Duarte's body, amongst others) which has solidified the laws around the state having any involvement in the tombs or occupants, such that there is no interference when the tombs become derelict. The only way any tombs are repaired when the money runs out, is when other contractors working on tombs in the cemetery have leftover material they occasionally use some of it to patch up the neighbours of tombs that are struggling, which you can see with the mish-mash of different mortars, material and bodge work on older and more run-down plots. It was fascinating to learn the traditions, cultural difference and practicalities of how these cemeteries work.
I had a quick look online for a free walking tour map of the area to see what else was worth going to visit around the cemetery and found a bookshop that was built in a repurposed theatre so went to look. El Ateneo was an amazing bookstore, making really good use of the structure of a theatre with reading spaces in the wings either side of the stage, rows of books in the stalls, a cafe where the stage once was, and many cubby holes and areas for difference genres split by the natural layout of a theatre. It is somewhere Jax should definitely visit if she's ever in Buenos Aires. We had a coffee and some cake at the cafe then continued walking around Recoleta past the National Museum of Art, the parks and saw the sunset on the prestigious looking university building before waiting half an hour at the sculpture of a metal flower before discovering it had been broken for a few months and wasn't going to close at sunset, as we anticipated. We got in an uber and went to a street food restaurant called Chori in Palermo for a delicious sausage related bun (cob, bab, roll, balm) type thing, a wander around the busy nightlife streets in that area then head back for the night.
The next morning I wasn't sure whether we'd have time in the afternoon to get to La Boca and explore before I had to get my afternoon flight to Ushuaia, so I went on a 7mile run to La Boca instead, as a rapid way to explore some of the city and get some miles in. It was a relatively small region of the neighbourhood that was vibrantly decorated but it was quite a sight. I checked out of Milhouse Avenue Hostel, said goodbye to Melina and arranged to meet Elena for lunch before I flew south.
Elena was tustling with cash acquistion as her Spanish account seemed to be less straightforward with Western Union, so ended up sending me money through PayPal, which I then used to complete another transaction for her, but annoyingly - it failed, again and again. Mum messaged to tell me that my bank had rung their home asking to speak to me, which itself isn't great security, but after a really boring episode of sorting out a way for me to phone a UK number and not pay £4/minute, I discovered they had frozen the transactions believing they were fraud. I appreciated the concern they had in protecting my money and would always rather it be that way round, but after 2 hours of being on the phone to them with me confirming it wasn't fraud just me trying to get cash in a foreign country, I was still hitting the brick wall of computer says no. In the end I had to buy the currency as cash advance on credit card and pay it off straight away - annoying but resolved, this time.
Elena had some friends in Buenos Aires who had previously taken her to a quaint little backstreet food market place we went to which provided pretty good shelter from the 35°C heat so we sat there for a couple of hours whilst I tackled the bank then ordered a bag to be delivered to the hostel in Ushuaia I would be staying at for a few nights. I headed back for my luggage then made my way to the smaller airport within Buenos Aires (the one I flew to Iguazu from), checked in and waited for the 3000km flight south.
A few hours later I walked out of the airport at the End of the World at 21:00, it was still light, 14°C and calm - I couldn't stop myself smiling. A lot of people are lizards, they need sunshine and heat to be happy - I need it a little cooler. I got an uber to Oshovia hostel and took in my new surroundings on the short journey. Enclosed by snow capped mountains, with Chile to the south of the Beagle Channel, Ushuaia is the southern most city in the world at the tip of Argentina, in Tierra Del Fuego (Land of Fire), part of Patagonia. It surprised me to discover that it is actually only as far south from the equator as Durham is north, but without the Gulf Stream, a much colder climate. For its geographical location, it's a destination city for many, and serves as a base to launch expeditions to the Antarctic, with a sort of frontier town feel, clearly prepped to deal with extreme cold for most of the year. The cars all have tungsten studs in year round which create a whirling sound as they drive by, the roads and concrete structures visibly suffering from regular freeze-thaw damage but a nice and relaxed atmosphere around the town reminded me a little of an out-of-season ski resort.
I didn't have a specific reason I wanted to come to Ushuaia, I know of it as the southern most city in the world, the start and finish of one of the longest land-road trips you can do, The Pan-American Highway (up to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska - 19,000 miles away), and a starting point for some of the most spectacular walks and scenery of Patagonia. I hadn't done much planning of this trip before I had set off, but I did have a flight booked from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia 5 days after landing on the continent, and that's it. Now that I was here, I needed to start forming a plan of where to go, what to do and see, and work out which countries I wanted to spend my time in over the next few months. I also needed to consider how I would travel around as flying is annoying, expensive and removes any sensation of connection from the places you pass over or transit through. That evening I met an Irish chap, Colum, in the same dorm as me who had been travelling for several months through South America, and listened to his recommendations of places he had been and what he had seen on his travels. He mentioned someone in the kitchen had cooked a batch of Argentinian stew (guiso) for everyone so we headed down for some and met Franco, from Buenos Aires.
The next day I started putting a bit of a near-term plan together, but spent the majority of the day held up in the hostel. I finished the long-overdue last entry for my Kazahkstan motorbiking blog, then walked into town and booked a lighthouse and sea-lion visit boat trip for the following day. There were serveral common hiking routes people who visit Ushuaia undertook, either along the shore of Lago Roca (Lake Roca), to the summit of Cerro Guanaco (3,200ft), up to Lago Ezmerelda, and a slightly longer route round the back of the mountains looming over the city for a 15 mile trail which takes in a couple of more remote lakes and affords a view of glaciers on neighbouring mountains. I looked into the logistics of starting some of the hikes in the area, whether getting access by bus or taxi, and learned that if you go early enough into the national park you can enter before the rangers start their shift (pre-8am) and avoid paying the AR$46,000 (£35) daily entrance fee to the park.
I entertained the prospect of taking a week long Spanish class whilst I was down here waiting for the daypack I had ordered to arrive, and went up to the Spanish school in town, but was slightly put off by the half-renovated appearance of the building with no obvious front door. I walked back down into town and was bumbling around when I met Franco again in a chocolatier, enjoying a free hot choc with a voucher from the hostel, he invited me to join him and produced another voucher. Sat chatting it through with him I messaged the whatsapp for the Spanish school and got a response, discovered that they're closed this week but open next week and got a quote for afternoon classes amounting to 20 hours of learning for £290. I mulled it over for a few days but ultimately decided against it as they only had afternoon vacancies from 14:00 - 18:00 which shot a hole right in the middle of the useful part of every day, and I didn't want to lose so much time to it - parking the thought in my mind as something I can pursue in another country or city later on this trip. Back to the hostel I picked up some basic ingredients and had dinner whilst talking through further plans of places to visit and explore with Colum, as chat about Antarctica expeditions began to float around as an interesting concept.
