Again, sorry this has been so delayed, friends! The last few weeks have been characterized by lots of changing scenery! Since I last wrote about our drive from the south of Chile and into Uruguay we have done a lot more driving and seeing! First we spent a week in Buenos Aires brushing up on the Spanish that I lost years ago and getting involved in the Mafia (Fooprints Guide hit it spot on when they described the Tango show we went to as äuthentic¨!....see pics here http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2148655&l=adf2c&id=606158).
The finale to this awesome week was the arrival of our lovely parents with whom we spent a relaxing week on the beach in a quiet town--made quieter by the fact that it was the off-season and absolutely NONE of the restaurants or shops were open...suffice it to say it is a good thing mom brought us a lot of Easter candy! (I miss you already Mamita!) Shout out to all you PEEPS lovers out there!
After returning them to the Buenos Aires airport and getting lost trying to leave the city (only and hour detour, or so!) we had our longest driving day yet: 14 hours through farmland and getting lost in more urban centers!
Slowly, but surely we started to see the scenery change (even the color of bug guts on our windows went from boring black mosquito to rainbow-sparkly butterfly...I am absolutely not exaggerating, ask my bro!). Even the road-kill started to change...from dogs and foxes we started to see coatie (a racoon-like species that we could have sworn was a monkey from behind!) and toucan (okay, that wasn´t road-kill but for all that know my mother I just had to add it in!). We stopped by some awesome Jesuit missions
with these cool trees that some call parasites but they are more like Anacondas as they wrap themselves around other things and suffocate them (pic: trying to suffocate the stone pillar of a Jesuit mission)
. Then we came upon our goal: the CATARATAS (waterfalls) of Iguazu (as you can imagine....the number of bird and insect species here were enormous!)
I think I will let the pics speak for themselves (the one with me squinting in the sun is next to the appropriately named GARGANTA DEL DIABLO (devil´s throat) portion of the part. Technically it was on the Brazilian side (which we didnt go to because the VISA was too expensive and they didn´t have the right gasoline for our car), but the Argentinians have taken advantage of an awesome walkway over the river and through the woods....to this awesome mirador (viewpoint).
The next fews days showed another change in scenery (that is, of course, after we got around the our second 2 hour demonstration)
, this time from east to west instead of south to north. Starting in the sub-tropical climate of Iguazu (meaning BIG WATER....touche).....through farmland and chaco (wetlands)--talk about two inch long grasshopers!....to what I am going to go ahead an stereotype as typical Mexico
. Of course it is just the dry climate and enormous cacti that gave me this initial impression. We also got to explore the ruins of a city that resisted both the Inca and the Spanish for 130 years before being marched to Buenos Aires on their own Trail of Tears
.
(Beware of the donkeys that will beg at your car window=.We camped a little.
Stopped to futbol a little.
And we museumed a little. (I am going to take it as a benevolent sign that I decided to pose under this statue, considering I later found out it was the figure of a Shaman.
At this point the bugs were not Kamakazi-ing our windshield, but rather our headlamps. (Did I mention Matt killed a bird?).
I think that´s about it for the last three weeks.
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