By the time I post this we will have been to Argentina and back. (we have to leave the country in order to renew our visas) I may even have more photos to post! --But really that's all I have been doing lately isn't it? Posting photos that is. I have the feeling it's about time for a real update - get ready - here it comes...
The Radical Journey group met for the first time with our leader Marta and after that meeting I decided to change my work. Let me explain. Until now Marta has been in Mexico with her daughter who was having her first child, she has now returned to Paraguay. When we got here things were a little confused and, at least as far as my job was concerned, they just put me in the church and I was led to believe that I was a volunteer IN the church and I was to work FOR the church. Nothing else. It was not what I expected. When Marta came back and heard that she informed me that working in an office as the assistant to a secretary is NOT what I am in Paraguay to do. She suggested a few places I could volunteer and said that it is at my discretion - where I am going to volunteer.
There is a day care down the street named Alto Refugio (in English "High Refuge"), the day care takes care of children whos parent(s) have HIV/AIDS, they also help the parents with health care and raise awareness about HIV/AIDS. There are around 400 children registered but only 10-15 are dropped off daily, 3-4 of which are regulars. I have talked with the directors at Alto Refugio and will probably be starting there the 18th of January.
There are a couple more painting projects that Emanuel (the church) wants done, so I will still be working there some of the time, but the majority of my time I will be at Alto Refugio.
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This is pretty long so if you dont want to read it all here's a table of contents of sorts (nice of me huh)
(Intro)
Paragraph 1: getting the tickets and first bus
P2: getting thru customs
P3: 2nd bus ride
P4: the hostil
P5: Walking to Brasil and monday night
P6 and pics: Iguazu falls
P7: Tuesday afternoon
P8: Stuck in Argentina
Back from Argentina! and it was an awesome trip! - even though a lot of things went wrong... (or maybe because of it...makes things more interesting right?)
We had a little trouble getting our tickets to begin with but finally Saturday afternoon Daniel was able to buy them..that seemed to set the pace for the rest of the trip. Sunday at 10:30pm we met at the bus terminal in Asuncion, Ruth arriving around 11. We got on our bus at midnight and headed south to the boarder city of Encarnacion. I slept most of the way there and the 5 1/2 hour ride went pretty quickly. Once in Encarnacion we found a bus that went to the Paraguay / Argentina boarder. It was standing room only in the bus but the ride wasn't long.
At the customs station on the PY side everything was going smoothly until the lady behind the counter noticed something about our passports. Three of them had already been stamped to admit us into Argentina, but she demanded them all back and when Daniel asked if there was a problem she responded curtly "Si hay una problema!" (Yes there is a problem!) We found out that according to the date on the passports we had been in PY 91 days instead of the 90 days allowed. We would have to pay a fine, she said, of Gs. 162,000 (about $36) per person. We argued with her for a while because to be fair, our plane had arrived on Sept. 21 at 10:30am. -it wouldnt be 91 days for another 4 1/2 hours, but we couldnt prove that. She finally told us that she would accept Gs. 200,000 (for her own pocket, a bribe) stamp our passports and let us through. After debating among ourselves we turned down the bribe, paid the fines in full and went through to Argentina.
We took a bus over the river seperating the countries and on the other side, at the Argentina customs station there was a mad rush from the bus and we ended up 3/4 of the way back in the "line" (more of a mob) after 45 minutes we got to the front and had our passports stamped with no problems.
We took another bus to the terminal in Posadas, Argentina. The terminal looked a little shady, housing only a few drunk guys and some others passing around mate (the hot form of terere). We were there for only half an hour at most before our next bus arrived. - it was at this terminal that we first encountered bathrooms that charged for toilet paper, 2 pesos for a pre-determined amount. We got on the bus that would take us to Puerto Iguazu, where we planned to stay the night and go visit the famous Iguazu Falls. The bus we got on was a double decker (we were pretty excited about that). Since this was a day time ride they showed movies during the ride, Tropic Thunder and then My Mummy. The second of which is probably the dumbest movie i have ever seen...and i've seen some dumb movies. These movies were in English with Spanish subtitles.
We arrived in Iguazu probably around 2pm. We walked a short distance and found the hostil we would be staying at. The place had a book exchange - to take a book it cost 2 pesos plus a book to replace the one you took. If i had had a book to exchange i would have done it, about half were in English, others in Spanish, a couple in German, and one in what may have been Russian tho i'm not sure. We went up to our rooms which had AC and very very comfortable beds, as well as a TV with a few English channels. After checking out our rooms and resting a little we went out on the town.
We explored the streets a little and looked around for an ATM, because up to this point we had no Argentine currency, only Paraguayan. On the third try we found a working ATM which took Daniels card and we pulled out some money. We then checked out the center of town - looking through the little shops and hunting for a place to eat dinner. We found a nice outdoor restraunt which didnt cost too much so we ate there. We ordered two salads to share, then four of us had pasta and Jono had a hamburger - all of it was delicious! After supper Daniel told us about a place where the boarders of Argentina, Brasil, and Uraguay meet where theres an oblisk (the same kind of thing as the Washington Monument...) and you can look over all 3 countries at once. ...So we decided to walk a little way then maybe catch a bus the rest of the way. Ruth tells the story here:
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i will upload this video a little later...it's not working at the moment
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We then walked back into town...the short way, and bought some ice cream for our efforts. Back at the hostil we went to bed, and i gotta say, i think i slept better than i have in 2 or 3 months.
The next day we got up early and went to the breakfast provided, the milk that was there had gone sour, but there were some amazing rolls so it was ok. Around 7:30 we headed signed out of our rooms and went to the terminal to catch our bus to the Iguazu Falls national park.
The falls were...amazing! The first thing we did was go see the part named the Devils Throat.
We talked about staying to see more of the park and taking the 3:30 bus back to Posadas, but decided to stick with our origional plan and catch the 1:00 bus. So since we wanted to be out of the park by noon to get back in time we could only go on one more tour - we chose the Lower Circut, going to the bottom of some falls to look up at them from very close and get showered by the spray.
Trying to find the exit after that took a good hour, but we finally made it out (in time too...) and got a bus back to the terminal. After collecting our bags where they had let us keep them in the hostil we went to find our bus. ...by the time it was 1:00 and the bus hadnt even showed up yet we knew something was wrong so Daniel talked to the agent from the company we were traveling with. The lady called the bus driver and informed us that all the passangers coming from Posadas toward Iguazu had gotten off and since no one on our end had a confirmed ticket for 1:00 so he had turned around and gone home. We were a little frustrated, but we took it all in stride and decided we could just take the 3:30 bus. We had already bought some cold subs to eat for lunch on the bus so we took them back to the hostil and asked if we could eat them there. They allowed us to so we ate then exchanged Christmas gifts.
Rose gave us each a mask for Christmas which she thought went along with our personalities.
We walked around a little more, stopping at one of the shops we had found earlier where i bought a hand woven bag. We returned to the terminal and asked about the status of our bus... just to make sure it hadnt turned around too. It hadn't turned around...but it had encountered a road block. They weren't letting anyone through, and none of the agencies had busses coming in from Posadas. They told us it would be at least 4:00 until they knew anything more. We periodically asked for updates and by 4:30 we were tired of sitting in the bus terminal and decided to confirm our tickets for the next definite bus at 1:00am. We left our bags in the locker in the terminal and went back out on the town. We looked through more shops and generally just wondered around for about an hour then tired, headed back to the terminal. Later i went out and found a book store that had a few books in English, but since all my money was still in Paraguay currency i didnt buy anything. Back at the terminal we sat and talked and played word games until 6:30 or so. We went back out and looked for a place to eat, we wanted pizza so when one of the restraunts advertisers on the street told us about their pizza and pasta for a reasonable price we decided to eat there. None of us were quite hungry enough by then tho so we found a plaza to sit in and talked and told stories until 8:30 when we went back to the restraunt.
Sitting in the plaza biding our time until supper
And this was a NICE restraunt! the water we ordered was mineral water and came in glass bottles. The bread they gave us before hand was definitely hommeade and some of the best i have had at a restraunt (tasted like it was baked over and open fire) We ordered two pizzas, one with ham, cheese, pineapple, and peaches and the other with chicken, tuna, olives, cheese, and some spices. both were good but the pineapple peach was increadible! Afterwards we went out for ice cream again at the same place and headed back to the terminal around 11:00pm. We had to call the attendant of the lockers where our luggage was because she had gone home. We then settled down on some benches. We all ended up falling asleep, but Ruth woke up just in time to notice that everyone else in the terminal was gone and our bus was there. We groggily got on the bus and fell back to sleep - each of us got 2 seats to ourselves becuase we were (almost) the only ones on board. We crossed the boarder without any trouble this time and got back to the terminal in Posadas around 6:30. We had until 11:30 until our bus back to Asuncion left so we ate breakfast at a little restraunt and checked out the local market. We ended up in another plaza and people-watched until 11 or so when we headed back to the terminal and took the bus back. This time they showed war movies in Spanish the whole ride, Black Hawk Down, Behind Enemy Lines, and the beginning of Marines. We got back into Asuncion around 5:30 and took busses back to our respective houses.
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I spent 20 hours out of 66 hours on a bus.
I slept 2 of 3 nights in a bus
I slept for 3 hours on a wooden bench in public
We seemed to be countered at every turn but it was still the most fun i have had in a long time
if you would like to see more pictures of the trip click [Here].
