Argentina 7

Final communiqué from your Argentinian correspondent

Unfortunately, for once the bus was on time so we were dumped at Corrientes Bus Station at 04.30.   It was warm, quite a lot of people about and half a dozen ticket offices open.  Outside the bus station it was dark, poorly lit and looked like a single storey wasteland.  There are lots of different bus companies and every one has it’s own ticket office.  I would rather have been up the wooden hill in bed land but you can’t have everything.  By 6.00ish, all the ticket offices were open, it was getting busy and  we got some breakfast, coffee, fresh orange juice and mediolunas (half moons) which are croissants.   Early bus to our hotel where we were let in early, showered, unpacked changed and out to catch the delight of Corrientes by 8.30.  We were to pay for this enthusiasm later by collapsing mid afternoon.

This place does have some lovely old buildings and a waterfront running along the River Parana, which looks a couple of kilometres wide.  It flows quickly, is chocolate brown and looks almost viscous.  It’s hot and humid here and the long waterfront is the perfect place for shady open air cafes catching the breeze along the river.  There isn’t one of them.  The only place is the fenced off, members only yacht club with its artificial beach.  So of course, Heather decided it was worth asking if we could go in for a drink anyway, which is how we found ourselves with a shady table overlooking the river with a huge bottle of pop.

I’ve written about the ice cream consumption and have now found out that a take away service is also available.  You phone in an order, it’s made up and goes in the freezer until you turn up.  What I neglected to mention was the near universal consumption of mate (mattay) which is an infusion of leaves with some ritual involved in the drinking.  It requires a special cup, the leaves float on the top and a straw, usually metallic is used to drink it.  The cup and straw are passed around friends as a sociable gesture, cafes will fill the flask with the hot water used to top up the drink and Argentinians of all ages can be seen anywhere sucking away.  Every souvenir shop and ‘craft’ stall sells mate cups and straws and we’ve managed to fight down the urge to bring some home.

Of course, the only reason to come here to Puerto Iguazu are the waterfalls and you could be forgiven for thinking that there’s a limit to the interest that gravity’s effect on water can have.  If you haven’t seen Iguazu.  They are truly stunning, the sound, the sight and that weedy damp river smell all taken to excess.   When I saw Victoria Falls many years ago I thought it the most amazing natural spectacle I had ever witnessed.  I hadn’t seen Iguazu.  There are many falls spread over several kilometres and we were very fortunate because the river was very high, well flooding really, with lots of  riverbank vegetation well under water.  

The falls are part Brazilian and part Argentinian and are unsurprisingly on the Rio Iguazu.  We spent four hours on the Brazil side and got absolutely soaked at the walkways out at the base of the left hand bit, technically known as El Garganta del Diablo.  Those in the know wore swimsuits whereas we just gently steamed dry.  We’d shared a taxi with two young Italians and the driver went into full marketing pitch on the journey, did we want to go the aviary, the mines, a restaurant, a taxi the following day to the Argentine side.  The Italians were interested in the taxi for the following day but I said we were getting the bus from town for 15 pesos and suddenly the price dropped to 100 pesos for two of us there and back.  Well, 15 each there and back is 60 pesos and we would be picked up and dropped at our hotel at times to suit us.  So we decided on the taxi for the extra £6.

The Argentinian falls are much more extensive and along with the two Italians we agreed on nine hours there which turned out to be only just long enough.  The Brazilians still do helicopter flights but the Argentinians have banned them on environmental grounds.  However, there is a large ugly Sheraton right in the National Park on the Argentinian side, so if you were going over the Garganta in a barrel (not very popular) the last thing you’d see would be the bloody Sheraton.  As a tourist attraction, the whole thing is done very well on both sides.  Coaches take you in 5km or so on the Brazilian side to where the walks begin and the Argentinians have a train to go to the farthest bit.  Lots of walking with lots of opportunities to get soaked, and you certainly get soaked if you want to buy food or drink on the Argentinian side. 

The real touristy bit we did was the boat ride under the edge of a couple of the torrents.  Wearing waterproofs we still got absolutely soaked, couldn’t see anything and I felt like I was drowning.  A bit like privatised waterboarding, you still get half drowned and you have to pay for it.

What I found interesting was how trusting all us tourists are.  It seems like a Disney set up but it’s not at all tamed with a stopcock to turn if anything goes wrong.  This is natural, unbelievable, unstoppable, uncontrollable power.  At the farthest end of the Argentinian side there’s a walkway above the falls going out for about three quarters of a kilometre across the river to end hanging over that left hand end, the Garganta del Diablo.  We all happily hung over that looking into the turmoil and feeling perfectly at ease.  I wonder how many notice the concrete supports and twisted metal of the last walkway running alongside.  It was all swept away in a flood a few years back.  It was at this last section that my camera stopped working temporarily and I’d only taken 10 million photos. 

Using roads to travel on rather than flying in this huge country has meant that we’ve seen a lot of varied countryside from  arid and windswept Patagonia in the south to the lushness of the tropical rainforest in the north.   Argentinian coach travel has had a pretty good try out we think, and it is very good but we decided that a flight of two hours is preferable at this stage to a 22 hour coach ride.  However, on TV news this morning we saw that Buenos Aires has had serious rain (70cm in 3 hours!) with flooding and an airport has been closed.  We don’t know whether this is the international or the domestic one, which we’re due to fly into on Monday.  It’ll be somewhat ironic if we end up with, say a 20 hour delay on the flight.

It was the domestic airport that had closed but we had no problems except the amazingly chaotic way airports handle passengers.  They really could learn some thing from the bus terminals – which aren’t perfect by any means.  So we’re back in Buenos Aires for a couple of days before we set off late Wednesday for Madrid.   Our 6 weeks are nearly finished and we have had a really good time here.  The people are unfailingly helpful and friendly and to us, prices are low.  Decent hotels have cost us between £35 and £55 a night with breakfast and wifi, and dinners have been about £16 to £18 for both of us including wine.  Towns/cities are undistinguished and menus are very similar but I have done my bit to reduce the Argentine beef mountain.   It isn’t a country that caters for or understands vegetarians.