Don´t Cry for Us Argentina!!!

Hello everyone! The past week or so has been a whirlwind to say the least and the fast pace of the trip is starting to catch up with us. Today is the two week mark and we both keep getting the feeling that the trip should be winding down and we will be heading back to our jobs any day now. It still hasn´t sunk in that this IS our job for the next three months!
Internet has been a little difficult to come by since Sao Paulo so we have a lot to catch you up on! We are now in Buenos Aires, Argentina where we´ve been for the past three days but I´ll back up and start from our last post.
We did find a Starbucks in Sao Paulo, turns out there are quite a few of them. We took some pictures from the outside and went in to get something only to find that a tall frappuccino was 10 reales which is $6.25! No, thank you. I couldn´t make myself pay that much and it was too hot outside for a hot drink. Oh well, it was still fun to see one. From the inside it looked just like ones in the states!
From Sao Paulo we took a 15 hour overnight bus to Iguazu Falls. Iguazu is a huge series of waterfalls (275 to be exact) on the Parana river right on the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. We had read in our handy travel book (i don´t know what we would do without our lonely planet guide) that it was best to see the falls from both the Brazilian side and the Argentine side.  So that´s what we did. The first night we stayed in Brazil and spent the day at the falls. It was incredible. We walked down on a platform that took us right up close to some of the falls where we felt surrounded by falling water. We got soaking wet from the mist. The Brazilian side has the best overview of all of the falls. We walked a short hike and and could see more and more waterfalls with each turn of the path.

The next day we crossed the river into Argentina and spend the day at their side of the falls. We are glad we took the extra day to see this side because they have a platform up at the top of one of the biggest falls where you can look down into the endless mist. It was kind of a creepy feeling to look down and not be able to see the bottom-- just mist. All in all Iguazu greatly exceeded our expectations.

After Iguazu we crossed back into Brazil in order to enter Paraguay. Three countries in one day! We took a bus from a small town at the border to Asuncion, the capitol of Paraguay. We stayed there for two nights and got to see a lot of the old historical part of the city including the president´s palace and lots of museums.

At our hostel we made friends with a guy from Holland who´s traveling by himself so we toured some of the city together and ate together a few times. It was fun learning about what life is like in Holland.
Paraguay is one of the poorest countries in South America and it showed. There was a plaza near our hostel filled with homeless families that live in tents made out of trash bags. Kids and everything. There were also a lot more children begging and asking for money near bus stations and other touristy places.

 
Over all Paraguay´s people were very friendly and welcoming to travelers. We enjoyed our time there even though it was so short.
And now for the best part... the bus ride from Hades. It was an ¨18¨ hr bus ride (that was more like 20) from Asuncion to Buenos Aires. Things started out well. We had good seats with extra leg room and a good view and we were feeling pretty lucky. When we stopped at the border with Argentina to get our passports stamped, our luck ran out. All of the luggage underneath the bus had to be unloaded and sent through customs screening, so everyone is responsible to find their own bags, put them on the little conveyer belt and take them back to the bus. Simple enough, right? Well, when Seth and I start looking for our packs, they are already at the front of the screening line, with several guys waving us over to them. We go over and they start asking us what we had in our bags- they asked about computers, cameras, electronics, etc. We answered the questions assuming that they worked in customs. Seth and I are starting to get confused about why we are being singled out since no one else was getting asked any questions. We made sure to stay with our bags even though we were being directed in several different directions and it meant Seth and I got separated. When we finally got through customs and back to the bus, the guys load on our packs and ask for a tip. Everything started to make sense. These guys specifically singled us out because we were the only white Americans on the bus. When they asked for a tip and we hesitated, looking around to see if anyone else was paying, one guy said ¨100 pesos.¨ 100 pesos!! That´s $25 US dollars. Are you crazy? For help that we didn´t even want? When we refused they started to get angry, which made us angry. Our not-so-great Spanish got even worse. All I could say was ¨es una locura!¨ over and over again. They then thought they would give us a deal with 20 pesos. Other passengers were paying a little, so we finally gave them 4 pesos and stood outside the bus until we left to make sure our bags didn´t walk away. So that was our welcome to Argentina.
The next part of the bus ride was uneventful, they showed a few movies and even served us dinner. Later that night as we were starting to fall asleep, Seth started feeling sick to his stomach (with 13 hours still to go). Sparing you the details, from midnight to 3 am Seth was running back and forth between his seat and the onboard bathroom. This would be bad enough by itself, but let me give you a brief description of this bathroom. Think tiny outhouse with a toilet that doesn´t flush so you can see what everyone else has put in there. Also, there was no running water to wash your hands with and no toilet paper. Luckily, we had a roll with us in our backpack just in case, but poor Seth was getting to the end of the roll by 3 am (with 9 hours still to go). Finally around 3 or 4 even though he still felt horrible we were able to get a little sleep. We made it though the morning by the grace of God without any accidents and got to Buenos Aires around noon. We decided to stay in a hotel near Florida Street instead of a hostel for the first 2 nights so Seth could rest and get better.
So here we are in Buenos Aires, Seth is feeling much better and we´ve been able to do a lot. We´ve toured the Colon Theater, seen Evita´s grave, walked through several artisan fairs, gone to Caminito (the painted houses) and we even got to go inside the Pink House (the Argentine version of the white house). We were excited about touring the Pink House becasue every other time we´ve been here it wasn´t open for tours. We even snuck video of mass last night at the Metropolitan Cathederal. And of course we have been eating as much steak and empanadas as possible!

 We have now moved to another part of the city to stay in a hostel that is a little cheaper and has free internet. We have changed our plans a little and we are going to be here for two more nights before we go to Monte to see the school we went to which is about 2 hrs from the city. We have an easy day today to relax, catch up on laundry and do some shopping on Florida Street. Tomorrow we are planning on taking the ferry to Uruguay for the day. We will try and keep the posts a little more frequent! And thanks for the comments! We have really enjoyed reading them!

Here are some bonus pictures for you of random little things that we´ve come across that made us laugh.  Enjoy!