About a week ago I returned from several weeks of traveling, and as being on the road and out and about exploring new cities has not exactly facilitated blog writing and so I've gotten quite a bit behind in what I'd have wanted to share about my journeying. In the end, my travels included a trip to Puerto Iguazu to see the famous Iguazu waterfalls and to Posadas, capital of the province of Misiones of which Puerto Iguazu is part. There I obtained a visa and crossed the border to Paraguay to visit the capital of Asuncion, where Emily Grannis, a friend of mine from high school, was busy finishing up her month spent studying the Paraguayan press. From there I went back to Buenos Aires to play tourist with Emily over her three-day layover before she returned to Ohio. On the second leg of my journey I visited Cordoba in the sierras, and then Salta in the far north and finally returned to Rosario a couple hundred kilometers away from Buenos Aires.
Rather than try to detail this all in one massive entry I've decided to break it up into "episodes" of a sort. This first one, describes my initial exit from Buenos Aires and the events that led up to my arrival in Posadas.
After finals were over I knew that I needed to get out of Buenos Aires, but I had no idea where I was going to go. Finally my escape from the influenza-crazed city and the threat of long boredom in the period in between semesters was facilitated by my friend Lina selling me her ticket to Puerto Iguazu, a port city a few kilometers away from some of the biggest waterfalls in the world. I went with her to the terminal to buy the tickets and when they gave me the option to leave the time for my departure open, I initially accepted...but then I thought about my tendency for "paralysis by analysis"--putting off indefinitely making a decision, based on the idea that with more information I could make a better one--and decided I would just buy it for the following Tuesday afternoon just a day after I turned in my last final exam. I had no idea where I would stay or where I would go from there. Nonetheless, on Tuesday I hopped on a 20+ hour bus-ride to the northeasternmost reaches of Argentina, armed just with my ticket and a vague idea that I wanted to travel more if possible, hopefully to Paraguay.
Although the sheer act of will (and a kind of pragmatic self-knowledge) that motivated my decision to leave were perhaps uncharacteristic for me, one aspect of my journey will probably not surprise anyone that knows me. I have no pictures of Iguazu because I hadn't bothered to get a converter for my camera before I left Buenos Aires (I told myself it was because I was too busy with finals stuff, but it would have taken like ten minutes). I wrote about my reactions to it in a pocket notebook where I've been taking all sorts of notes for poetry that I'd like to write in the future. This too I have since lost. Typical.
My friend Lina wrote post about the falls and took some great pictures so this may give you some kind of idea about what they looked like. For my part, I didn't have the chance to see the "devil's throat" she refers to as I spent most of the day seeing the smaller waterfalls (of which there were many!) and so by the time I was ready to take the train north to see the really big one
(I'd seen glimpses already, but I'd wanted to save the biggest one for last) the train had already stopped running so I had to head back to the hostel.
In addition to seeing waterfalls my time in Puerto Iguazu was spent taking long looks across the river at Paraguay and trying to figure out how to get there. I went to internet cafes to communicate with Emily and get her contact information, which it ocurred to me I both didn't have and might need, and talked to folks at the hostel about immigration rules over endless cups of mate (the communally consumed bitter tea-like beverage typical to Argentina). It was there I decided I'd have better chances (and possibly a more interesting stay than the small port town) in the capital of Posadas. In addition, nearby Posadas are about a dozen ruins of Jesuit missions that were built there several hundred years ago. Being both from Cleveland, itself a kind of industrial ruin, and roots in Guatemala, a country with some of the most gorgeous ruins in the world, these hold a special interest for me.
Traveling brings a lot of unexpected experiences with it. One such experience happened for me in the hostel where I was staying in Puerto Iguazu, where I met a fellow traveler, a Peruvian girl maybe a few years older than me, who's been traveling all around South America selling hand-made jewelry, mostly to tourists. In this way she has managed to support herself sufficiently to keep traveling and, along with a group of friends has funded her journeying throughout Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. As I left she was on her way to Brazil, having recently gained a portuguese-speaking companion. It was this encounter that gave me the idea of not only of trying to travel while selling wares of some kind to support the travel, but more importantly about how much there is to see and places to go within my own country--just as the Peruvian artisan traveled South America.
Going to Posadas from Puerto Iguazu, with the idea of eventually making it to Paraguay, introduced me to something new--the idea of traveling in a linear fashion, getting to a destination by moving from one place to another and spending various days en route. Almost my travels in the past--camping in Colorado, visiting family in Guatemala, visiting a friend in San Francisco--have been one-shot journeys to a specific place; I go, I stay, I come back. This is the first time where I've traveled by myself and gone somewhere, in order to get somewhere else. It's a fabulous way to travel--you get to see places that are more off the beaten track (hardly anyone goes to Posadas just to see Posadas) and it gives you great satisfaction in having finally gotten someplace when your final destination is reached.
These novelties were (are) exciting. I started to think about the possibility of doing a roadtrip of the United States with my brother, traveling and selling art (my brother is an aspiring artist). In the meantime I still had more traveling to be done.
Next time, the trials of getting a visa in Posadas and finally crossing that river.
Rather than try to detail this all in one massive entry I've decided to break it up into "episodes" of a sort. This first one, describes my initial exit from Buenos Aires and the events that led up to my arrival in Posadas.
After finals were over I knew that I needed to get out of Buenos Aires, but I had no idea where I was going to go. Finally my escape from the influenza-crazed city and the threat of long boredom in the period in between semesters was facilitated by my friend Lina selling me her ticket to Puerto Iguazu, a port city a few kilometers away from some of the biggest waterfalls in the world. I went with her to the terminal to buy the tickets and when they gave me the option to leave the time for my departure open, I initially accepted...but then I thought about my tendency for "paralysis by analysis"--putting off indefinitely making a decision, based on the idea that with more information I could make a better one--and decided I would just buy it for the following Tuesday afternoon just a day after I turned in my last final exam. I had no idea where I would stay or where I would go from there. Nonetheless, on Tuesday I hopped on a 20+ hour bus-ride to the northeasternmost reaches of Argentina, armed just with my ticket and a vague idea that I wanted to travel more if possible, hopefully to Paraguay.
Although the sheer act of will (and a kind of pragmatic self-knowledge) that motivated my decision to leave were perhaps uncharacteristic for me, one aspect of my journey will probably not surprise anyone that knows me. I have no pictures of Iguazu because I hadn't bothered to get a converter for my camera before I left Buenos Aires (I told myself it was because I was too busy with finals stuff, but it would have taken like ten minutes). I wrote about my reactions to it in a pocket notebook where I've been taking all sorts of notes for poetry that I'd like to write in the future. This too I have since lost. Typical.
My friend Lina wrote post about the falls and took some great pictures so this may give you some kind of idea about what they looked like. For my part, I didn't have the chance to see the "devil's throat" she refers to as I spent most of the day seeing the smaller waterfalls (of which there were many!) and so by the time I was ready to take the train north to see the really big one
(I'd seen glimpses already, but I'd wanted to save the biggest one for last) the train had already stopped running so I had to head back to the hostel.
In addition to seeing waterfalls my time in Puerto Iguazu was spent taking long looks across the river at Paraguay and trying to figure out how to get there. I went to internet cafes to communicate with Emily and get her contact information, which it ocurred to me I both didn't have and might need, and talked to folks at the hostel about immigration rules over endless cups of mate (the communally consumed bitter tea-like beverage typical to Argentina). It was there I decided I'd have better chances (and possibly a more interesting stay than the small port town) in the capital of Posadas. In addition, nearby Posadas are about a dozen ruins of Jesuit missions that were built there several hundred years ago. Being both from Cleveland, itself a kind of industrial ruin, and roots in Guatemala, a country with some of the most gorgeous ruins in the world, these hold a special interest for me.
Traveling brings a lot of unexpected experiences with it. One such experience happened for me in the hostel where I was staying in Puerto Iguazu, where I met a fellow traveler, a Peruvian girl maybe a few years older than me, who's been traveling all around South America selling hand-made jewelry, mostly to tourists. In this way she has managed to support herself sufficiently to keep traveling and, along with a group of friends has funded her journeying throughout Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. As I left she was on her way to Brazil, having recently gained a portuguese-speaking companion. It was this encounter that gave me the idea of not only of trying to travel while selling wares of some kind to support the travel, but more importantly about how much there is to see and places to go within my own country--just as the Peruvian artisan traveled South America.
Going to Posadas from Puerto Iguazu, with the idea of eventually making it to Paraguay, introduced me to something new--the idea of traveling in a linear fashion, getting to a destination by moving from one place to another and spending various days en route. Almost my travels in the past--camping in Colorado, visiting family in Guatemala, visiting a friend in San Francisco--have been one-shot journeys to a specific place; I go, I stay, I come back. This is the first time where I've traveled by myself and gone somewhere, in order to get somewhere else. It's a fabulous way to travel--you get to see places that are more off the beaten track (hardly anyone goes to Posadas just to see Posadas) and it gives you great satisfaction in having finally gotten someplace when your final destination is reached.
These novelties were (are) exciting. I started to think about the possibility of doing a roadtrip of the United States with my brother, traveling and selling art (my brother is an aspiring artist). In the meantime I still had more traveling to be done.
Next time, the trials of getting a visa in Posadas and finally crossing that river.
