Chapter 5: BA y Iguazú

Chris's college buddy Mike picked us up at the airport. He and Eliza have been living in Buenos Aires for 3 years and have found a beautiful apartment and group of Argentine and ex-patriot friends. They showed us around their neighborhood, Palermo and took us to visit Tigre - like coney island or coney beach, with river boats, hundreds of parrilla restaurants, and a ferris wheel.

We went to the Iguazú waterfalls, known in Argentina as Las Cataratas, and actually stayed in a hostel. We thought we would call it our romantic getaway because we were spending a little more than we would usually. Turns out Iguazú is actually the most romantic place ever. The first day there we fell head over heals in love and the waterfalls were magical, beautiful and perfect. The next day we watched other couples falling under the same spell. We saw kisses aplenty. All around us boys and girls were running off to make out and again, everything was marvelous. It had just rained incredibly hard when we arrived. In fact, most of the tourists were on their way out of the park as we headed in, so as to avoid the torrential storm going on. But they missed out because the falls (250 in all) were even more powerful and amazing thanks to the added rain water.

We hitchhiked to San Ignacio to learn about the history of the area. Misiones, the province in which Iguazú is located, is a rare part of Argentina that juts into Brazil and Paraguay. Here the land is green, lush and tropical, much unlike the rest of the country, the majority of which is an enormous plain filled with Guanaco and shrubbery. Strangely, the tropics here make their mark on the rest of the country. For instance, tropical birds can be found all the way in Ushuaia.

In San Ignacio there are Jesuit ruins. The Jesuits colonized this area of South America, and did so rather successfully. There were obviously problems with the colonial rule, but the Guarani were possibly the best off. They were an effective, co-operative style, farming community and were taught Spanish, Latin and Guaraní in school and the Jesuits often intermarried with the Natives. Unlike much of indigenous groups the rest of the country the Guaraní were treated as more than slaves and survived as a group much longer. They also proved to be a highly successful army. But, alas, other colonizers became jealous of the easy workforce the Jesuits had under their thumb and the Jesuits were expelled from Argentina, by order of the Spanish Crown. The Guaraní were entrusted to the Franciscans and sold as slaves. A few Guaraní live today and the language is spoken by many intellectuals.