Wrapping up Argentina (a lot of bus time, Iguazu Falls, and...Brazil??)

After our amazing time spent in Patagonia, we knew it was time to head north (back to Buenos Aires) to start our journey home for the wedding in Mid-January. Here’s the problem….we hadn’t exactly booked our flights yet. Well - we had flights from Bogota (a city 2,902 miles away) to Omaha booked from weeks ago, when they were dirt cheap, and we figured we would somehow find our way to Bogota in the mean time. We had seen flights from Buenos Aires to Bogota via Santiago, Chile or São Paulo, Brazil that were reasonable and decided we’d go with the cheapest option. By the time we got to Buenos Aires we had let the time get away from us a bit and it was now $700+ each, no matter the route we took, to get to Bogota….so we decided to improvise. We'll get into the nitty gritty of this later, but we made the most of our time in Buenos Aires, and decided to visit a family friend.

Note here that we stayed in the same place in Buenos Aires that we had previously stayed. When we were here last time, we got groceries at the store across the street a couple of times and noticed that the cashier/owner seemed to be charging extra. Sure enough, when Kyle went to get a couple of things he saw here taking off price tags, hiding them under the counter, and adding to the bill. He called her out on it, and after some argument she finally went down to the original price, and we chose to shop elsewhere after that....

Back to the story: Nicole's Aunt Anne and Uncle Joe (shoutout if you guys are reading this!) had hosted an Argentine exchange student, Nico, years ago. They shared his contact info and we had decided to meet up at their place for dinner. He, his wife Sabrina, and their 2 sons live in a suburb of Buenos Aires. It took us about an hour and a half via metro train and tram to arrive. We brought wine and pie, which we thought was an apple pie (but ended up being a traditional sweet potato pie), and had no idea until halfway through the evening that it was actually Nico‘s birthday! He had made an asado (see the Los Molles post for more explanation on this), while Sabrina made a delicious salad and meat/cheese/snack trays. We had a few beers while the meat finished, then had the wine with dinner. We may have also had a second bottle of wine..…and champagne once we realized it was Nico‘s birthday, and next thing we knew it was 1:30 am and definitely time to go home. The train was no longer running so we ordered a cab home, which Nicole slept through the entirety of. Again, for those who know Nicole…..you’re well aware she can literally sleep anywhere, anytime, and be comfortable doing so.

The following day we were up and standing in line at 7am to take a pre-flight Covid-19 test that is required to get back into the US (note that the line took several hours to get through). Additionally, since we were passing through Chile, the test had to be the PCR type, which takes longer to process (Chile requires the test be taken with 72 hours of travel, and wait times for results in Buenos Aires were up to 5 days, so the timing did not really add up). Knowing that there was a good chance that we would not get our results back in time to fly, we were back to the drawing board. On a whim, we searched for flights from Iguazu Falls to Bogota and found them to be relatively cheap, and with the added bonus of skipping the issue of passing through the more strict requirements in Chile. As a double bonus, this was also the last big remaining place on our Argentina bucket list, and we had previously lamented that we might have to skip it! The only downside, was it was an 18-hour bus ride away from Buenos Aires...but at this point we were pros at the long bus journeys. Also note: We decided to wait until we got to Iguazu to book the flights (a terrible decision in hindsight).

Iguazú Falls was voted one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature, and it undoubtedly earned its spot as one of the seven. The national park that contains the falls is located in both Argentina and Brazil, and the river that their in actually divides the countries apart. The falls are majestic from both sides, and while we debated a lot which side to choose if we could only do one - we went with the sound advice given and just saw both! We started on the Argentine side which had much more extensive walking paths and a pretty stellar splash zone at the top of the “Garganta del Diablo”, or the Devils Throat. We saw toucans, coaties, monkeys, multiple bird species and tons of butterflies, and DEFINITELY hit our step goal for the day. After the park we ate dinner before going to catch the bus across the border.

Here would be a good time to note that we had waited to long to book our flight to Bogota. This time, prices had skyrocketed again (we're calling BS on the major airlines on these crazy price jumps!) and we actually had to re-book from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Omaha, taking out the Bogota leg of the journey (the only thing we had planned out in advance)!

Back to the Falls (kind of): The bus from the Argentina side to the Brazil side only ran until 4:30pm, and we were told that the only way to get across at this point was via cab. We decided to get a cab ($40) which seemed expensive considering it was 4 miles away - but the bus tickets were also $14 a piece so we agreed and took the cab. At this point while going through our various documents to fill out our “leaving Argentina form”, Kyle nearly left his passport at the bus station (thank you kind strangers who flagged our cab down to hand it back). We drove, we kid you not, 5 minutes (a 5 minute cab ride anywhere else should have been $1-2) before our cab driver stopped at the border, told us to walk across, and his buddy from Brazil was waiting to pick us up. Had we known he wasn’t actually taking us, we would have walked to the border, but what’s done is done. Also, this probably worked out for the best as taking the same cab all the way would have meant waiting in an enormous vehicle line at the border. Why was the line so long you ask? Because every day Brazilians line up in 2-3 hour lines at gas stations in Argentina because gas is almost 1/2 price. We had been curious about why gas station lines wrapped around city blocks, but assumed it was a gas shortage. We were wrong, and it was very interesting to then ask our cab drivers about the price differences between countries. For example, clothes and shoes are much cheaper in Brazil, while gas and wine are much cheaper in Argentina. The more you know, right?

We found our Brazilian cab driver who took us the rest of the way to our guesthouse. As with many borders, once you pass through the Argentina exit border, you drive about a mile before you reach Brazil border control. They checked our passports, vaccines, and stamped us in. With all of the flight changes and debacles we ran into, we were relieved we had booked our place in Foz do Içuazu (the Brazilian side of Iguazú falls) for 2 nights. We ran a few errands and finished all of our planning before heading to the park again to view the Brazil side.

At this point, we had spent what felt like hours and hours of planning, organizing, and trying our best to execute our journey home while also enjoying this amazing part of the world. But we were stressed and exhausted, and decided that we would sit down and have one cup of coffee each, and made a pact with eachother that when the coffee was done we would be reset. So, of course, when we finally ordered our coffee (dos copos de cafe) at the park, what we actually received were dos cocos....coconuts with straws in them. We had nothing to do at this point but laugh, and as the Brazil side was so cheap it was a simple $5 mistake (plus we still got coffee after that). Once we finished, feeling renewed and fresh, we headed down to the beautiful panoramic views from the Brazilian side that you don’t get from the Argentina side. There is only one trail that winds along the river (vs several on the Argentina side), where you can see the Devils throat nearly the entire way. While there were still a ton of coaties (they actually have buckets on broomsticks to shoo them out of the food areas - similar to national parks in the USA they ask you not to feed the wildlife, but inevitably people do), we also saw a lot more lizards on the Brazil side. We stayed until the park was closing and headed back to Foz, found a beer garden, and shared a meat plate (shared meat platters are a major staple of restaurants in Brazil). Our bus wasn’t until 7 pm the next day so we spent time shopping, printed out bus tickets, and got the lunch special at a tiki/sports bar. We finished packing and took an Uber to the bus station, and began the next 18 hour bus journey to São Paulo.

When we arrived at the São Paulo bus station, we got an Uber and headed straight to the airport where our fate would be determined. Up until this point, we did not have our required test results to fly back home (the US needs a test taken within 24 hours, but luckily the only require an Antigen tests which has much quicker, on-the-spot results). After the test at the airport, we had to wait an hour for a result to know if we could fly home or not. Fortunately, they were both negative which meant we could return to Nebraska with a day to spare before the wedding! We loved getting to spend time with friends and family, getting boosted, visiting wedding venues, cleaning a rental, and repacking before our next flight took us to the equator….

A couple of things to note:

- Nearly every family in the Argentine sid eof the park lugged around giant thermos' of water for their mate tea. Even in the way north, hot, humid climate they drink their mate every day!

- The Brazil side of the park was SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper for souvenirs, food, drinks, etc.

- At the Sao Paulo airport, we had some leftover Brazilian real to spend, so we got lunch. The cashier did not have any change for us so she gave us a Twix bar instead!

Levi's shirt count: we finally topped 300 and the count stands at 304