Puerto Iguazu (and the joy of customs)

So we arrived in Puerto Iguazu in Argentina on Friday of last week having finally managed to negotiate Paraguayan customs, then Brazilian customs and finally Argentinaian customs... little did we know that the worst of the customs was yet to come...

We booked our tickets to return to Paraguay at the bus station on arrival, along with tickets to the falls for the following day (including a speedboat ride through the gorgeous waterfalls!). After recruiting a French guy at the bus station by the name of Pierre Francoise (no joke), Izzy and I want to find our hostel, which was conveniently located not too far away. There we met a guy from Taiwan (call me Jerry), a girl from Chile (yes Imke... I finally met someone called Priscilla!!!), a couple from Ireland (Bill and Laura)... we decided to all meet up for drinks later. But first (minus Bill and Laura) we decided to go out for a traditional Argentinian dinner- this may or may not have been my fault... for some reason I thought traditional Argentinian would be steak... I was half right. For our delicious CUSTOMary dinner (see where I was going with that?!) we were bought two steaming delicious platters of small intestine, large intestine, black pudding, white pudding, chicken gizzards, kidney, liver and a chicken leg and small steak each. Oh yeah, just what I wanted. Now keen as ever to embrace my new intrepid traveller, open to all experiences, image I TRIED EVERYTHING (yes mum, the girl who was vegetarian for two whole years, who couldnt watch her sister eat bloody steak, the girl who cried at the thought of eating lamb). Sadly I was put to shame by Jerry who not only tried eveything but ate the remainder of everyone elses with gusto; god only knows what they eat in Taiwan. A word of advice for those of you wanting to try customary Argentinan food- close your eyes, dont ask what it is until after you´ve swallowed, don´t participate in a conversation about animal biology during, and the thing you actually really like but would never admit or bring yourself to eat again is large intestine.

Luckily we washed this all down with copius amounts of beer back at the hostel, a wonderful finish to a gorgous Argentinian day, and in the morning we were off to the falls!!!

Saturday (Sabado) started disappointingly cloudy, which turned out to be a blessing as the day wore on, as we would have been fried to a crisp walking round the oddly touristy waterfalls for 7 hours (I defy anyone lucky enought to visit to spend any less time in this gorgeously beautiful nature park). The waterfalls were literally amazing, the photos do them scarce justice as such epic beauty is almost unimaginable when right in front of you. I did my best to capture the scene digitally though with a minimal 400 photos (hands up who wants to see 400 pics of me in front of a waterfall, near a waterfall, with Izzy in front of a waterfall, waterfalls alone, a beach near a waterfall... you get the idea. Don´t worry, they´re not all facebook bound). The speedboat ride turned out to be an excellent choice too, not sure how to descibe the feeling of being under a 200 metre waterfall but it gave us an incredible adrenaline rush meaning that we didnt even mind our waterproofs being rendered moot!

After the falls we returned to Puerto Central to sample the Argeninian nightlife (exactly like being in 90 Degrees- expensive, sweaty, sticky floor and music from 1999), hit the hay around 3am (we wont metion Izzy´s extra two hours alone with Pierre) ready to catch the bus back to Asuncion the following day...