Sunday, June 10, 2007

I woke up at 7 and Diana was still sleeping. I got dressed in the dark and went out to the garden to read my Bible and be alone for a while. I went back in about 8 and woke up Diana. I packed my stuff up and went down to breakfast. I ate a lot of food (again!). I especially liked the homemade bread with plum jam and dulce de leche (not at the same time!). I drank a lot of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Fruit and bread was pretty much my breakfast. It was all delicious. I went back upstairs and brushed my teeth and got my stuff before we met in the lobby of the hotel at 9. We left our luggage in the middle of the lobby because the hotel people were going to move it to a safe place since we had to check out of our rooms. We got in these hay-wagon type vehicles (only with a roof and open sides) and drove about 20 minutes to the Guaraní community. It was very much like a reservation for native Americans back home. The only way the community can support itself is to invite tourists in for tours and to sell them their crafts. It was kind of sad. Our guide for the tour was Santiago. He took us through the reservation on a “special” path through the selva or jungle that you could tell had been specially designed for this purpose. Every so often we would stop at an animal trap and he would explain how it worked and show us. We saw three different kinds of traps and a typical Guaraní house from days past. We saw a Guaraní house where a family lives and saw the crops that they grow. Then we came to a little clearing and the Guaraní children sang for us in Guaraní. It was really sweet. I am such a sucker for small children. I took lots of pictures and videos and I bought a CD of them singing. We then went to a park shelter type thing where different families had their crafts set out. No one had told us that you should have lots of little bills (5 peso) because they wouldn’t give us change. I ended up making a big purchase at one table and that was all. We then walked back to our wagon things and drove back to the hotel. We had one hour and fifteen minutes before we had to leave, but we couldn’t go to our rooms because we had already checked out. I walked down the street with some girls. We stopped at a little gift store and I bought another mate and bombilla (hopefully with much smaller holes than my previous one!) and we talked to the man and woman working there. They really liked us and when we left, the woman gave us each a free quarter kilo of mate! We kept walking down the sidewalk until we met up with other people from our group at a sidewalk café. I sat there with them for a while and then decided to go back to the hotel and sit in the swing outside and read and journal. I sat there for about a half hour and then it was time to go. We got on another bus (but with the same driver) and drove to the Iguazú airport. We waited about forty-five minutes before getting our boarding passes and going through security. We then waited on the other side. There were not very many chairs so we all sat on the floor. Lots of people took naps. Finally we got on the plane. I got to sit next to the window because someone wanted to trade. Hurray! They told us that sometimes you can see the mist from Garganta del Diablo from the plane, but I couldn’t. The girls sitting next to me fell asleep. The stewardess asked me to fill out a survey in Spanish and so I did. They brought us drinks next. I was expecting it to be like a normal flight where we would get juice or pop and that’s it. Nope! On this flight, we each got a box of cookies with three different kinds. They were delicious. I think all airplanes need to do this. There was a chocolate alfajor which is kind of like a big sandwich cookie made of cake and frosting (my description does not do it justice), a big sandwich cookie with lemon icing, and three cheese flavored cookies which were kind of strange, but good. I had orange juice to drink which was kind of like Tang. I journaled for a while and looked out the window and read the magazine that was in Spanish. I took some pictures of the rivers below. The flight was only an hour and a half. We got to the airport about 5. It was a smaller airport than the big international one. We waited for a while and then a bus came and picked us up and took us back to the ISA office. I was worried because we were getting back so early and Fani had specifically asked me when we were getting back because she wanted to be there. (She was visiting her family in another part of Argentina.) Our itinerary said we were arriving back at 10, but I was home a little after 6! Fani was very glad to see me because she was worried that there would be too much fog for us to land. Buenos Aires has been having problems with fog the last few days and the domestic airport often closes as a result of this. Fani left to go buy a frozen pizza for my dinner (Sorry!) and I unpacked. I ate my over-microwaved pizza, soup, and chocolate mousse and put some more stuff away. I put my pictures on the computer and read for a while before going to bed about 11pm.