Friends and Family;
What most people who haven’t travelled before don’t realise is just how easily things can go wrong. Your travel experience hinges on so many variables that need to fit together swimmingly. Sometimes you get lucky. Most times you don’t.
I hitchiked from Mendoza to Rosario in record time, and arrived at roughly 6am after having met the saddest trucker I’ve ever laid eyes on. This guy seriously had issues, but he took me in the cab of his truck for the night. Let me give you an example of just how sad this guy was: he told me he had no friends, so I told him my best friend lived in Hong Kong. He then let me know that his only friend was his son, who was dead. I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
He dropped me off and I spent the night in a service station before catching the city bus into Rosario. I searched for a hostel for the next 5 hours, and ended up settling at this lower-quality hostel with not much going for it. Hey, it was the only place that had space. My skin then broke out in hives, so I shipped off the hospital and came back surprised that I hadn’t had to pay a dime. The next day was fairly good, given that I’d slept for 12 hours and felt rested after a quite literal all-nighter. I farted around Rosario and saw some sights, before heading back to the hostel and having another early night. When I woke up the hives were back, so off I went to the hospital again. They gave me drugs this time, and I had another lazy day of relaxation.
The hostel I was at had absolutely no foreign travellers. The entire guest base were Argentines who had come in pre-arranged groups with no desire to include “that one white guy.” So I was alone. By a random fluke of luck, I met Javier and Jared in a supermarket, both from the States, and we hung out for the night, getting rid of my loneliness. By this time, I was ready to move on, so I got on the next bus to Puerto Iguazú, having had enough of hitchiking for the time being.
When I got to Iguazú, I’d been on the bus for 24 hours, and was extremely tired and annoyed, given that I’d found out roughly 10 minutes after getting off the bus that the price of a 45 minute flight costs roughly $20 more than the bus. When I found a hostel and finally fell asleep that night, it was 8pm, and I was beat. I woke up at 8am twice as tired as when I went to sleep. Not sure about what was going on, I started calling home and doing research, trying to find the cause of this random sickness that had befallen me. The next day, I didn’t get better. When I finally got ahold of my Dad, he told me that the drugs that I’d been put on by the hospital in Rosario were in fact a sedative, and they’d given me way too big a dosage. I’d been overdosing on Benadryl. Joy.
Now that that episode is over though, I’ve been able to thoroughly enjoy Iguazú and what the falls have to offer. Instead of describing them, let me get you some pictures. Please enjoy, and don’t overdose on drugs.
Global Thoroughfare 