Getting robbed, getting soaked

When our bus arrived in Puerto Iguazu 19 hours after leaving Buenos Aires, Ryan and I stepped out onto the reddish-brownish ground and breathed a sigh of relief: aahhh...finally in a place where we could have some peace and quiet. After a month in BA, arriving in such a small town with big trees and birds chirping and few cars seemed necessary and we embraced it immediately, despite the heat and humidity.

How nice it was to be able to walk from the bus station to the hostel! No bus, no subte, no cab, just our feet. As soon as we got into the room at the hostel, we opened our bags to adapt to the tropical weather by changing into shorts, and after a very brief moment of complete shock, we realized that we'd been robbed. Ryan announced, "They took my camera." I think my heart skipped a beat right there, before I completely understood the situation. Someone had opened up our bags, looked through all our belongings, and selected the most valuable items to steal. Let me clarify that these were our big backpacks that were stored in the luggage compartment below the bus--an area that only people working for the bus company have access to.

Ryan's camera was stolen, along with his dork light, aka head lamp. And for some bizarre reason, my Tevas were stolen…what a thief would do with a size 6 pair of old, worn women's sandals I have no idea. I remember just standing there in shock, wanting to cry or scream or something, but feeling too angry to do anything. The anger just built up in me, bigger and bigger, as I continued digging through my bag to check if anything else was gone. Nope! Just my Tevas. Ha! Can you believe it?

But more importantly, Ryan's digital SLR was stolen. Luckily we had all the photos backed up. We ran from our hostel back to the bus station. This turned out to be extremely difficult for me, now that I was Teva-less. I was running in cheap, stupid flipflops that were digging blisters into my skin between my toes. They were just my shower flipflops--not quite for running. Finally, we arrived at the bus station and found the office of the bus company. A girl was sitting at a desk, looking bored as hell, and we ran in all sweaty and out of breath yelling: "Alguien nos robo!" and tried to piece together the whole story in Spanish while she stared at us with an expression on her face that said: hmm, interesting, too bad, oh well, and what do you expect me to do?

The following 10 minutes consisted of a rather hilarious (only in retrospect, of course) mostly one-sided shouting match in which we tried to convince the extremely uninterested employee that she could, in fact, help us by finding out the names of all the people who worked on the particular bus we'd ridden on. Someone who worked for the company, on that bus, with access to the luggage compartment, opened our bags and took our stuff. She just kept saying that there was no way. No way! She said she couldn't possibly find out who worked on that bus. She also stepped for a moment into the shoes of a kindergarten teacher by providing us with the moral lesson of, "Well, you can't just accuse someone when you don't know who did it!" Oh brother, give me a break. I almost laughed. Just find out the names of all the people who were assigned to work that bus! Ryan's response was, "Your company keeps records of who works on which bus. It's not like only NASA keeps such records. This is not an impossible request." Ryan actually said that in Spanish. At that point, my very serious and trying-to-scare face broke down and I couldn't help but laugh. NASA!

Well, all that left us with nothing. The girl just kept saying she couldn't do anything, she had no information, blah blah blah. We realized we were getting nowhere and just needed to go straight to the police. Thus followed more running! There was a sense of urgency. I guess that we initially felt like there might be a way for us to catch the guys and retrieve what was stolen. There was a feeling that if we moved fast enough, we could do it. After an hour of running around the town and ending up in a place that was supposed to be the tourist police office, but wasn't, that sense of urgency was lost. We knew we'd never see the camera, dork light, or Tevas again. They "se fued": a phrase we have invented mixing 3rd person singular past tense in Spanish (for something that really should be plural), and to which we've tacked on an English "d" as in "ed" to further emphasize past tense. Yes, our things se fued. They left, they went, gone.

So, what do you do once you've accepted that you've been robbed and cannot catch the thief or get back your stuff? You drink frozen daiquiris, of course. Entering an air-conditioned restaurant was quite heavenly. Although I must say that I was extremely paranoid. I looked around the restaurant and thought everyone had the potential to steal my backpack. I trusted no one. Everyone was a suspect. Even after all that yelling at the unhelpful girl, running around in the hot sun to find the wrong building, and finally accepting that the thief got away--even after that exhausting process with no conclusion, I still felt angry.

Ryan, on the other hand, was sipping his daiquiri, already dreaming about the next camera he'd purchase after (hopefully) getting money from our travel insurance. He had a smile on his face. I was full of anger and he was smiling! It wasn't that I was so angry about the particular items we'd lost. It was more the principle of the thing. That some idiots felt like they had the right to go through our stuff and do that. I felt violated. It was a disgusting feeling and I just couldn't get rid of it.

I eventually did, though, of course. The anger slipped away. After a while, there's nowhere for it to go and you just have to let go of it. I thought, instead, about how incredibly lucky we were. We could have had our entire bags stolen! That would have been pure disaster. We could have lost much more important items, or we could have had our bags slashed and ruined. Really, we were very lucky that our thieves work for the bus company and keep their thievery controlled and calculated. They leave the bags looking fine so you walk away from the bus without a clue.

With Ryan already excited about getting a new camera, the most negative effect of the incident seemed to be the blisters developing on my feet from the stupid flipflops. But Ryan then swept to my rescue like Prince Charming. We were walking back to the hostel after lunch and I was moving at snail speed (the concrete was too hot to walk barefoot, I tried). Maybe Ryan just wanted to get home faster. Or maybe he wanted to be my hero. Well, either way, he knelt down in front of me and ordered me to jump on his back. I hesitated for maybe a second and a half, then jumped aboard. Ryan carried me all the way home! Stolen Tevas led to the piggyback ride of a lifetime. It lasted several blocks and I was beaming with joy the entire time. There is probably some saying I could put here. Or maybe I could quote a Tupac song: "after the darkest night always comes a brighter day."

Anyway, later that day I bought some funny, strawberry sandals (Croc knockoffs).

And we did finally find the tourist police station. We got a police report filled out, and the lady helping us there told us that what happened is very common. It happens all the time, and always in the same way (things stolen from the bags below the bus).

Our second day in Puerto Iguazu was spent taking care of business. Ryan got his visa for Brazil, which took several hours, lots of running around, and a story half as long as the one above. I’d stayed back at the hostel while he went to the Brazilian consulate to apply for his visa. When Ryan came back, his shirt and hair and face were all dripping wet as if he’d just stepped out of the shower. I think it took me a second before I realized that he was actually drenched in sweat. Breathing hard, the first thing Ryan said to me was, “I’m glad you didn’t come. You would have flipped out.” He then proceeded to tell me the story of how he almost didn’t get his visa before the office closed for the weekend.

Later that day we were laughing about all the little things that seemed to keep on going wrong, one after another. We were eating lunch at a restaurant and I said, "Everything is going wrong! What's next?" And like one second later (seriously) all the power went out. This was followed by a storm with crazy wind and rain that we had to run home through. It was pretty funny.

Our third day in Puerto Iguazu, we woke up early with the intention of getting an early start to go see the falls. It was pouring rain all morning though, nonstop rain. We sat under the covered patio at our hostel, watching the rain, waiting for it to stop. When it finally lessened to a drizzle, we decided to take our chances and head out to the falls. We were in luck! The rain stopped soon after we arrived at the park, and we had a great day at Iguazu Falls.

There were neat trails through forests and over rivers.

And the views of the falls from the various different spots on different trails were truly spectacular.

One of the most amazing moments was walking up to the “water wall.” You could get so close to one of the falls that the water hit you with incredible force and soaked you down to your underwear.

Ryan approaching the water wall:

More views of more falls from different trails (there are over 250 falls!):

And we left for last the famous La Garganta del Diablo which everyone told us would blow us away. To get there, you have to cross many rivers. You walk and walk and walk, wondering when the amazing thing will arrive.

You feel the spray before you can even see the falls. Then you arrive, and all you see for a while is WHITE. Everywhere, white. It is so powerful, so overwhelming and good! Standing there to see it, hear it, and feel it is a fight against the water and wind. Super amazing.

La Garganta del Diablo:

If you ever want to feel the power of water in a new way, I highly recommend a visit to Iguazu Falls. It was so, so lovely.

Our next and final day in Puerto Iguazu, we took a tour of a wildlife animal rehabilitation and conservation center called Guira Oga. The work they’re doing there is really admirable, and I totally believe in it. They receive injured animals and work to rehabilitate them so they can be released back into the wild. Animals that for whatever reason will not be able to survive again in the wild remain in the center in captivity. Their homes, though, were so big and nice. I was really impressed with how not-zoo like it felt. And it's awesome how the whole place serves to educate the public.

Seeing the toucans was really neat:

But of course our favorite was watching the monkeys

After watching beautiful animals for a couple of hours, we picked up our bags, headed to the bus station, and made our way to BRAZIL!