Thursday-Monday
Iguazu Falls last weekend. Iguazu is an uber-majestic waterfall park on the Argentina-Brazil border. It is a bit of a ritual for Buenos Aires tourists to suffer through a 18- or 20-hour bus ride to get there. At the park, my group absorbed the raging splendor of the falls from afar on a series of trails and bridges. Then, we hopped on the Grand Adventure speedboat, surged at kamikaze-like speeds into the falls and got raging splendor sprayed directly in our faces.
The real fun began when we took a break at the snack bar. That's where the coatíes hang out. As we discovered, coatíes are small aardvark-like creatures whose only apparent source of food is bread crusts from the snack bar at Iguazu Falls.
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| For real, this place was crawling with aarvarks yo |
These guys spend their days with their snouts on the ground hunting for crumbs. They also sucker tourists in with their cuteness for a bite to eat. They have no reservations about climbing onto tables, either. In all seriousness, more so than seeing the actual waterfalls, my favorite moment from the weekend very well may have been witnessing a patron accidentally drop a full sandwich on the ground and watching an impressively alert coatí sprint to his table, snatch the sandwich off the ground, sprint away and devour it in a matter of seconds.
Actually scratch that. My favorite moment happened on the drive back, when boarding the bus, I slowly came to the realization that our bus came equipped with "cama" seats rather than the semi-cama we paid for. Cama seats, which are considerably more expensive than their semi counterparts, recline all the way back and are comfy beyond belief. Ironically, for several hours I was unable to sleep because I was so excited that I was sitting in a cama seat.
Tuesday
Incubus concert. Lead singer Brandon Boyd shouted "muchas gracias!" after several songs and the crowd went apeshit every time.
Wednesday
MLB playoffs began. I watched the Phillies-Reds game at The Alamo, which caters to Americans desperate for sports that are not named after poultry.
The bar was packed, albeit with Argentinians who did not know what baseball is. My friend Anthony, a Yankees fan, commented on how unbelievable it was that two American baseball fans are watching the playoffs on a muted TV in a noisy bar in Argentina.
I picked a good day to get in front of a television as Roy Halladay, my new hero, pitched the second no-hitter in postseason history. When Carlos Ruiz threw to Ryan Howard for the final out, I went berserk, shouting and jumping and running up to high-five a group of Argentine strangers who were startled yet intrigued by my happiness. Alcohol may have been involved. I don't remember for sure; I was too drunk. Needless to say I will be there for the next one.
Thursday
I got tina'd without even saying a word. While participating in a Facebook chat on my laptop, I typed the word 'it's' and was confused to see the 'it-s' on the screen. I soon realized I have grown accustomed enough to the Latin American keyboard that I had reached up for the dash key, where the apostrophe is located on keyboards down here.
The future
Tomorrow I take the 10-hour bus ride to Cordoba, where I will spend the weekend celebrating Argentina's Oktoberfest. I have ceremonially renamed the festival Doctoberfest in honor of Roy "Doc" Halladay, who, if you didn't here, is a beast with insatiable appetite for blood and World Series victories.
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