The Escape 2

Well hello there, blog. It's been a while now, hasn't it?

I'll tell you, I haven't written for so long because I've been in La Rioja for weeks, pretty much doing the same old thing. I've escaped. Now I'm on a bus. The bus is going to Córdoba. In Córdoba I will get on another bus. That but will go to Puerto Iguazú, the home of Argentina's famous super-waterfalls. These waterfalls supposedly so super, they have earned the name "Niagara on Viagra".

That's impressive.

I'm traveling with a kid from England (Ollie), and a kid from La Rioja (Angelo). I just met them. I hope that by the end of this week I will have some crazy story to write about them.

Oh yeah! This trip is almost a week long. That's a long time! Wednesday just ended, it's 12:09AM on Thursday and we just got on the bus. I arrive back in La Rioja next Tuesday, six days later. This is kind of bad news because I'm leaving for Buenos Aires almost immediately after. And after that, I'm coming home. All in all, I have THREE MORE DAYS in La Rioja. The whole Argentina thing is coming to a rapid close and there's a lot of things I still want to do.

But back to the bus. To get to Córdoba is six hours. To get from Córdoba to Puerto Iguazú is twenty-two hours. What the hell and I going to do with twenty-two hours?? I ask you: Imagine yourself in the busiest part of your year. You're losing your hair trying to find time to do everything you need to do. And suddenly a bizarrre pink-haird fairy descends from the ceiling and grants you a free twenty-two hours to do whatever you what. What would you do?

Maybe you'd finish a research project that's due on Monday. Maybe you'd finally memorize your lines for the Musical, or learn your notes for Marching Band. Maybe you'd catch up on sleep. Maybe organize that bookshelf that's been such a mess for months, or finish up a home-imporvement project that's been suspended for ages. Or maybe you'd just chill, and watch the entire Lord of the Rings movie series... two and a half times in a row. Or all seven Harry Potter movies consecutively (3 hours x 7 movies = 21 outrageous hours of British wizardry). Or you could play the entire game of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time from start to finish, I dare you. You could watch fourty-four episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Or if you're from La Rioja you could sit in a park and do nothing for twenty-two hours straight.

But for all these miraculous possibilities, I honestly don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow on the bus for twenty-two hours.

[Twenty Two hours later]

Uuuuuh.

So looking out the window I realized, "Oh look! Argentina actually has a nice countryside!" Things were green and nice to look at. It was something of a surprise; I've been in a dry dusty desert for four months. Why the hell did AFS send me to La Rioja, with all this beautiful country to choose from? Whatever.

Now we're in a youth hostel, which isn't too bad! We're paying $45 pesos a night (that's $12.03 USD); the 6-man dorm is filled with foul-smelling bunk beds, but the bathroom is nice. We have free wifi and computers with internet access, a spacious dining room with free breakfast, a decently-equipped kitchen for whoever wants to use it, and a room full of things to do when you're drunk (fuseball, pool table, pingpong, and big TV screens). Alcohol is an integral part of the youth hostel experience.

Tomorrow we hit up Iguazú falls. Either we'll have a super cool adventure and I'll write an exciting blog entry when I get back, or it'll be kind of unexciting and I'll just show you pictures when I get home. More on that later.