March 26, 2008

Week 1: Iguazu and Buenos Aires

Where: Iguazu Falls (Argentina and Brazil) and Buenos Aires (Argentina)

The good: The insanely beautiful Falls, especially from the Brazilian side

The bad: Injuring arm in Iguazu

The possibly interesting: Language-wise my Spanish is slowly coming back to me, but having more recently learned Latin in college and basic tourist Italian last summer, I found myself accidentally using words from the latter languages quite often.

Biggest surprise: Meeting a husband-wife Taiwanese couple running a souvenir shop in BA and feeling strangely connected to them. We chatted for about 45 minutes in Mandarin (in which I was surprisingly fluent). After them, I've only met a few other Asians (all of whom were Japanese tourists).

Lesson learned: Shared-room (aka dorm) hostel beds aren't as scary as I thought. So long as the roommates are courteous, as mine were in Iguazu and BA. I switched into a private room on my second night in BA and found it to be somewhat isolating ... and 3.5x more expensive!

Regrets: not going to a soccer game in BA

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