New country, new spelling of Iguazu and something new and different for this blog post…
Puerto Iguazu is a small Argentinian town that sits on the border with both Brazil and Paraguay. The Iguazu Falls, especially on the Argentinian side, are truly spectacular and do earn the moniker of “Natural World Wonder”. Sadly, however, we will remember it as the place that broke us. As such, this blog post will be a tale of first world woe interspersed with some seemingly out of place pictures of the amazing falls – a nice allegory (is that the right word?) for how we felt about our stay there.
Before we share our woes, however, some background on the falls. We preferred the falls on the Argentinian side, partially because we made it to the park those crucial few minutes earlier than we did on the Brazil side, meaning we were ahead of the crowds, and thus, enjoyed a fairly quiet and uninterrupted walk around the falls. It also offered more hikes to do with better, more up-close views of the falls. We did all the hikes over the course of two days: The Superior trail, with its great views overlooking the falls, the Inferior trail (in elevation, not quality), with great views from the bottom of the falls, and the mind-blowing Garganta del Diablo, a stunning narrow section of the falls where 50% of the water falls with an impressive roar and finally, on day two, the longest hike to Macuco. Throughout our hiking we saw a lot of wildlife.
There was also a light show at the point on the river where Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet. It’s the type of attraction that could go either way depending on your mood – from a cool way to experience the three borders, to two minutes of a lame light show that didn’t really work and I can’t believe we walked all that way in the heat for that! I won’t tell you which mood we were in…
Now for our tale of first world woe interspersed with out of place pictures of the falls (we’re being allegorical (we think), remember?).
We’re traveling long-term so we need internet for our remote work (very important) and home school (could get by without it for a little while). Despite the importance of having internet it’s usually a non-issue.
That is, until we got to South America! We expected some issues and tried to plan accordingly (mixing small towns and big cities to catch up if necessary, specifically contacting places in advance and reading reviews to determine if they will have strong Wifi), yet on this continent we’ve had every internet issue you can think of and several I bet you can’t – slow internet, no internet, internet that only works on Google owned sites (yes, that’s actually a real thing), internet that cuts out periodically for no reason, internet that cuts out surprisingly methodically (but again for no reason), internet that cuts out in the rain, internet that cuts out in the wind, internet that only works in the far corner of our accommodation if you stand on one leg and lean out the window, internet that only works if Venus is in line with the sun, and finally, “The Great Internet Mystery of Puerto Iguazu”, or as we will come to call it, “The Last Straw”.
We got off to a bad start in Puerto Iguazu when our accommodation was changed on us last minute. We’re not fussy people and we can sleep anywhere, but we do like to scope out our accommodation ahead of time. We look for certain (previously considered) basics: advertised number of beds, place for the kids to play and do home school, a well-stocked kitchen, a table to eat/work at, and, of course, decent internet. With this change in accommodation, we were going in blind. However, our host assured us everything would be “the same or better”, the liar!
The accommodation itself was actually fine. Not good, fine. The internet was neither. The wifi was so slow we couldn’t even open a website – no exaggeration. It was faster to disable wifi and go on the painfully slow 3G phone network. We told the host, who had come over from the place we were supposed to stay, to let us into this new mystery (no sign indicating the name of the accommodation) place, who said there was nothing he can do as, “it’s the same internet company for the whole town.”
To which we replied, “You know that’s not really relevant?” And also “If you operate a company that gets bookings online – which you do because that is how we booked – you couldn’t possibly use this internet, so therefore you MUST have better internet at your place.”
To which he didn’t reply.
So, we asked the lady who seemed to be the owner. She said she called the company and they told her the wifi was out in the whole town. Hmmmm. (Meanwhile, yet another remote work meeting missed).
That evening, while heading out to dinner, we walked by the hostel next door to us when an eagle-eyed son spotted a sign in the entrance with the wifi password. We had to steal try it. It worked.
So, the internet was out in the whole town but worked just fine right next door to us!? In fact, our speed test rated it “Excellent. You can stream movies!” Too hot and tired to walk home from dinner, we took a taxi. We asked the taxi driver if the internet was out in the town. “Yes” he said. The plot thickens! Then, he added, “It’s out in the whole country because of the storms”. Whole country!? Ha! Calm down, buddy. Credibility lost.
When we got back, we told the host and owner that we can’t tell them how we know but we know the internet was working next door. They assured us it would be fixed the next morning – no mention of the storms being at fault. No apology either.
The next morning? No internet. (Another remote work meeting missed). A different driver picked us up early to go to the waterfalls. We asked him, “is the internet out in the town”. He replied, “Yes, and electricity and water…because of the storms”.
Hold up here, because of the storms!? “Aren’t there a lot of storms here?”
“No”.
So now we have to believe that in the RAINforest, they don’t get a lot of storms? That’s why they can’t handle it when they come? In the eight days we’ve been in the rainforest we’ve experienced TWO (not even big) storms. We’re supposed to believe that’s just some statistical anomaly? And again, the wifi is working RIGHT NEXT DOOR! And one last thing (we’re going full on Columbo at this point), “you said there is no water or electricity, but we showered this morning? And we have electricity!”
“Well, we don’t have water upstairs in our house because there’s not enough water to create sufficient pressure.”
I’m no plumber, but I haven’t lost my sense of smell and I smell BS – and not because the toilet won’t flush because of lack of water. Also, we’ve just experienced TWO (not even big) storms, which dropped a lot of water onto the town. These TWO (not even big) storms are at the same time big enough to knock out the internet (possibly in the entire country!), but not big enough to create sufficient water pressure to get water upstairs in a house? What the heck is going on!? Is this some kind of conspiracy?
Once we got to the falls, we got on the park wifi. It worked no problem, of course.
We would never get the wifi to work in our accommodation in Puerto Iguazu. We would never get our apology either. We borrowed the hostel next door’s wifi and tried to make do (the signal was so weak we didn’t really make do). To this day, we have no idea what all the taxi drivers were talking about – why internet was fine in some places but “out in the whole town (or country!)”, why it was because of the TWO (not even big) storms that they never get, but actually always do. It remains, “The Great Internet Mystery of Puerto Iguazu.” And for us it was the last straw.
Internet aside we were also tired. Tired of the food, tired of the woefully under stocked kitchens (how can you not have a spatula?), tired of moving around all the time (we had a lot to see, and with working at the same time, we pretty much moved every weekend), tired of not being able to flush toilet paper down the toilet, tired of being eaten alive by mosquitoes at night, tired of the diarrhea, tired of the elevation, tired of the cold, tired of the heat, tired of the crowds, tired of being tired.
The bottom line was that for the first time of traveling in almost three years, we just weren’t enjoying this anymore. Also, after Uruguay and Buenos Aires we only really had Patagonia left. With the ongoing political unrest in Chile, freezing temperatures there, high probability of yet more internet issues as well as the fact we had no big plans for one month there, we knew it was time to move on.
We cut out the Patagonia portion of our trip and changed our flight back to Europe for one month earlier than planned. It was a big relief. We could really enjoy what would now be our last two weeks in South America instead of just getting through it. It’s been an amazing trip and we have absolutely no regrets. We’ve seen and done some amazing things and we’re grateful that we’re so lucky to have been able to do all that we’ve done. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed it (for the most part!), so let’s end it before we ruin it. We could now look forward to Uruguay with a renewed vigor!
