Well, things did not quite go according to plan. I hit Puerto Iguazu (for the second time) fully intending to spend a day there and then cross to the Brazil side, head to Florinopolis with a couple friends, and then head up to Salvador to visit an old College friend who´s spending the year there teaching English. The first part went stunningly - I met a couple of Brits and headed off into a little jungle trail that culminated in cool little pool/waterfall that you could even swim in. I also got a chance to snap some photos of wildlife that I missed the first time - Toucans and those furry little raccoon-like critters with the big snouts. I even saw a whole herd of them. They´re not shy, mostly because they know we´ve got food by now, and are all over the place - even painted on the side of the buses. The park has actually bagged and tagged all of them - look closely in the first picture and you´ll see its collar.

That evening though, a little wrench got thrown in the plan - I started to feel pretty sick, to the point of throwing up most of the night. Not really feeling up for a 16 hour bus ride with three transfers, I told my friends to go on ahead without me, intending to just head directly up to Salvador when I was feeling better.

But I didn´t feel better - I felt even worse the next day, couldn´t keep anything down, and dry-heaved through the night. I wasn´t really that sick, but I was getting spooked - especially since I was alone - so I decided to hit the hospital to see a doctor. Now, I´m pretty much used to Buenos Aires. Good hospitals, 1st-World Health Care, that kind of thing. Puerto Iguazu is not Buenos Aires. I went into their one hospital and they hooked me up to an IV. Now, this place I wouldn´t exactly describe as "3rd-World," but it was definitely "2nd and a half World." Basically, it was one of those Hospitals where you´re more concerned with not getting sicker rather than getting better. And the worst part was that it ended up being like Hotel California - they wouldn´t let me leave. Unbeknownst to me when I checked in, you can only check out at one time each day, which is after the head doc makes the rounds. I had checked in right after that, so I has to stay until the next morning, where I ended up sleeping through the head doc´s rounds. So 48 hours (and a lot of broken Spanish) later, they finally sent me on my way. I had luckily remembered to bring my book - I finished all of "The DaVinci Code" during my stay. The only other thing to read was this graffito on the wall, which reads:

Smile to be happy
But never wait
To be happy to smile

Hey, just add a "Yeah" to the end of the first two lines and it´s a Haiku.

The only other interesting thing about my stay was meeting the Visitantes - professional visitors hired by the Department of Social Services to visit people in the hospital. They just go around to each room chatting with folks. The first day I thought they had sent a Priest in to see me and got kind of freaked until the guy explained what the deal was. The two ladies who came in the second day coughed all over the place and then made the sign of the cross on my forehead (to be fair - the lady did say "Permiso" before she did it, I just didn´t figure it out what she was doing soon enough). A superb idea - let´s send people to every room in the hospital to cough and then touch everyone. This is what I mean by the kind of Hospital where you´re more worried about not getting sicker. And keep in mind that they stuck me in the obstetrics ward for some reason - I´m sure the newborns are going to love whatever bug I had.

A good thing about Argentina - you can show up to the airport, ticketless, a half-hour before a domestic flight and make it with room to spare (at the same price you would pay under any other circumstances), which is exactly what I did. After finally getting out of the hospital I was shook up enough that I decided to forego Salvador (my friend was actually heading back to the USA in a few days anyway) in favor of jetting back to Buenos Aires for a little R&R - and a much-needed familiar environment - before tackling Brazil. First though, I did take a little trip to the Brazilian side of the Falls which I missed last time. I considered heading over to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay too, which is most famous as a place to get really cheap bootleg electronics (and perhaps the Mona Lisa too - I couldn´t really figure out what that sign was about). However, the fact that everyone I´ve talked to, even the Paraguayans, has said it´s an absolute wretched place, I was still not feeling so hot, and they don´t even stamp your passport if you´re just there for the day led me to forego that little adventure.

I´ve mostly just taken the last few days to relax and recuperate here, but I did find a couple of little random things: first, what the Communist Party is now reduced to being headquartered next to, and second, a newsstand that displays original vintage covers of the newspapers it sells.

There´s been a couple noteworthy excursions. I found the little Chinatown they´ve got here. Here is the restaurant I ate at. Here is the restaurant I did not eat at. It was actually pretty surprising to find a Veggie restaurant period in Buenos Aires, much less a Chinese Veggie restaurant. I was also kind of surprised I didn´t find a Kosher Chinese restaurant

I also decided I should do the whole Tango thing while I was here, so I did an evening with lessons, a show, and a milonga (dance) at the end. All that with a cheesy photo op, dinner and wine for 20 bucks - and the old couple that cooked even ended up putting on a show themselves. Not bad at all. And as it turns out, I love the Tango. My instructor said I was a natural, and that it was extremely rare for somebody to be able to follow the music as well as I could their first time. And I just learned of free Tango lessons back in New York, so this might well become a new hobby.

The only other slightly noteworthy thing is that the Hostel I´m staying at is run by Israelis. I knew they traveled all over the place, but I didn´t know they´ve started to set up shop. I think it´s only natural - we´re a traveling people and always have been. The last little bit of history we´ve been playing against type and consolidating in two places, but I think we´re starting to revert back to form again. Not only do all the Israelis travel everywhere they can, but I´ve also found that there´s a hugely disproportionate chance that any random American backpacker you run into on the road is going to be a Member of the Tribe as well. Different folks have their different takes on it, but I personally have always dug being part of a worldwide crew, with a culture and history in virtually every every corner of the globe. I think it´s a shame that that´s disappeared over the last 50 years (in favor of all the aforementioned history and culture gravitating to Haifa and Brooklyn), and I think it´s kind of cool that it might start up again in a new way - and this time voluntarily to boot!

So, today is my real last day in Argentina (I hope). I´m heading off into the Pantanal to do crazy stuff like Piranha fishing tomorrow.