The city of Sculpture
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008So, the problem with going to Iguazu Falls, well, the problem with Argentina in general, is that it’s huge. Okay, not USA huge, but pretty darn huge. Which makes getting around a bit of a pain. So, not wanting to take a 36 hour bus ride to Mendoza, which was our ultimate destination before we headed back to Buenos Aires, we decided to break it up a bit and hit our first, and apparently only stop-over…Resistencia.
So, yes, we headed onto another overnight bus ride. But it was kind of cool because we ended up in the front of the bus so we could watch out the front. Anyway, it was rather uneventful, except for Andesmar, the bus company we were using, had the big sign that said it’s ultimate destination “Mendoza”. Hmmm, maybe we’ll just skip right over Cordoba, which we were thinking of making our next stop-over and just keep on moving for a 24 hour bus ride.
Anyway, Resistencia…first off, accomodations. We had called like 3 places from our handy-dandy Lonely Planet but they were all full…which kind of alarmed us since this isn’t what you would call a huge tourist destination. In fact, unless you’re from the north of Argentina, most people hadn’t even heard of it (although it’s quite a large place). So we made a booking at this kind of expensive place, but when we got to the bus station, John had this bright idea to try this place that was posted on the tourist information door…and it ended up being a really cool hosteria and we were quite happy with it. TV, a super-loud fan, own bathroom…really, what more can you need…
So we head towards the center. And we’re like going…this is really not a very pretty place. But, it had rained all night and typically when things rain all night…they look kind of miserable even if it’s like the Wizard of Oz where the streets are lined with gold…but it was so weird – it had the nicest park in the middle of it. So, after stopping off at the tourist information office for a map of where all the sculpture off and then a quick cafe at a scarily super-busy cafe which at 10:00 am people were waiting for tables to have their morning coffee, we were off to see the sculptures. And let’s just say, they weren’t kidding when they said there were a lot of sculptures. John had a literal field day…and they were all within like a 10 block radius of the park in the middle…
1 p.m. The whole town stopped. I mean, quite literally, stopped. Other places had the idea of the siesta, but this town…it took this term VERY seriously. So we searched around and around for some food of some sort…and ended up at this place that served way too much food for a reasonable price – let’s just say quantity over quality. But, well, when you’re the only place open…
Anyway, it was a very pleasant stop-over – and it gave us plenty of time to rest for our monster bus journey to Mendoza…
JohnCin