And I thought I had some travel stories…
Aug 12, 2005 – Fri
In the middle of the night, I changed the alarm to 8am…however, I woke up at 5:55am to some Germans speaking to each other in the dorm, so I got up, got ready, and went to the bus terminal. I was able to get on the bus no problem. It was 23.50 pesos for about a 6 hour journey to Posadas.
I arrived in Posadas with only the information in my Footprints guide, which was not much. I wanted to stop in Posadas to do a daytrip to the San Ignacio Jesuit mission ruins. I went to the info office in the bus terminal to get a map of the city and info about the ruins. The lady told me quite a bit about the city. As I was leaving, she asked me where I was from, so I told her the US. she had an odd reaction, like a grimace of horror. Whatever…
I took a taxi to Hotel Misiones for 7 pesos. They had a single room with private bath available for 25 pesos a night. I went ahead and took it, even though it looked a little ¨dark¨. Posadas is not a backpacker town, that´s for sure. And in non-popular places, it´s hotels. Posadas is a city of about 350,000 people. Not huge, but a decent size. It has a river waterfront along the Rìo Paranà. Across the river is the city of Encarnaciòn in Paraguay.
After getting my bearings, I walked to the Plaza 9 de Julio, ate lunch at a place called Recodo. Pretty cheap — 9 pesos for gnochis a la bolognesa and a licuado of banana and milk (like a banana milk shake). From there, I decided I wanted to see the waterfront, the Costanera.
I walked to the stadium on the costanera, then took a leisurely stroll. I headed towards the International Bridge. The Costanera of Posadas is so beautiful. The walkway is wide. People are walking and jogging for exercise. And there are a lot of Argentines hanging out with friends and family and drinking mate.
Posadas is warm. It´s in a subtropical climate zone. It was sunny out, and about 75-80 degrees F with some humidity. The walk was nice. I walked quite a ways to a roundabout area to get a closer view of the bridge. As I´m walking, a guy yells out, “It´s the American girl” (in English). I turn around, he´s looking at me smiling, and I say, “How do you know?” He says, “You don´t remember me?” I ask him from where and when. He said, “Three years ago” I say, “Belize??” He joked around for a bit and then told me that he saw me in the bus station this morning. He was the guy at the tourist office after me.
I sat down on the bench next to him, and ended up spending the rest of the afternoon to evening talking to him. He´s a 40 year old Italian guy with black curly gelled hair named Fabio. He had been living in Miami for 8 years and had his own tourism agency that he closed in order to pursue a dream of a round the world trip. So far, he was at month 14 and 5 days of his trip, with about 2 months left to go.
Fabio is quite a character. If anyone has travel stories, it´s him. He had never taken a trip longer than 3 weeks before this one. He started in Germany, worked his way through the Ukraine, to Poland, and to Russia where he hopped on the trans Siberian railway to Mongolia. In Mongolia, he took an 18 day tour through the nomadic regions with a company that set up those huge nomadic tents. As he says, there was dust everywhere. One day during the journey, he and the 7 other people on the trip were in the cooking tent. He was the chef for the night. He went to the truck to get a yellow canister of water to add to the pot. He smelled it to make sure it was water, and all seemed fine. He thinks his nose was clogged up with dust and he couldn´t smell properly…because the canister, in reality, contained fuel.
The whole tent blew up. He showed me pictures on his digital camera. Then he showed me picutres of his fried computer. He said that everyone was able to escape unharmed, but the guide had 2nd degree burns as he went to put the fire out.
The story only gets better…(or worse). The owner was furious and demanded damages. He got the police involved. The owner demanded the group pay $11,000 US. the group was held in a prison for 6 days. All their passports were confiscated and they had no idea what would happen to them. For the duration of the 6 days, the police made threats to them and instilled fear. They all called their consulates, but none were helpful. One guy was from Switzerland, and his consolate was able to bargain the price down to $7,000 US. They had to gather the funds via wire transfers from banks. However, the local bank would not give them the entire amount in 1 day, so they had to wait an extra day. They paid the $7,000 and were released.
He had many more stories..which I´m too lazy to talk about. But very interesting. His passport, issued 3 months before starting his trip, was full except for the last 2 pages.
In the evening, teenagers played drums and blew whistles. It was a huge group of teens, like 20-30 playing the drums (boys), and the same amount of girls dancing in unison to the music. It was neat to watch, and added a special character to the city.
A French guy named Pierre, who Fabio had met in Asunciòn ran into us. He´s a teacher in his mid 40´s from the Tolousse (sp?) region, who is going to teach in French Guinea.
We stayed at the costanera till dark, then decided to meet up at 8:45pm to eat at a parrilla. The restaurant was fancy, the food was excellent, and cheap!
Tags: Posadas, Travel
Marisa
August 16th, 2005 at 12:04 am
hey marisa
web site looks great, read a bunch today, sounds like your doing having fun and staying bisy.
stay safe
mikkel