Misiones (Argentina & Paraguay)

To avoid a 20h busride from Cordoba to Puerto Iguazu, we decided to make two stops on our way. We spent the night in Santa Fe, a small provincial city near Rosario. Nothing special to do here, so the next day we took a long overnight bus to Posadas, capital of the Misiones province.

Misiones is the narrow fingershaped province in the Northeast of Argentina, squeezed between Paraguay and Brasil. It is famous for its numerous Jesuit ruins, so we hired a private taxi to drive us around to the five mayor sites, including two ruins in Paraguay.

Although people in busses have to face long queues to fulfill the border formalities, taxi drivers seem to have a special treatment here. Our guy passed the whole queue and took care of the procedures for us. It took him less than ten minutes to cross the border. I wonder how much money is involved in this special 'relationship'.

Of course there is no big difference between Paraguay and Argentina, except for the money. The Paraguayan Guarani is worth nothing. It's cool though to see advertisements along the road for a haircut (12.500 PYG) or a steak (20.000 PYG). The ruins were nice to see, but we saw more impressive ones in Peru and Bolivia, so we weren't that impressed anymore.

One day was certainly enough in this expensive area and we were really looking forward to see the Iguazu Falls. So we took a bus (our last one) to Puerto Iguazu, our base for a couple of days to explore the falls and the surrounding national parks.