south america

Back in April of 2012 when we were chaotically planning our year long round-the-world trip, we decided ending it in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for Carnival 2013 would be the best way to celebrate it coming to a close. Knowing that people would be traveling from all over the world to be in Rio for the festivities, we booked our hostel in advance. Way in advance. 11 months in advance. It was very unlike our “bad tourist” habits of doing things last minute. But we knew it’d be expensive if we waited. In fact, prices were already inflated by the time we booked.

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Iguazu Falls was the perfect way to cross the border from Argentina into Brazil and from there we continued our journey to Rio for Carnival, but we had one more stop on the way. Parati is a former Portugese colonial town with well preserved cobblestone streets (or as Auston calls them: cobbleystone) and historic buildings (mainly churches). Getting a bus from Iguazu to Parati wasn’t easy though. We were told that we could take a bus to São Paulo and easily catch a second bus to Parati from there. This proved to be much more difficult than that.

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When you make your way to see the infamous Iguazu Falls in South America, you’re going to want to choose which side to visit in the National Park. And if you chose both sides, you chose right. The falls are formed by the Iguazu River which creates part of the border between Argentina and Brazil – hence the two sides of the falls.

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Three magnificently wine filled days in Mendoza flew by quickly and we needed to start making our way toward our next destination: Iguazu Falls on the Argentina/Brazil border, but first we had to decide what to do in Córdoba for just one day, since it was our stop along the way. Córdoba happens to be the second largest city in Argentina behind Buenos Aires, though Córdoba’s population of 1.5 million pales in comparison to the 13 million people of Buenos Aires.

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After the wine debaucheries of the previous day in Mendoza, we woke up the next morning needing strong coffee in order to catch up on some blog work. We went to cafe near the tourist area of Plaza Independencia. We sat at a table for four inside the cafe and Auston placed his backpack on the empty seat next to him. We ordered coffees and then reached for our computers to use the wifi. This is when Auston realized his backpack was gone. We looked all over the cafe but it was nowhere to be found. Someone had so stealthily snatched his bag that we couldn’t even believe it happened. It had been right next to him and no one but our server had come up to our table.

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