Paraguay --> Bolivia

After a few hours waiting in Asunción for the plane and then the short flight, we landed in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. This was just a layover for me, en route to La Paz. However, this flight landed late at night, 11 or maybe midnight, and the flight to La Paz was leaving early in the morning. I have a mission companion from Santa Cruz, but I had no way of getting a hold of him. I once had an email address, but I never was able to communicate with him either because I never emailed him or he never emailed me back. The details are fuzzy.

This is Bolivia and Paraguay. It is hard to see, but Asunción is on the bottom of the map. This is a map from Brazil, so Asunción is written as Assunção, and Paraguay is written as Paraguai. You can see Santa Cruz on the east of Bolivia and then La Paz on the west. As you can see, the distance between these cities is not great. The flights are only an hour or so. But driving takes over 10 hours and sometimes longer because of underdeveloped roads and a few other things.


I arrived late at night into Santa Cruz. A lot of South American countries require Americans to get visas because they want to get back at the United States for making these countries' citizens get visas in order to come to the U.S. And they always make them the same price as what a visa to the U.S. would cost. I think it is ridiculous, but that is probably what they're saying! I tried to get this visa done in Rio de Janeiro, but they wouldn't let me. After almost an hour, I got through the line and they got the visa put into my passport. I went to find my bag, but it was not there. I went to ask a representative of the airline why my bag was not there. When he found out that I was only making a connection there, he took me to the ticket counter and called some guy on his walkie talkie.

This guy came up and told me that the airline was providing a hotel for me because of the layover. I was happy to hear it because I was planning on just staying in the airport until my flight left. But I was also a little skeptical because it just seemed too nice. And once I started talking to this guy, things seemed really weird. We were talking in Spanish at first, but he insisted on speaking English because he said it would never get better unless he practiced. I was fine with that and he proceeded to fill out the form in order to get me into a hotel.

He started to ask me the basic questions, such as my name and age and so forth. After a few of these, he started to ask some really weird questions. The one that stuck out the most was "Do you want to live forever?" I couldn't believe that he asked me that. What a bizarre question! I thought maybe he had been listening to Alphaville or something. P.S. this song might be the best worst song of all time. Same for the music video. The lead singer looks like a younger version of my brother-in-law Mark, aka Cry Boy. When my sister dumped him in high school, he sat in our house and cried, which gave him a name that he has never lived down. I'm glad things worked out for them.



I told him that I was planning on living forever. He asked me briefly about what religion I belonged to and I talked about it with him for a second. Then he took me out to get a cab. The conversation with him had been so weird that I wondered if I was stepping into a drug deal or something. Maybe his live forever question was some kind of code. And then a free cab ride on top of everything just seemed too weird! But I felt like everything would be fine, so I went with it. Oh, and he told me it was a 5 star hotel. I said to myself that I would be the judge of that.

The cab driver took me to the hotel. By the time we got there, it was probably around 1 am. It was nice of them to do all that, but it was kind of useless to get a hotel for 4 hours or so. But I was not complaining. My room was pretty nice. There was a front room with two small beds, a couch, and a small kitchen, and then a bedroom. The only weird thing was this really small iguana that was dead. That was gross.

I'm getting ready for bed in the bedroom when I hear a noise. Someone was trying to open my door! And he was whistling. It seemed a little bit weird that someone trying to break in would be making a lot of noise. I figured that he was just at the wrong room, but it was so bizarre. I went to the kitchen and looked out the window. I couldn't see anyone, but I was a little weirded out. I put the couch in front of the door, which may seem kind of silly but I was really uneasy about all of the weird things going on. I did that once too in Nashville, TN when I went to visit Vanderbilt Law School. The dead bolt wouldn't work on the door, and I had looked out the window a few minutes before only to see a dude across the parking lot looking right at me! Anyway, maybe it's baseless fear, but I like to keep it safe. I went to bed eventually, but did not get much sleep because I had to wake up early to get back to the airport. Other than this person trying to open my door, nothing bad happened and I made it back to the airport.

The flight was fine. The only weird thing was this guy who was whistling on plane. It caught my attention because I had heard a guy the night before whistling outside of my room! It was really annoying in the plane, and eventually someone made a really loud "Shhhh!" at him. Didn't stop him. Luckily it was on the descent and we were getting out of there. I finally made it to La Paz, the world's highest capital city. 12,000 feet! Things were a little crazy up until this point, with the hotel situation and all, but nothing like the next 24 hours. I will tell you all about it in the next post.

Misiones

I left Iguazú on Tuesday morning headed for Posadas. Posadas is in the same province as Iguazú, but on the opposite side of Misiones (the province's name). See for yourself here on this map. Posadas is on the left (the west, if you will) and Iguazú is up near the top of the map (north). Posadas is where my mission president lives with his wife and son. I had not seen them since I left my mission in 2004. The bus ride took about 6 hours and went by very fast.


I arrived at the station and within a few minutes found my mission president. It was great to see him! He is one of the most influential people of my life and I was happy to get a chance to see him. He was kind of like a father for an important time in my life. He even looks like my dad. And he remembered a lot of details about me, which I found to be incredible. I am sure that he remembers a lot of stuff about each of his missionaries, and he had something like 400 or 500. He is an amazing man. He has these great attributes that I feel are a reflection of what God is like.

He took me on a small tour of Posadas and then home to his house. I knew that he was going to ask me a few questions. Well, two things at least: am I married? And then the next question, why am I not married? He hit those in the first two minutes, and then he asked me a lot about what I was up to in life. It was fun to catch up, especially since I never was able to talk to him for long periods of time as a missionary. I never worked in the offices with him and only talked to him in interviews and sometimes on the phone when problems came up. I was always jealous of those who worked closer to him, but now I had a night to myself. We ate a great dinner, talked about the mission, life, my family, and all sorts of stuff. I spent the night there and then he took me across the river to Paraguay in the morning so that I could catch a bus to Asunción, Paraguay.

A few weeks ago, I bought a plane ticket from Asunción to La Paz, Bolivia. If I had more time, I would have taken the bus. But since I was going back early for a family reunion, I had to speed things up, especially since my flight home was leaving from Peru. A ticket from Asunción to La Paz was not too expensive and saved me a lot of time. I was going to spend a day in Asunción but I wanted to see my mission president instead. I figured I would still get some time in Asunción before my flight.

My mission president dropped me off at the border. I had already gotten my visa at the consulate in Rio de Janeiro and just had to get my passport stamped. Then I got on a bus and went into the little city of Encarnación to catch a bus to Asunción. It is incredible to see the difference that a border can make between two countries. Posadas is not the nicest city on earth, but it is pretty nice. Encarnación, on the other hand, seems to have more poverty and way less infrastructure. I noticed the same thing when I was in Iguazú. The Argentine city (Puerto Iguazú) was not bad, the Brazilian city (Foz do Iguaçu) is bigger and nicer, but the city on the Paraguayan side (Ciudad del Este) is just like Encarnación: poor and full of cheap goods. Ciudad del Este is notorious for having tons of really cheap electronics (and drug deals), and Encarnación had a lot of markets that sold all sorts of stuff. Paraguay as a whole has a hard time. It is sad to see, and you can see a big difference between Brazil and Argentina (even with their problems) and Paraguay.

I arrived at the bus station in Encarnación at 9:30 or so. There was still a little bit of doubt as to whether I was going to make it for my flight. I had 12 hours or so, but a 6 hour bus ride in Paraguay could take who knows how long! I got to the terminal, checked some times on some of the bus agencies, and realized that I had just barely missed a big group of buses that were leaving for Asunción. I was not overly worried, but it would have been nice to get on one of those. Then I realized that Paraguay is an hour behind Argentina! I had not missed the buses, but was almost an hour early. I bought a ticket and got on. The ride was cheap, but not so great. It was really warm in the bus and my side has the sun on it. I get hot easily to begin with, and you know what they say about the sun in Paraguay!

The scenery was prettier than I expected. Paraguay is greener than I thought it would be, but is also pretty sparsely populated. We made a ton of stops, but eventually made it to Asunción. By the time we got there it was too late to go visit the city. I didn't want to risk missing my flight, so I just went to the airport. I was a little early, but I have had some bad experiences missing buses and almost missing flights, so it was a good idea. And I was glad that I went, because if I hadn't then, I never would have heard this terrible but great song in the taxi. Make sure you read the next post or two, because this flight leaving from Paraguay was the beginning of maybe the craziest 48 hours of my life!

Face Lift

I've been told that my blog needs a little bit of a face lift, as in it needs more pictures. An ordinary blog author might be upset finding out that his blog needs some improvement, but I've always been all about reaching out to my readers and hearing out their concerns. Making my blog prettier shouldn't be a problem because I have around 2000 pictures from this summer. So, I am happy to post a few pictures here, and even a little bit of video later if I can get them to upload, from my trip to Iguazú. For my next post, I won't be able to post pictures. I am going to write the next post in a few minutes and I don't have the pictures after Iguazú on my computer. They are on my camera and there are some issues with getting them from my camera to the computer that I can resolve, but not right now. I will get on here later. But starting today, I will make my blog a little easier on the eyes (except for my next post).

The next few pictures are from the Devil's Throat/Garganta del diablo/Garganta do diabo.

From the bridge on the way out...you can already tell that this is going to be a pretty big deal.


This is the only spot where I could see the bottom. The rest is covered by falling water or rising mist.






Mullet

Long Time No Blog

I know that this happens every so often, and I apologize. It was hard keeping up with my blog at the end of my trip because I was traveling a lot. Then I went to a family reunion, where we had internet access, but it just didn't happen. Being back in New York has been busy, but not out of control. This is just one of those things that I either do a few times a week and really enjoy it, or let it slide for a few weeks at a time. But my mom told me last night that she had checked this to see if anything new was here, and so I figured that I better kick this in gear. But trust me, there are going to be some great stories about the rest of my trip that you don't want to miss.

Let me just talk for a second about being back in New York. I got back after a week in Washington at a family reunion. The reunion was fun and I enjoyed seeing my family. I have some pretty adorable nieces and nephews and some pretty funny siblings. And some interesting cousins. It was great also to be back in the Pacific Northwest and to get to a Mariners game, even though they lost to the Yankees. That reminds me of a title of a musical....what was it....oh yeah, Da(r)n Yankees! After the game, I was checking my flight schedule so that I knew when it left. I could have sworn that I had purchased a 6 am flight or something like that, but it really was leaving about 30 minutes after I was checking my email. I couldn't believe it. It actually turned out ok because it was a refundable ticket and I got my refund about 10 minutes before the plane took off. Then I got another ticket that wasn't much more expensive. It could have been a lot worse, especially since I had job interviews the day after I was scheduled to arrive. I got back on Sunday night without any problems.

On Tuesday I got invited to play softball with a few friends. I was a little hesitant because my heart is still broken from losing a lot of playoff games in BYU intramurals softball leagues. But I decided to do it. That day was really hot and the game was on a field of artificial turf. So this place was smoking hot. That artificial turf stuff is pretty hard. The only other time I ever played on it was when I was 10 in Seattle. My dad, brother, and I went to the Kingdome for some sponsored event or something with my dad's company, and my brother and I were playing catch. My brother had just gotten home from his mission that week and it was like being in heaven playing with him and my dad on the same field as the mighty Seattle Mariners. My brother threw a ball to me that bounced off the turf and hit me right in the nose. It gave me a bloody nose and it hurt pretty bad. Then some kid elbowed me on the school bus like two days later and made it bleed again. But it was all totally worth it.

Anyway, turf is hard and it is quick, so it makes things interesting. They had me playing left field, which is a lot of fun, but I never have really played much outfield. I don't mean to toot my own horn here or anything, but I made one play that was really great at the time, but maybe not so much in retrospect. I've noticed that whenever people start a phrase with "I don't mean to (blah blah)," they really are saying that they do mean to it. Especially in church! "I don't mean to take too much time," and then the person is finally done 15 minutes later. So I guess I do mean to brag. I had a ball come out to left field and I had to run in for it. I knew from the moment it was hit that I was going to get a chance to dive for it. I ran up, dove, and caught it while sprawled out on my chest. It was a great feeling and a lot of fun. It hurt a little bit then, but then it really hurt later that night. I could barely move when laying down and had to twist my body to get out of bed. I really thought I had cracked a rib, but I went to the doctor and he said that I hadn't. Anyway, that it just a little bit of what has been going on since I got back. Once I catch up on the rest of my trip, I will post more about what has been going on here.

So after the day I posted about earlier, where the Brazilian Federal Policeman almost stuck his machine gun in my face, I went to the falls of Iguazú. (P.S. "Iguaçu" and "Iguazú" are the same thing. Sometimes little intricacies like that can confuse the blog reader, and sometimes they even think that the author made a mistake. It's good to clear those things up.) Going to Iguazú is something I had wanted to do for a long time. I heard that when Eleanor Roosevelt saw Iguazú, she said "Poor Niagara." I have never seen Niagara, but I can't imagine anything more amazing than Iguazú. Supposedly the word "Iguazú" comes from the Guarani language and it means "big water." Those Guarani weren't kidding! When you're walking up the trail to get to some of the lookouts, you can already hear the water rushing on its way over the cliffs. The way they set up the higher lookout points allows you to be a few feet above the river at the top of the cliff, just as the water is headed down. On the lower lookout points, in some places, you can get right in the face of the falls. And the Devil's Throat....don't get me started! You can't even see the bottom where the water hits because of all the mist that the falls produce. The mist flies up higher than the height of the falls. It is also unbelievable to see a calm and slow-moving river on one side of the bridge, and then a steep waterfall on the other side. Trust me on this one....this place is amazing.

I walked all of the trails at least two times, and three on a few. The shades of green, the falls, the forests, and the cliffs all combine to make this the most beautiful piece of nature I have ever seen. Yeah, I went so far as to say that! It was that amazing! There are a lot of different species of trees and animals as well. It was the first time I had ever seen this weird kind of animal that looked like a monkey mixed with an anteater....sort of. And I had never seen an alligator outside of a zoo, until that day. Other than the scenery and so forth, there weren't any crazy stories or anything to report on. I will have to post some pictures here in the near future. The one at the top of the blog is a picture I took there. That's just there to whet your appetite.

After being there all day, I came back to Puerto Iguazú (the city in Argentina close to the falls) and bought a couple of books at the town's only bookstore (but a great bookstore nonetheless). It was fun talking to the clerk a little bit. But he was coughing pretty hard. I asked him if he was sick and he said he had been sick for months. I didn't really want to hear that, and especially when he wanted to shake my hand when I left. I know that the risk of getting swine flu doesn't increase all of a sudden when one crosses the border into Argentina, but it still was on my mind. Especially since these people--and bless their hearts, I love them to death--kiss each other all the time and share straws on their social beverages for hours at a time. It is not a place where germs go down without a fight. But it was fun to talk to him and to get some reading in Spanish to shake some rust off, at least because I was on my way to meet up with my mission president the next day. I will have to tell you about that the next time I post. Thanks for reading.