IGAUCU and other shit

Information: if you hate your job or your life and you want to travel we find many people working at hostels without pay, but living for free and performing fairly simple duties for the hostel. In Pucon, Chile there were two german girls running the hostel for a Chilean woman. They hardly spoke spanish and knew very little about the town. Here in Foz de Igaucu and the Hostel Bambu there is an english dude who speaks NO portuguese and tries to joke with you while you just wanna get your damn heineken for 3 reais. Another Brasilian woman here speaks the language but knows absolutely nothing about where she is.
So the point is, anybody can just email a hostel, get a little gig there, hop on a plane and live in southern Chile, Northern Argentina, Brasil, or wherever the fuck else. Cool thingssss.

Ok, so after Lizzie left Ally and I found a cool record store in Palermo. This dude is about 24, owns the place, has massive posters of Hendrix, Lead Belly, and others plastered on the walls, and is coming to California with his girlfriend in january. hopefully he is going to meet up with ally and i for new years and perhaps again in San Francisco. His name is Paco and hes badass.
On Sunday we went to a street fair and despite the rain a younger dude and an older guy were set up in the middle of Defensa in San Telmo playing Djano Reinhardt-esque jazz. It was very sexy. We also found a young dude who was very similar to Paco who had an old school camera shop (passed down from his father and grandfather) and he was an expert in all the cameras and since my camera broke the day i got here we bought this sweet little "half-shot" camera (a roll of 36 pictures can take 72 pictures). I almost bought a super 8 but didnt have enough money and we liked the guy a lot and he was very into everything, all his cameras got him really excited and we took our first picture of his nice little store and continued on to find a side street where there was a piano chillin on the sidewalk. We walked up to it and then 3 dudes busted out accordions. They started warming up while another gentleman sat down at the piano and started playing some dark, dramatic tango. Two others joined in with violins and then the guy from the crowd who handed me a flyer for a show walked into the middle of the street and started singing, nearly with tears in his eyes. It was pretty emotional for a street performance but it was incredible to watch the way all the musicians performed together, the way the accordions move and match up with the direction of the music. Later that night we met up with our friend Andy again (he happened to be in Buenos Aires one last night) and went to La Catedral, where people take tango lessons earlier in the night and then dance and mess around into the wee hours a da mornin. We had some good wine and i was very into the building - this ENORMOUS space, like a mini basketball arena, with art thrown everywhere on the walls, random instruments and posters, a large bar, and a serious darkness that makes everything more powerful for some weird reason. Basically like Andy Warhols FACTORY....thats how i thought of it anyway.

Ok, so now were in Igaucu, staying on the Brasilian side cus i was duped by some scavenger at the bus station who had lies hanging out of his teeth like dental floss, but we were dripping in sweat and it was hot and humid and the smell of shit was still hanging in the air from our bus ride, so we went to our little room which had a bunk bed and NO SPACE to move AT ALL. you walk in the door and it nearly hits the bed post and then you just have to jump into bed. Then you can walk into the bathroom with a small sink and you can sit down on the toilet to take a shit. the BONUS of this lovely bathroom is that you can turn on the shower while you are shitting and the water conveniently drops directly on your head. So after you take a shower the entire bathroom is drenched in water. but if the toilet is clogged you can put the shower on and the water pressure can force the monster down the hole.
Luckily the beer is cheap and i had many Heinekens and fast forward to the next morning, we head back over to the Argentinian side of the falls (where there is a lot more territory to cover). There are a bunch of different busses that you need to get on, get off, get on get off bla bla bla...We got there, bought our tickets, walked in the park with the sun in our face, walked to get a coffee, turned around and heard a roar, and then saw the water from the fuckin gods pour viciously out of the sky and it DID NOT STOP the entire day. so we had to buy their damn ponchos that say Puerto Igaucu on the back, otherwise our passports, money, our new old school camera, etc would have been drenched. i was very pissed off but we went up to something called the Devils point...i cant remember the name. Anyway, completely soaked, we got there, but could not see ANYTHING but we could feel the power. just water smashing into our faces and dark grey clouds hovering over ominously. So we took the little train down to the next spot because i wanted to take the boat tour. this seemed like a better idea at the beginning of the day but i was determined and ally had to come with me. as we walked down we got better views of the falls and i kept screaming and we saw a monkey in the trees and it was all pretty cool. There was one little platform i walked down that took you face to face with one of the falls and you get right in the ring with the monster. it was great power and felt very cool.
Then we continued down to buy tickets for the boat tour. we watched a few of the boats and started to hesitate as the rain was becoming more and more powerful and people began leaving, the boats began to empty, and the water was moving violently, etc etc. we decided to do it anyways, bought the tickets and then started walking down to the water on the rocky steps, nearly slipping, getting knocked back from the wind.
then there was a godly moment. I was looking ahead at the great mountains and a waterfall in the distance and above the mountain i saw a bolt of lightning that must have come directly from the furious fist of ZEUS himself. it scratched across the sky and was followed by a bellow from Poseidon that caused Ally to scream outloud. The boat was shaking violently back and forth at the bottom of the rocks and it was empty besides two other insane couples like ourselves. Ally pointed out that the video camera they were filming us with was to identify us if we died and our bodies were too mangled and then we took off to the first set of falls. If you havent seen many pictures of Igaucu then look them up. It is insanity and if you look at a picture of all the falls we went to the right hand side first. we started riding straight towards the thing and then slowed down. Rain was smashing into our faces, and water from the falls was shooting at us like assault rifles. Ally and i thought that this was as close as we would get. But then the guy put his foot on the gas and took us straight towards the heart of the bastard. it seemed like suicide and at this point you couldnt see much but he stopped just short of the falls and ally was laughing hysterically and i was singing "baby baby looks like its gonna hail" to cope with the madness, and i saw two tucans chillin on a rock but ally didnt care, and the boat was swinging wildly back and forth and then we spun around and did the whole damn thing again. On any other day i feel that this whole trip would have been pretty intense but overall just a crazy experience. i think this day was something different and we started riding to the next set of waterfalls (if youre looking at the whole set these are the ones to the left, that you can see from the brasilian side). there was lightning flashing across the sky and thunder from the jaws of hell and this time the guy didnt even hesitate. he drove us straight into the fucking falls and it was kind of painful and in all the madness it really seemed like we might die, but i guess i knew it would be ok cus the camera guy stood in the center of the boat the entire time filming us with a smile on his face. he was a crazy man but i liked him.
The brasilian side today was easy as pie and unbelievably incredibly beautiful with green all over the place and waterfalls everywhere you turn, exploding out of every space that seemed possible. we just got back into town a little while ago and had a beer and met a strange german/brasilian/spanish dude who i thought was homeless but turned out to have a tour company and his name is Nelson and he cracked open a can of Skol, gave me a sip and walked away. In 90 minutes we take a bus to Florianopolis. We are tired and delusional and ally is afraid because im going crazier everyday but everything is fanastic and were laughing a lot and home seems sweet but we got more damage to do and were still hungry.
cheerio!