Escape.

Friday, I took a picture of one of our classrooms at school. It wasn't being used, so we moved from our previous closet-like room into this one. In the picture is Lucía, our instructor. On the doors and walls are assorted posters advertising various causes.

After school, Anna and I met up with her Argentine friend Gastón, whom she'd met a few days previously. He took us to a somewhat-nearby park - we ended up walking on the way there, but decided to take a bus back. Anyway, it was really pretty.

After that, Gastón asked us something about whether we were courageous. It was a mildly confusing question: a group of people in a public park during the daytime is hardly the most dangerous of situations. Turns out we were about to cross a fence onto private property. It was really nice, though...

I had to hurry home after this in order to get ready to leave for Puerto Iguazú that evening. I picked up my laundry, packed, etc., and took the normal-bus to get to the omni-bus station, whence the group would be embarking on its eighteen-hour ride to Misiones province, where the falls are located. The ride was surprisingly comfortable and unproblematic for the most part. ("The most part" being everything except the part where J. and E. were left behind, but we thought they were in the bathroom, but two Argentine guys had seen them disembark, so I had to go and try to talk to the driver, who firmly told me that he was not a babysitter and - I thought - that they would just have to go on their own. Apparently what the second part was was that they were coming to meet us a couple of minutes down the road in a different bus, which we figured out soon enough, when we stopped and waited for them. So everything turned out okay.)

We reached Puerto Iguazú - the little town nearest to Iguazú falls - by 2:30 or so Saturday afternoon, too late to head to the falls that day. I met up with Elizabeth and her Icelandic friend Hildur (with whom I unfortunately failed to take one of those Colbertesque token-minority-friend pictures), who are both studying abroad in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, a mere twenty minutes away from Puerto Iguazú. We hung out on our own, away from the 20-person English-speaking-mob that was the other COPA students.

Since it was too late to go to the waterfalls, we did the seemingly next best thing ... went to a tree place. I don't remember the name, and the brochure was a little pathetic, but it was five minutes away, and actually ended up being really neat. The doorway was made of a thousandsofyears-old tree (that had died of natural causes):

There were buildings and such made out of different types of wood, and furniture made out of the roots of dead trees. There were also little handicrafts and such being sold, as well as - wait for it - wood candy! It was delicious.

There was also ice cream in a couple of different intriguing flavors: (1) "yerba mate" - the, you know, herb used for mate (pronounced MAH-tay), a strong tea-like beverage that's really popular in Argentina (but which I have yet to try). (2) "rosella" - some sort of flower. They had given us a free taste of jam of the same flavor in the hut with the wood candy. Anyway, it was very delicious, and here are pictures:

On the way back, I saw this sign for the umpteenth time, and had to take a picture. As far as I can discern, it is advising the viewer to avoid any dancing men wielding hammers:

We dinnered (pizza), and then went looking for a bar. Sadly, we initially only found a LAR:

Elizabeth and I. This is not an aqueous martini, but for the sake of inness, let's pretend it is.