Damn it, just one more country left. On to Brazil!!

It was actually a chaotic mess trying to get out of Iguasu.  It happened to be that there was only one bus per day from Iguasu to Rio, and it left at 1:15 every afternoon.  Clearly I couldn’t have made it on the bus the day I’d seen the falls, so I had to stay at the hostel another night.  James had decided he would also stay one more night so he could see the falls from the Brazilian side, and though I wanted to too, the timing was going to be too close for me to get back and make the bus.

Another day, another bus.

So the next morning, I woke up, had breakfast, said goodbye to my new friend James, and went to buy my bus ticket.  After I sat down and inquired about buying a ticket to Rio, the woman smiled and told me the bus was sold out.  

SHIT!  NO!  This was super bad news... If I have to stay another night, this meant that I could have gone to the falls again today, so now I was just going to have to sit in this town again and wait for tomorrow’s bus.  No good.

I went back to the hostel and sat next to the only other person who was still there.  We started chatting and I told her how bummed I was because I needed to get to Rio asap.  That was when she told me that she was the one who got the last ticket.  

Then I slapped her.  No, not really, but I kind of wanted to slap her.  Instead though, before I had time to say anything, she told me that there was actually a big chance that she wouldn’t be able to get on the bus because she was waiting for her Brazilian visa to be ready.  After some talking, we decided that at 12:45, we would both go to the bus station with all of our stuff and if she got her visa, she’d go.  If the visa wasn’t ready, I’d buy it off her at full price.  It was a good deal for her because otherwise she could have only received 20% of the ticket price back.

At 12:45, with our packs on our backs, we marched up to the bus station. I was mentally preparing myself for a let-down and started coming up with ideas for an extra night.  Maybe I could finally blog some more so Taryn wouldn’t harass me about posting?  Or maybe I could watch a DVD that wasn’t a violent American action flick like the ones shown on the buses?

My new friend, Jamie, enjoying the trip.

We put our stuff down and I sat and watched it as she went to the visa office.  I was starting to day dream about what movie I’d watch that night when she came back, ticket held out to me and said, “Well, it’s yours.  My visa won’t be ready today.”

Yay!!  It took me a minute to actually get excited because I had gotten a little lost in the whole blogging/DVD fantasy, but finally I snapped to and we got up to go switch things around.  She went to the ticket office to get my name put on the ticket and I ran to an ATM to get the cash to pay her.  (As a side note, this was the first time in weeks that I had run anywhere, and even in flip flops, it felt amazing and it has renewed my interest in running whenever I can purchase myself a new pair of trainers.)

On my way back from my glorious run, I saw two people I had met one night in Buenos Aires.  We chatted for a minute and I found out they were going back to BA but the two guys they were with, Jamie and Sweeny (henceforth known as “Sweety” because that’s what I thought he said his name was) were on the same bus to Rio.

And that is how I ended up going with another 2 random guys to yet another city.  Rio, here we come.