While Bon was with us, my six year old laptop started to show its age. The monitor started blinking out on occasion, probably because the plastic shell started falling apart months ago, leaving some vital internal cables exposed. (And it was emitting small amount of voltage through its frame, not enough to shock really you, but maybe 15 volts — enough that if it touched the inside of your arm, it hurt.)

The laptop had been a college graduation present from my parents. When I got it, it was state of the art: 3.5 lbs, slim and fast. By the time we left the US, the good old Pentium III was pretty outdated, but perfect for our trip: small, light, competent, and mostly worthless, so if it was stolen, we wouldn’t be too upset.

By this point in our trip, the laptop had become vital. There was no way we’d have time to do all of our blogs, or back up our photos, without it. But Bon warned us that his Dell laptop had the same issues a few weeks before it died, so we started talking about whether (and how) we would replace it if it conked out on us. We couldn’t afford a laptop, but do they sell word processors in Argentina?

I kept insisting that it might hold out the three months we had left. We crossed our fingers that it would, and left Buenos Aires for Iguazu Falls.

Iguazu Falls are the largest water falls in the world. They’re on the border of Argentina and Brazil and can be viewed from both sides, but Lauren and I were going to have to settle for the Argentina view. Brazil is a little peeved (rightfully so, I think) about the hoops we make their citizens go through to get a tourist visa, so in retaliation, they make U.S. citizens go through the same process: applying from one’s home country less than 6 months in advance, getting fingerprinted on arrival, and shelling out US $100. Lauren and I decided it was too much hassle (and sort of impossible, since we weren’t in the US), so we booked our bus tickets to Puerto Iguazu, on the Argentinian side.

It was the first of what will be many (many) bus rides for us in South America. And when we got on the bus, we were psyched. We took the semi-cama (half-bed) class, which is like a regular bus seat but has a foot rest and lays back half way. Upon the advice of Shayna, we sat in the top level of the bus and got the very front seats, meaning we had panoramic, unblocked views of everything we passed. Food was included, which was an exciting change of pace. (In Africa, cokes might be included, but if you got hungry, you were expected to buy food from touts that held up boxes of biscuits and baskets of bananas outside your window, or worse, poked nameless meat on a stick through the window.)

Lauren and I settled in for the 19-hour overnight trip, spending our time reading, studying Spanish and watching the horrible (Jean Claude Van Dam!) action flicks on the TV screen. The one thing we hadn’t planned on was that the bus was freezing, and neither one of us slept very well because our toes were ice cubes.

When we arrived in Iguazu the next morning, we were exhausted. We went searching for a hostel, finding several for US$11.50 each. I refused to pay that amount, pointing out that we didn’t NEED a swimming pool or to be as close to the bus station. Lauren was getting cranky, though (Lauren: I’m not a morning person!), and I still don’t speak enough Spanish to negotiate a hostel room, so we ended up giving up early and booking a hostel that was $10/each. (We can use that US$1.50, thank you very much!)

After a few hours of napping, we decided that we’d go see the falls the next day when we could start in the morning and have more time. Just for kicks, we thought we’d hop on the public bus out to the park and see if we could get a look around before paying to get in.

Our plans were somewhat thwarted though: a few hundred meters from the entrance to the gate, the bus stopped and we were all told to get off and buy our tickets. It was $10/each to get in, quite an expense for us, and we didn’t want to spend that twice. Fortunately, we discovered that there was a second-day-half-off option, so we paid for our ticket, and went ahead and walked into the park.

The park itself was huge, with multiple walks to choose from. Since it was late in the day (around 4pm) Lauren and I decided to do the Upper Walk, overlooking the falls from the top, which was closer to the entrance.

On the trail to the walk, hundreds of butterflies of all different types flew around us. They were purple, red, large and tiny, and some looked like “88’s” were written on their wings. We also tried to make loud noises as we walked, having been warned that dangerous animals, including jaguars, had killed people in the past. 

The walkways turned out to be metal (sturdy, don’t worry) catwalks that actually went OVER the falls, so that you could see the water rushing just a few meters below your feet as if fell down the enormous cliffs of the water falls. Lauren and I marveled at how the water could seem so peaceful just a few dozen meters upstream and how a lone kayaker might not realize what was ahead until it was way too late.

It took a while before we got the full concept of exactly how massive the falls are. No photos can do it justice. The falls go for miles in a huge crescent. One half seems to be more “orderly” perfectly aligned falls while the other side ends with Garganta del Diablo (Devil’s Throat), the most massive part of the water falls. The whole thing has to be 3 or 4 times larger than Niagara Falls. The weather was perfect; and at each turn, Lauren and I stopped to get more photos and video — each step seemed to be a more spectacular view than the one before.

It started sprinkling rain as we finished the walk, so we pulled up the hoods on our jackets and made a run for the bus.

When we made it back to the town and we found a cheap cafe where we got a blue cheese pizza (amazing, why doesn’t this exist in NYC?).

That night it started to pour. Lauren and I had never heard rain like this: it was more water pressure than in the best hotel shower I’d ever been in (Lauren: and the sound of the furiously cracking thunder was way louder than anything I had ever heard - even Ms. Beth, seasoned storm girl of the South, said it was the loudest she´d heard). As we were trying to go to sleep in our $10/night hostel, Lauren started to feel a drip on her leg. It took her a minute to realize it was rain. We flipped on the light and discovered not one but two leaks in our room, both right above the bed.

“What is it with you and leaks!” Lauren exclaimed, referring to my last (actually, two) apartments that I had to leave because of water issues.

We tried to clean up the room some (as anyone who knows us can attest, we have a habit of having our stuff “explode” when we unpack) before Lauren went to talk to the manager.

Not knowing the Spanish word for leak or roof, Lauren managed to put together a Spanish sentence that translates roughly as “There is water coming from the sky!”

The manager looked at her quizzically. Rain is probably not much to be alarmed at in Iguazu.

“You want a bottle of water?” he asked.

Lauren finally convinced him to come look at the room, and he suggested that we move. We packed up our belongings and headed to a new room (where the shower wreaked so bad it made Lauren gag… luckily we’d already taken our showers that night). We tried to go to sleep, planning on getting up early the next morning to see the falls.

At 4:30am, we awoke to discover that the water was still coming from the sky. A lot of water. And it was leaking down the wall in our new room. Fortunately, it wasn’t leaking on our bed, so we put down a few towels on the floor (since we definitely weren’t using them for the shower) and tried to sleep as much as we could, occasionally waking up panicked that the leak had gotten worse, but it never got unbearable.

At 7:30 am, when we planned to get up and go to the park, it was still raining. We decided to wait half an hour to see if it let up. It didn’t. Two hours later we decided to go ahead and try to go to the falls, despite the heavy rains.

When we got to the park, it was much more empty than the day before. The Lonely Planet had snarkily stated, “you could try coming early, but you’re unlikely ever to have the place to yourself.”

“Ha! The Lonely Planet was wrong AGAIN,” I declared. “Come to Iguazu during a flood and you can have the park to yourself!”

That day, we decided to head to the Lower Walks before having lunch at the Sheraton, a splurge that the Lonely Planet also declared was worth it just for the views.

Despite the rain, the Lower Walks provided some of the most amazing views of the waterfalls. From that angle, you could see the waterfalls in all their glory, tumbling down the cliffs. The rain let up every now and then so we could get some good shots. 

After getting completely soaked trying to get pictures of us as close to one of the waterfalls as possible, we headed up to the Sheraton through sheets of rain for our all-you-can-eat lunch. We walked in and thought we’d tidy our haggard appearance, dripping with wetness from head to foot. We ducked into the ladies bathroom and stripped down, blowing our clothes dry in the automatic hand dryers.

Despite our attempt to blend in with the uber wealthy crowd, we could not hide our shocked faces from the host when we discovered that the buffet the Lonely Planet suggested was no longer US$10 — just three years later, the price had increased to US$27. Even with the view (which was great, but not as mind blowing as it was hyped to be), there was no way it could ever be worth US$27, so we skipped it and headed towards the cheaper options in the park.

An Irish park guide that we had met the day before had taken pity on us for having to visit the falls in the pouring rain. She gave us a 35% off coupon (plus a free cocktail!) for an all you can eat buffet at the park’s main restaurant, so we went to check it out. For US$7, we stuffed ourselves silly with pastas, salads, stuffed peppers, grilled barbecue (parilla) and vegetables, and we even forced ourselves to sample every desert. Take that, you overpriced Sheraton!

Around 3pm, we took off for the bus, getting on our 20-hour busride back to Buenos Aires that night. After another night of slightly less fitful sleep, we arrived in Buenos Aires and headed straight for Oohostel, our home away from home.

I went to crank up the laptop and discovered, lo and behold, the monitor had bitten the big one. We started searching online for computer stores and made the decision the next day to go shopping.From 10am until 5pm, Lauren and I bargain-shopped for a replacement. We wanted to get a word processor, but I had suggested a Palm PDA with a keyboard as an alternative, since they were lightweight, had good battery power and you could do MS Word and Excel on them (all we needed).

After visiting a half dozen computer stores, we decided that despite the fact that we didn’t know the translation for word processor, Argentina didn’t seem to have any. But we did find two good options for a Palm: the basic, word processing one and the higher-end with WiFi.

After visiting another half dozen stores on the other side of town from where we started, Lauren and I had managed to get the prices down by 100 pesos or more on both types. The question before us was: Do we get the higher end one because we might use it more at home? Or do we get the cheaper one since it might get stolen?

In true Beth-and-Lauren style, we sat down and made a pros-and-cons list and decided to sleep on it.

That night, we went out to Gilbrator, the British Pub, one last time with Shosha and Taylor. As if it simply wanted to say goodbye to us, Jagermiester girls showed up with free shots, and we managed to snag two each.The next morning, we both awoke deciding to buy the more expensive one, justifying to ourselves that it was a lot cheaper than we thought it was going to be, and our bargain shopping had knocked off even more. We went and bought our new toy.

Despite no one at one computer store we visited speaking any English, we managed to communicate what we were looking for and they had it. While we were there, knowing that computers need to be disposed of properly because of their silicon and batteries, Lauren asked the tech guy where we could recycle the laptop. ¨Here,¨ he responded.We changed our day around, running back to the hostel, getting the laptop and heading back — a 2-hour detour. When we got to the store, though, the guy looked at us blankly. He couldn’t fix this obviously falling apart laptop. (Lauren: And he definitely didn’t want to buy it, as he communicated by pushing it away from him like a three year old with a plate full of lima beans.) No, we tried to communicate, not fix, not buy, recycle.

Despite the word in English and Spanish for recycle being very similar, everyone there seemed confused by the idea of recycling a computer. I finally managed to use the Spanish word for ¨trash¨ and they understood, saying they´d take care of it, though they didn’t seem to understand why we wouldn’t just throw it away ourselves.

Frustrated, we gave up and left my trusty old laptop there to rest in peace. (It had been with me to more than 10 countries and through 5 different jobs. Goodbye, laptop!)

We spent the rest of the day blogging and uploading images before spending our last night in BsAs as a date night, once again (for the fourth time) going to La Cabrera to overindulge ourselves on beef. 

When we came back to the hostel, one of the Israeli guys that we had made friend with while Tiff and Randi were around, invited us out to drinks. (It was three in the morning.) Lauren said yes and I relented, and we spent the wee hours with two Brits and two Israelis at an Irish bar. True Buenos Aires fashion, we think…The next morning, Lauren and I packed. Taylor and Shosha met us for brunch, and Lauren and I mourned leaving Buenos Aires, our new Spanish NYC.

We were excited to be leaving too, though. We were jumping on a 40-hour bus ride that night on our way to Ushuaia, Argentina, otherwise known as The End of the World. It was the beginning of the last leg of our journey. We are hoping to make it from the southern tip of South America to Los Angeles overland in the last 3 months of our trip. But first, we had to get all the way south.