Foz do Iguaçu: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Diane and I spent all of our cash to pay for that trip to the falls, but we figured we'd be fine: we could just talk to the hostel owner, pay with credit card, and get our cash back. On Saturday night, we wanted to go out and experience the Foz do Iguaçu nightlife, so we went to talk to Luis about paying in credit. Unfortunately, Katharina House doesn't take credit cards. So basically, we were screwed. We had, I think, R$5 left. Luis, ever almost creepily kind, said he could loan us money to go out. We promised to buy him something from the grocery store, which did take credit, the next morning, and borrowed R$50. Then we ventured out to a bar, which is another story: let me just say, never go to a Metallica tribute concert in a pink dress and jelly shoes.

We spent R$15 each to enter the bar, R$1.50 on a water, and R$12 for the cab home. That left us with R$6.50 from Luis, and R$11.50 total.

The next morning, we wanted to get out of Luis's debt asap, so we went to the grocery store to buy him the 3 cases of beer he requested. That's right, Follower: instead of going to church on Sunday, I bought 36 cans of beer. We tried to get cash back (in many painful and embarrassing schemes) at the store, because R$11.50 wasn't enough for all the bus rides we needed, but no luck. So, after bringing the beer to the hostel, we decided to just walk to our next destination: 3 Frontiers.

3 Frontiers is where Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil meet. It's the coolest border-monument I've been to, because the countries are separated by a river, and each country has a monument like this on their bank of the river:

The river makes a T, and you can see the other countries from the banks of whichever one you're standing on.

By our finger measurements on the map, the walk should have taken about 45 minutes. However, either our fingers or the map weren't to scale, so it took about 2 hours. That's right: we totally hiked to Argentina, through what we later learned were the slums of Foz do Iguaçu. We walked past banana groves, boys with homemade go-carts, and run down soccer fields. Fortunately, the tourist shop at the monument let us get R$10 cash back, so we could afford a bus ride home! Yay!