Jesuit Ruins

After our stint in Puerto Iguazú, we decided to break up the long bus ride to Salta by stopping in Posadas for a night.  In our Lonely Planet, it said that the bus ride from Iguazu to Posadas was 5  hours, so we decided to lounge by the pool at the hostel until mid-afternoon and then take the 3pm bus which would, in theory, have us arriving around 8pm. 

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We bought the wrong tickets.   Instead of choosing the 5 hour direct-to-Posadas route, we ended up on the 8 hour stop-in-every-little-town-that-doesn´t-even-appear-on-the-ma p  route -- and were pretty much both seething balls of fury by the time we got to our final destination.  Lucky for us, our hostel was lovely and we were able to wind down with a nice dinner by the River Paraná (thank goodness everyone eats late in this country!). 

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The next morning we got up early-ish and took a bus to San Ignacio, where we checked out the Jesuit ruins there.  This area (north-eastern Argentina and neighbouring Brazil and Paraguay) was home to over thirty Jesuit missions in the eighteenth century -- before the Jesuits were expelled by the Spanish Crown.  San Ignacio Miní -- the ruins that we saw -- was home to nearly 4500 Guarani indigenous at its peak in 1733.  It was a beautiful little day trip and we, as per our norm, took WAY too many pictures. 

Later in the afternoon we boarded another overnight bus  -- this time to the bubbly metropolis of  Salta -- and we´re here now until Tuesday!   We´ll have more to write about that after our "excursion" tomorrow....

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