Posadas y los Ruinas Jesuiticas

I walked into the bus terminal and went with the first place that would take me to Posadas because I heard it was 45 pesos regardless of the company.  So I hopped on the bus and it wasn't exactly luxurious.  And by that, I mean it was a dump.  Not that bad, but it wasn't a bus that catered to tourists.  It was only 5.5 hours, and I slept the whole way so no big deal.

From the bus terminal, I hopped on a local bus to the hostel in Posadas.  Hostel Vuela el Pez.  It's the first hostel that I've stayed at with some character.  The reception desk is just a dude lyin in a couch.  Walking in, you see a nice courtyard with a little clean pool and some hammocks hanging around.  The whole place is pretty clean and it's pretty much what I pictured when I imagined hostel living, as compared to the other backpacker havens teeming with Europeans where I'd been staying.  I walked around the waterfront (Posadas is on the Rio Parana), found a pizzeria, had an empanada and a pizza.  Later at the Hostel, I met a guy who I'd seen in Iguazu.  We were both here to see the Jesuit ruins and agreed to go to them together the next morning.

A little history about the ruins:  In the early 1600's, I guess the Jesuits came over and set up these missions to evangelize the local Guarani people.  To do so, they built around 30 or so missions all around the area and helped the Guarani come out of the forest and taught them how to farm and what not so they'd stop eating each other.  But Brazil and Argentina and kings and queens and other royalty apparently preferred that the Guarani eat each other because then they'd be easier to enslave and kicked the Jesuits out of the country.  After the Jesuits left, the Guarani took off and the ruins were left to rot and I think they may have been destroyed.  And then rebuilt in the 1900's.  I may have missed some facts here and there, but that's the gist of it.  Anyways, they're a UNESCO world heritage site, so it seemed worth checkin out.

There were three that we wanted to go to, San Ignacio, Loreto and Santa Ana.  San Ignacio was the furthest away so we went to that first.  After an 8 peso, 1-hour bus ride and a 15 minute walk, we got into San Ignacio and we see this:

From Tres Fronteras and Jesuit Missions

Walking around, you see more ruins.  It's pretty impressive.  Fun fact: the buildings were originally white, but because of the deep red soil that covers the entire area, they stones have been turned red.  At least that's what my dutch travel partner, Ado, told me.  We hop on a bus to Loreto, but not before Ado runs out into the street and almost gets hit by a truck.  Hopping off the bus, we start the 3km walk to the ruins.  It was hot. And there was no shade.  A guide meets us and tells us stories about the ruins, etc.  But the ruins themselves aren't all that much to look at.  Without the guide, it would have been pretty frustrating to have walked all that way for this:

From Tres Fronteras and Jesuit Missions

After waiting on the side of the road for half an hour, a bus finally stops for us and we take it to the next stop. We walk 1-1.5km to the Santa Ana ruins and the guide there speaks no English.  So we decide not to take her up on her offer of a guided tour because neither of us could really understand her, though Ado's spanish is much better than mine.  There were several workers doin their thing and scaffolding around some of the ruins as they work to restore the ruins.  It made me realize that the San Ignacio site looked just like the other two, but then they were recently made to look very pretty.  Anyways, here's a pic of the Santa Ana site:

From Tres Fronteras and Jesuit Missions

We luck out after the walk back to the main road and hop on a bus right away and get back to Posadas.  Tired and hungry, I scarf down a hamburguesa completa (hamburger with ham and cheese and fried egg) and sleep well.