It is another early morning, especially for Tracy who had to drop her client off at the airport. Today’s destination is the Jesuit ruin of San Ignacio Mini in Argentina. I still find the history of the ruins to be very fascinating and am looking forward to visiting another site. This site has a light show they put on at dusk, which is supposed to be worth the visit. More on that later.
The first task of the day is to take the ferry to Argentina. It was a beautiful morning and the wait for the ferry was short, so we got underway fairly quickly. Once we made it across the river things took a turn in the wrong direction.
Immediately after we pulled up to the immigration building to get our passports stamped for entry into Argentina, the Noah started to get an unwarranted amount of attention from the folks in Customs. We got the stamps and then came back to the car to find out what was so interesting. The guess is they were wondering why Americans are driving a car with Paraguay plates, but who knows for sure. We had to run our luggage through the portable scanner they have on site (not a first), and eventually they asked Tracy to see the papers for the car. Here’s where things start to go south.
While looking through the papers they find a document in the folder from a previous entry into Argentina. The customs officer gets rather animated while explaining the document should have been turned into customs on the way out of Argentina last time, and the car is now entering Argentina illegally. The conversation immediately moves to threats to impounding the vehicle and the customs officer takes Tracy into his office to fill out paperwork.
This is where Tracy’s experience in South America is invaluable. Her approach is to wait them out. She very calmly keeps explaining that she was not informed the document needed to be turned in and that there was no issue when she left the country before. She hasn’t done anything wrong and doesn’t understand why there needs to be an issue. The customs officer keeps threatening. Tracy keeps calmly responding. I think we were there between 30-45 minutes. Eventually he calms down, fixes the old document situation, and issues a new document with a clear expectation this one will be turned in when we leave the country. All of this for less than 30 hours in the country.
There are a couple of things that I find very interesting about this whole exchange. The first is the customs officer would not have even know there was an issue if the document had not been in the folder. Lesson learned…keep the folder cleared out. Second, the document in question was not from the previous trip. It was from an older trip. Remember when we went to Iguazu with the adoptee? We entered Argentina through this same port of entry. No documents were issued and there were no issues entering or leaving the country. You have to love the lack of consistency.
After this little ordeal we started our drive to San Ignacio Mini, stopping to tour a number of hotels along the way for Tracy’s tour business. She’s had trouble finding good lodging in the area and wanted to check out some new places. As the day progresses we realize it’s getting late and we need to leave immediately to make the show at San Ignacio Mini.
San Ignacio Mini is one of the most popular ruins, in part because of the show. There was a San Ignacio reduction in Paraguay, which was much larger, but little remains of it today.
The show is meant to depict scenes from everyday life in the reductions. The technology is projectors aimed at sheets of water that are sprayed down to act as screens. They also project against the ruins. It’s a very cool idea, and as you can see in the pictures it creates an interesting effect. It was fun wandering the grounds after dark to take in the show.
After the show we grabbed some dinner and tracked down some lodging for the night. We stayed at a small place a husband and wife had recently opened to bring in some additional income.
Tomorrow we see San Ignacio in the daylight and make our way back to Paraguay.
Will