The year I travelled without leaving Misiones

I got home from my first Work and Travel in March 2020, after a month of quarantines, and for the rest of that year I did not work. I lived on what I had saved in Park City. I was at home, I saw my friends, and when the province of Misiones reopened travel inside its borders, we started moving again. It was the only kind of travel allowed, so for almost a whole year Misiones was the world.

The Wanda mines, the first week travel reopened

The first trip was by car, in the very first week that travel between towns in Misiones was allowed again: to the semi-precious stone mines of Wanda. We did the guided tour through the mine and the tunnels, where they explain how the geodes formed. The short version: some 130 million years ago the whole region was covered by lava flows. As the lava cooled, gas bubbles left hollows in the basalt, and over time water loaded with silica filled them, first with a layer of chalcedony or agate and then with quartz crystals, which turn purple, amethyst, because of iron. You break a grey stone and inside there is a purple cave. We went with Ale, Rodri and Mili, in Mili's little Gol — a Volkswagen Gol that took us everywhere that year.

We took the chance to visit Manu, a friend from Colonia Wanda. He will come back into this story in Croatia.

Waterfalls, tents and wherever

After that we did not stop. We went to the Iguazú Falls, which with so few visitors were something else, and we camped in places chosen almost at random. One of those trips took us to Puerto Rico, to a friend's house, and from there to the Gruta India: Rodrigo, Camila, Mili, Ale, our friend from Puerto Rico and me. Looking back, that year of forced local tourism taught me something I would later use at work: after a crisis, people travel close to home first.

The plans that did not happen

With Milly (Milagros, a friend who appears a lot from now on) we tried to go back to the United States for the 2020-2021 season, but our agency never opened the programme that year. We also applied, in January 2021, for the Working Holiday in Portugal: neither Milly nor I got a place. One more friend who had been with us in Park City did. Paula tried as well.

What I would take from this

• If you come back with savings, it is fine to use them to breathe. But decide how long for.
• Local tourism opens first after a crisis. If you work in tourism, be ready for it.
• Working Holiday quotas are decided in hours, sometimes minutes. Apply with everything ready, and have a plan B.

Keep reading: manager at 23, in the middle of the jungle →

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