Jesuits and ruins

Following a bumpy, muddy and very wet jeep ride away from Carlos Pellegrini we arrived in Posadas with a choice of 2 things to do – go to Paraguay and visit some ruins and a town famed for being a place where you buy anything and everything but getting out with it still on your person is the difficult part or visit some ruins very similar just up the road and not go to a town in Paraguay where…! Not needing a fake passport or fake iPods we decided to give Paraguay a miss and head up to the small village of San Ignacio. It's only an hour or so away from Posadas but a world apart, from modern city with all the trappings we were now in an old jungle village which was very run down and poor. The ruins we went to see are from the Jesuit missionary's who came to this area in 1690 to help the local indigenous tribes by setting up missionary's to protect them from the Spanish! The sight is one of the best preserved examples around, even if a bit did nearly fall down on Shona's head as she walked under an archway! It is also set in a lovely location so we just walked around for a couple hours looking at the ruins etc before heading back to Posadas. We spent another day in the town waiting for the weather to improve further north because according to the forecast Iguazu was currently being hit by a storm, so staying in the sunshine made sense!!