argentina: resistencia

our bus departing puerto iguazu left 45 minutes late on it's way to resistencia...i should be used to these delays, they happen all the time, but it still annoyed me this time...
we visited resistencia, argentina mostly because we needed a place to stop in between other places we wanted to see...you can travel all over argentina by bus, some of the rides are really long...we decided at some point that we weren't particularly keen to spend heaps of time on buses...10 hours is a long time, there are rides as long as 48 hours or so...no thank you...so, we arrived in resistencia after dark, with no planned place to stay...

which wasn't the greatest idea, as the bus station is nowhere near the center of town...we figured out the local bus to take into town (which went through a very sketchy neighborhood, making me really glad we hadn't decided to walk) and asked around...the first two places listed in the guidebook were full, and a third random place was really really helpful, the guy made a few calls for us...hotel scrum ended up being our home for a night :)
since our hotel was very basic, and didn't involve breakfast, we were slow about getting moving the next morning...we arranged to leave our bags at the hotel during the day, then set out to explore...

there are sculptures all over the city...some are memorials, some are art, some are....i don't know exactly...needless to say, some are more interesting than others...apparently there is a sculpture festival, but it doesn't take place every year, and we were there during an off year...booo...
we found a 'museum' that was all about the people who went missing during those awful years several decades ago...the government in power at the time did a lot of horrific things...kidnapping, torturing, murder, etc...to this day, no one knows the full account of what happened...how many people died, where they are buried, etc...this museum had some maps of various locations, but not everything is known for sure...and likely won't ever be...

some of the grafitti remains were pretty intense as well...
too kill time in the afternoon we laid in the grass at a park and read for a while...it also helped us get over the food coma from lunch, and continual stops into bakeries...(note to self, there isn't much (if any) good ice cream in resistencia)
eventually we picked up our bags from the hotel and walked to the bus station...walking with someone through a sketchy neighborhood doesn't bother me nearly so much when it's daylight...the guidebook said the walk was 2km...there is no way it was only two kilometers...i don't know the distance, but it took us plenty longer than it should've if it were really only 2km...
not surprisingly, the bus we rode that evening departed late...