Last day wrap up

Last wednesday I finished the carts that we built, just in time to take Thursday to wrap up some details of the sales process and get the bulk of our process changes started. That was perfect timing because I was able to take the weekend and go to Iguazu falls. We had a BBQ to celibrate life with our friends in Cerrito: It was a long trip, but worth it. We started at our house in Cerrito, leaving for Asuncion at 1:00 in the afternoon. Enjenero Resquin gave us a ride in his truck, a Nissan Mistral. We arrived at the casa de pasantes (intern's house) and waited a while for our 12:15 am bus. It was interesting to see so much activity at midnight at the bus station, when Cerrito is completely silent at that hour. We got our bus on time, and it was a great ride. The executive seats turned into beds, and we were able to lay down for the five hour bus ride to Ciudad del Este. Once we arrived there we waited until the sun came up to go out into the city. Since the falls share borders with Brazil and Argentina we had a bit of a logistical problem - we had no Brazilian visa. We tried to cross the large (very large) river Parana at a point called Tres Fronteras (three borders) in a boat, directly from the Paraguayan side to the Brazilian side, but since it was a holiday there was only one rowboat available for all of us. We felt a lot of pressure to go, since we thought this was our only chance to get to the falls. The dock worker was quite upset when we decided that packing all of us into this tiny row boat to cross a very large river with jungle on both sides was not the best idea. Since we were far outside the city, with no cell service to call a cab, we hiked back up to the road to get the next bus. We had no idea where this bus was going but it was better than walking, so we took it. We rode it until we could take another bus back to the center of the city at a roundabout that was amazingly busy. We stood in the middle of the roundabout while Jose, our local friend, figured out where to go from there. The roundabout was crazy. People weaved in and out on motorcycles, while semi-trucks, hand carts and passenger cars all mixed together around the circle. We only saw one motorcycle accident there. The roundabout is right next to a market that was buzzing with activity because of mother's day and a holiday. People were carrying lots of blankets because of how much the temperature drops here during the winter.
Jose was able to talk to a friend of his who new the Ciudad del Este very well and this friend knew of a bus that passed where we were every hour that drove through Brazil without stopping and then stopped at a port in Argentina. We thought that would be perfect because of our visa situation. We walked up the street to the place we thought would be best to pick up the buss and waited, and waited and waited. I was feeling pretty tired at this point, with all the travel, almost no food and little sleep. After way more than an hour the bus finally came and we got on, where we waited for even more time as the bus parked, waiting for more passengers. Finally we got underway, and the bus took us through Brazil for about an hour on our way to Argentina. We got to the port in Argentina and then had to go through customs. After customs it was off to another bus terminal who only accepted Pesos and not Guaranies. We found an exchange store open on the holiday and got back to the terminal in time to get the bus to the falls. We got to the park about an hour later, and then took a train in the park to a very long foot bridge over the river to the falls. On our way to the falls there was a great sign. What do you think it means?
The falls were simply wonderful. I was so pleased that we were able to find a legal way of finding them. Here is a photo and a video of "The Devil's Throat", a tiny portion of the falls.

Notice that the falls are U -shaped in this area. We are actually standing over the edge of one side of the falls. Whoever installed this walk-way was very brave.

Our travels home were much less eventful than our arrival, but it still took us from 1:00 to 1:30 AM to travel home. The next day was Sunday and we slept and went to church. I was so bushed.
Monday we wrote our final report, packed and attended a party for the Fundacion. I sang for everyone the song that I sang for Kirstin when we got married. We danced and had a good time. I gave my final presentation to the board of directors the next day and also gave two hours of training on how to use google earth. They were so appreciative and gave us fancy certificates and made me feel so loved. It was hard presenting to the board of directors, the president, his staff and the other interns in Spanish, but I was able to get my message across. We recommended that there be other interns that focus on the internal accounting, the branding and the human resources issues they have before having more interns focus on revving up production, like they assigned us. I think we showed our passion, and were able to get solid results during our time here. They emailed me asking for the financial analysis that I have done, which gives me hope that they will take a look at the margin numbers that we ran for them.
Overall I am very pleased that we could change completely their way of selling because of the donation of my father, and we were able to leave them actionable recommendations for the future.