Total Immersion

Looking to improve your Spanish?  Think your verb conjugation could use some fine tuning?  Try spending a night in an Argentine prison (let me preface this by saying that I´m nowhere near creative enough to make something like this up).  Last night after having a great barbecue with good friends and good wine a big group of us decided to take in the night life at Puerto Iguazu´s club Cubra Libre.  Below follows a list of what to/not do:
Upon exiting the free shuttle from the hostel the thumping base of the reggaeton beats consume the surrounding area.  Grab your ticket and wait in line to enter.  Once inside proceed straight to the bar to collect your complimentary rum and coke.  Hit the dance floor in the main room for a bit and sweat it out with the locals.  Then around 2 or 3 make sure you´re in the front of the queue of people heading into the airconditioned back room.  In there you´ll hear a broader mix of house, techno, and trance.  Dance, drink, do as you please.  Once you´ve had enough revelry for the night abandon your partying hostel mates on the dance floor and head out to grab a quick taxi back to your room.  But keep your wits about you...space out for a second and you might stumble across the wrong corner where 3 Argentinian policemen happen to be shaking down a few local vagabonds and your night is in for a dramatic turn.  If you´re lucky you´ll spot them and pull a quick u-turn before they even know you´re there.....or so you think.  Next thing you know you you´re the most important student in AP Spanish at a really, really shitty public school.  Once the smell of piss and shit has brought you fully into reality and your cell mate informs you that you are, indeed, in an Argentine prison and will definitely be spending the night, and possibly the weekend, start working through those verb tenses in your head otherwise you´re in for a long night.  First order of businesss: become good friends with Antonio and Gonzalo, the two guys you´ll share your 10 foot by 10 foot cell with for the next 13 hours.  Step two: in your broken Spanish belligerently plead with the guards to take your watch, camera, and/or 700 pesos if they´ll please just let you go back to your hostel and go to bed.  Why not....you haven´t done anything illegal anyways, have you?  Step 3: give up on all your other futile efforts and just try to get comfortable, you´re in this for the long haul.  Spend the next 10 hours or so really practicing your Spanish with your cell mates (to this day this was definitely the most important and useful day of Spanish speaking I´ve ever experienced in my 28 years). 
Finally, after about 13 hours you´ll be lucky enough to get a visit from the "doctor".  He doesn´t bother to actually enter your cell but instead just asks your name, age, any pertinent health info, and requsts that you remove your shirt and pull up your shorts to show any tattoos and/or scars.  Being that he is the first semi-sympathetic figure you´ve seen in the last half day make sure you impress upon him the importance of the fact that you have a bus to Brazil at 1 this afternoon (it´s really at 8 but you´re already in jail, lying probably isn´t going to make this situation any worse) and would be really disappointed if you missed your trip. 
After hearing conflicting stories about your possible release being in anywhere from a few hours to Monday afternoon rejoice when you hear the words "Yon Carrterr" coming from the head guard´s mouth.  Proceed with 2 other young guys who had the pleasure of spending the night at Forte Iguazu to 2 or 3 processing rooms.  Stand quietly with your arms at your side and your head while waiting for them to do whatever the hell they´re doing.  Don´t react when the new guard (likely still drunk from the night before) replaces one of the other guards and for no reason punches the guy 2 people away from you first in the balls and then in the face for trying to re-lace his Converse sneakers.  After an hour of standing quietly at attention for an hour or so get released - sans camera, belt, watch, and the 700 pesos you came in with, and wearing a different pair of sandals than the ones in which you entered.  For some asinine reason make a huge deal about getting your belt (which was a gift from an old friend) back.  If you´re lucky they´ll happen to find it in the draw under the TV.  Just your luck though, your money, camera, watch and hostel key are nowhere to be found. 
Quietly ask the seemingly nicest of all the policemen if there´s any possible way you can be provided with 1.50 pesos for the bus ride back to your hostel and get told by the ball puncher (in English) to "get the fuck out of the estation anow".  Walk out dejected, in your prison sandals, and wait half an hour for the bus.  When it gets there plead with the driver for a free ride.  Get denied.  Ask how far you hostel is from the station.  6 kilometers, huh?  Aren´t you a runner?  Isn´t this what you do?  Don´t you claim to be passionate about this sport?  Unbutton your shirt, kick off your prison sandals, and make like Forrest Gump.  Enjoy one of the most amazing, important, introspective, and weird runs of your life.  Upon arrival at the hostel proceed directly to your room to grab some money to buy eggs for breakfast.  When the guy at the counter refuses to give you change for your 100 peso bill tell him you just ran home barefoot from jail and threaten his life if he doesn´t let you have some goddamned scrambled eggs.  Win the argument.  Eat said eggs.  Go borrow change from friends and pay the guy back (thanks for understanding, amigo). 
Maybe it wasn´t what you´d planned on for your last night in Iguazu Falls but hey, you wanted to work on your Spanish, right? 
Fuck, I think I have some glass in my toe.

Talk to you guys in Brazil...