We arrived into Santiago, Chile shortly after 6pm and took the shuttle to our airport hotel. We had an early night since we needed to get up at 3am to go back to the airport for an early morning flight to Buenos Aires and then a connecting flight to Puerto Iguazu, Argentina. The flight was non eventful…or if it was eventful, I wouldn’t have known since I slept through the whole thing.
Our flight had numerous passengers who were supposed to fly to Puerto Iguazu yesterday on another airline, Aerolinas Argentina, but that airline had a one day wildcat strike and all their flights were cancelled.
It was raining when we arrived in Puerto Iguazu but the rain soon stopped and it was just humid and overcast. Puerto Iguazu is the entrance point to the spectacular Iguazu Falls which can be visited from both Argentina and Brazil as the countries straddle the falls.
The taxi from the airport drove us through the national park to our accomodations at the Iguazu Jungle Lodge which is on the outskirts of the town and overlooks the jungle.
The Lodge is our accommodation splurge for the trip and I’m thrilled with the place – our suite is quite large, consisting of a full kitchen, livingroom, large bedroom and two large balconies overlooking the jungle and river. We can hear, but not see through the jungle, the rush of a nearby waterfall. Compared to our typical hostel accommodations the Lodge is the lap of luxury.
We took a 15 minute walk into town and found a restaurant for supper. I am getting a little tired of restaurants and eating out., even when you think you are ordering a lot of vegetables, you find you only get a few but lots of meat and carbs. Also, so much of the food is fried.
We grabbed some necessities (wine and chocolates) from a supermercato and headed back for an early night. It gets dark here around 6:30pm while in Rapa Nui the sun did not set until 8:40pm.
*****
Next day it was still overcast. We slept in and missed the buffet breakfast offered at the lodge so we walked into town for some food and walked the streets. We noticed some interesting signage…I think it was one of those incidences of missed in translation.
Puerto Iguazu is bigger than I initially thought. We found a buffet and I filled my plate with vegetables for a delicious brunch.
We went to a hummingbird garden but it was only open from 4-7pm which is strange since it’s dark by 6:30pm. So we went back to the Jungle Lodge to hang out on the balcony and see what we can see. Local inhabitants of the jungle include jaguars, capybara, coatis, caimans, toucans, parrots, numerous snakes, lizards and butterflies but so far we’ve only seen butterflies. I think we are too close to town to be seeing any of the others but I’ve just poured myself a large glass of Argentinian Malbec so who knows what I’ll be seeing shortly!
