Other than the cruise, we didn’t have Argentina on our top 20 countries to visit during this journey but our friend, Jonette, mentioned Iguazu Falls while we were visiting her in Minneapolis, and we decided to hop up to see them since we were relatively close. And what a great decision that was! The falls are wider than Niagara and Victoria and include around 275 separate falls. Sandy said that it is probably her new favorite place in nature that she has been – or at least one of her favorite if not THE favorite. The falls are on the border of Argentina and Brazil, and we decided to see the falls from each side.
Saturday, we walked from our hotel to the Puerto Iguazu bus station to get our tickets to go out to the National Park – we needed to go to the ATM because they only accepted cash. The ride to the Argentinian park was a little over 30 minutes. The first thing we did was go to the park’s train station and ride the train to the second stop for a walk on the boardwalks out to the Devil’s Throat. As a first glimpse of the falls here, it was spectacular – tremendously powerful. There were a lot of people at this viewpoint and for good reason.
After viewing the falls here, we went back to the train and took it to the middle stop in the park. There were three restaurant options – fast food, small buffet option, and then a full buffet option. We opted for the small buffet, where we had spaghetti and Sandy had some vegetables. After lunch, we walked two other trails – the upper circuit and the lower circuit for more incredible views of the waterfalls.
In addition to lots of different birds, we saw quite a few monkeys and also Coati, which are raccoon-like animals.
We then walked back to the visitor center using the short green trail. Overall, we walked around seven miles in the park. It was hot – 93 and humid – and mostly sunny all day. We caught the bus back to town around 4pm. On our walk back to the hotel, we stopped for a snack of a brownie and and a chocolate alfajores.
Back in the room, I spent time dealing with our flybondi changes. This is a good time to mention that we should probably not ever book with flybondi again. We have booked three flights with them – the first was to get to Puerto Iguazu from Buenos Aires, the second was the return to Buenos Aires, and the third was to get from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia. We already know from the last journal entry that we had to get a refund for the first flight because they moved it to a time that was too early for us based on our cruise time arrival. The second flight was moved to a day earlier, which didn’t work for us, so I’ve requested a refund for that one. We’ll see how that goes. And more to come on the only remaining flight.
After getting that work done, we walked to Patagonia Brewing Company for dinner. We enjoyed their amber and wheat beers. I had two empanadas while Sandy had grilled vegetables and then we shared a pizza.
Sunday, it was off to the Brazil side of the falls. The bus left Puerto Iguazu at 9:30am and we arrived at the park at 10:30am. We had to stop for passport control since we were crossing the border and that took around 30 minutes. It was a pretty busy day at the park, so we had to get a timed entry for the park bus to take us into the park. We arrived at the start of the main trail (there are others but they don’t follow the waterfalls) around 11:30. The trail on this side gives wonderful views looking across to the falls that are mostly on the Argentinian side.
We finished this trail close to 1pm and again it was hot and humid – feels like temperature around 102 during the walk – but only a little over two miles of walking today. We went for the full buffet here on the Brazilian side – it was a nice reminder of our cruise buffets. After lunch, we took the shuttle back to the entrance and made it just in time to catch the next bus back to Puerto Iguazu. Again, we had to stop at the border for passport control and this one took longer. Sandy was finished before me, so she got on the bus to save seats for us and she said the bus driver started to leave without me and four other passengers. Thankfully, she stopped him before leaving. I am guessing if he had left, we would have had to wait for the next bus, which would have come an hour later.
We took naps back at the hotel and after showers that felt great after the heat, we walked to Aqva for dinner. It was an excellent restaurant. Although the steaks looked amazing, I avoided the temptation, and we had minestrone soup and a delicious tropical chicken salad. I was having trouble with the VPN at the hotel, so we couldn’t watch the Super Bowl but that was fine. We didn’t have an interest really in either team.
After the buffet breakfast at the hotel (mainly fruits and cereal each day) on Monday, we went for a three-mile run from the hotel to the marker in town for the three borders. Puerto Iguazu, Argentina sits at the confluence of the Iguazu and Parana Rivers – this is where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay all come together.
We did some of our normal tasks after the run and then walked to Subway to get sandwiches for lunch. We walked around town a little in temperatures that felt like 106. Back at the hotel, we wrapped up more of our tasks (things like backing up computers, pictures, blogging) and then decided to have dinner at the hotel. We enjoyed river fish caught locally and vegetables – very good dinner.
Yesterday (Tuesday) started early with a taxi to the airport at 5:40am. This is where the joy of our third scheduled flight with flybondi began. Once checked in, security would not let flybondi passengers through security for quite some time. Even though the inbound plane was not there, it was still confusing as to why we couldn’t pass through security. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 8am and it ended up delayed until 9:30am. We finally got through security and waited in the airport lounge, enjoying some of their breakfast food. We boarded the plane and as it made its way to the runway, the captain announced that there was a maintenance issue and we were returning to the gate (the plane had to be towed). Once we deplaned, the communication wasn’t great and I know part of that is because of our limited understanding of the language. We did learn that a new plane was coming for us and so we went back through security and back to the lounge to await its arrival. We knew at this point that we were going to miss our connection flight on Aerolineas Argentinas in Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, but we knew we had a couple of other later flights that we’d be able to get on.
The new plane arrived and we boarded at 1:35pm. We had our normal traveling clothes on – jeans, hiking boots – and it was already 95 degrees outside and they couldn’t put the air conditioning on until we left the gate. It was wonderful for all of us. We finally left at 2:15 and heard the announcement that we were going to land at the other airport from where we needed to be in Buenos Aires and we needed to ride a bus to the other airport. Are you kidding? Now, we are likely not going to make those other later flights. We landed at EZE in Buenos Aires at 4pm, waited for our luggage, and then boarded a bus to AEP. As expected, we made it to AEP in time to learn that the last flight to Ushuaia had just closed. We went to the Aerolineas Argentinas ticket sales desk (we had switched to them for the Buenos Aires to Ushuaia flight when flybondi had switched that flight to a time we could not make) and bought new tickets for tomorrow morning. We’ll see if we can get some kind of reimbursement from flybondi for the extra costs associated with all of this craziness.
We ate dinner at a café in the airport. I had a burger and Sandy had a salad. We were exhausted from the long day. We got an Uber to the hotel Sandy booked while we were at the café and we were in bed at 9pm. A crazy day but we were safe and healthy.
This morning started very early again. The alarm was at 2am and our Uber arrived at 2:45. We checked in, passed through security at 3:30am and grabbed a blueberry muffin and egg bagel. We were in the air at 5am and we both slept as much as we could on the flight down to Ushuaia. A woman sat next to us from Ushuaia who is very proud of her hometown. She took us on a picture tour through her phone. She didn’t speak English, so we made do with my limited Spanish. We landed in Ushuaia at 8:35am and we were at our apartment by 9:15.
It is summer here and the temperature feels like 39 with drizzle and 24 mile per hour winds. We aren’t in the jungle of Iguazu anymore. We settled into the apartment and then walked to Marcopolo Freelife for lunch. We had delicious spinach gnocchi with broccoli and smoothies. Judy, one of our friends we used to work with at Wells Fargo, just happened to be on a cruise that made a stop in Ushuaia today, so it was awesome to be able to see her for a few minutes before she had to get back on her ship.
After seeing Judy, we went to Carrefour to do our grocery shopping for the week. It’s nice to be able to get back into that routine. Back at the apartment, Sandy did laundry while I worked on planning activities. We made spaghetti and had Argentinian Cabernet for dinner. We watched some of the Grammy awards that we had recorded and then called it a day.
Leave a Reply