Iguazu Falls to Buenos Aires: very hot and humid

Interesting🤔

We are sitting in the airport at our departure gate waiting for our flight that departs in about 2 hours. The bus only runs at certain times to the airport hence our very early arrival. We walked up to the boarding pass confirmation point to find a long line of passengers and thought that this was going to take a while, but a woman called to us and told us to come see her at the front of the line no less. We aren’t too sure what that was about, but a gift horse and all that. Then over to ‘security’ to discover that there really isn’t any. No kidding. One young kid sitting beside a scanning machine who didn’t want to see our liquids, my knife or Annemarie’s poles. Nothing! We walked through the metal detector door and there wasn’t anyone around to check us through. We picked up our gear, looked at each other, shrugged and made our way to the departure gates. Unbelievable! So 1980s! 

We picked up a small lunch snack at a kiosk and sat down at our gate. It got better. We watched as a mass of parents and their kids came racing up to the departure gate where the flight to Córdoba had just taken off from. All the people we had been invited to jump the queue around at the boarding pass check point had missed their plane. I’m not making this up. You’d think the people at the check and those boarding the plane would have wondered why 90% of the passengers hadn’t shown up for their flight. Think of all those empty seats to stretch out on!! Any how, a Latin based upset ensued. All those parents and kids obviously on a school trip made to sit and wait.  New update: suddenly they are all boarding without any inspection of boarding passes or ID. They must have either brought the plane in from its takeoff position or they found another available plane. Hoping it’s not our plane!! This all seems to be really interesting. Ok. They’ve now changed our gate as a result, and we’ve all had to move. Might have made more sense to not move us all around, but hey, we're flexible: ) Musical chairs! Now a ticket guy has just walked up to us and cleared us for the flights. Such service, we didn’t even have to line up. Annemarie has asked if there is any way we can sit together? The agent takes our boarding passes away (I’m now a little worried) but fortunately brings them back with the seats changed with a pen. We’ve been upgraded! I’m getting a feeling that this is all in a day’s work in an Argentine airport. Sure is keeping us amused and time is passing nicely. This reminds us of the very funny British Netflix series Boarderline in a secondary, back country airport. Check it out. 

I wasn’t going to blog today, but I’m always amazed at what can happen when travelling and this whole event got me laughing and then of course I had to write it all down. After all, my blogs are really my travel diaries. So while I’m here I guess I’ll update our day. 

This morning we decided to head back to the National park for another foray. Our National Parks signs would have bears on them where we live. Not here. Fortunately we didn’t see this fella while hiking.

We decided to walk into a single fall, but it was more about the walk than the destination. Along the way we enjoy a very nice part of the dense jungle-like growth and were rewarded with a quiet trail all to ourselves. 

I always know that we’ve been somewhere first, well, at least the first that day by all the spider webs that park themselves across my face. Today was one such day. We were rewarded with many sightings of beautiful butterflies, one particularly impressive variety that was bigger than a humming bird with winds spread. I figured at least 4” across and with stunning neon blue on its wings. I never did get a good photo of one as they were almost always flying in a very unpredictable pattern, and rarely landed. The only shots I was able to get were of one on the trail. 

But there were other really nice decent sized butterflies, some of whom were obviously pozers!

Sometimes I really had to look for them, like this type who only seem to land on the underside of leaves. Actually pretty smart.

There were birds with beautiful calls as well, and sometime we even spotted them. Difficult in the dense foliage.   

Lizards big and small as well including Iguanas. I think nature got this one right...a tail given for someone’s lunch and the ability to grow a new one! Nature in balance.

The small, but high falls at the end of the trail were pretty nice. A quiet place to reflect a little on this first stage of our journey. 

Bused back to our hostel where our hosts kindly offered us a refreshing shower. Our clothes were soaked from the walk courtesy of the high humidity today. What a great place we stayed at. Simple hostel with lovely owners who walked us to the door when we left. A real pleasure to meet folks who really enjoy what they do...even in the stinking humid heat!

A photo of our Thanksgiving appies and later our meal last night.

And a shot of the waterfalls as we took off. Our seats were on the wrong side of the plane to see this before our seat upgrade. Now we have massive amounts of leg room on the falls side of the air craft. A generally slow day has turned out very well indeed! 

Now in BA and in our simple, but adequate hotel with matching ugly yellow, gold bathroom fixtures. You remember the ones from the 70’s? The Ritz it ain’t, but it’s ok and home for 5 nights. Beds are pretty good too. 

18 million people call this town home! We have gone from 36 to just 15 degrees and rain in 2 short hours. Looks like Vancouver in the winter on a rainy close day. Early spring here. Looking forward to wandering the streets. Will report back at some point!