Iguassu Falls Day 2

 Friday, March 1

35C today.

This morning we were met by Amanda who would be our tour guide for the day.  And a driver who would come and go as we needed him.  Amanda turned out to be Maurizio's sister.  But her English wasn't nearly as good, she kept having to translate things on her phone. When she told us that there were 7 varieties of flins in the park, it took us awhile to figure out that she meant "felines". But she was nice and she tried.

Today we went to the Argentinian side of Iguassu Falls.  After we bought our tickets, there was a tram which they called a train.  There are 3 trails on this side, but the Devil's Throat trail is closed.  

We started on the Upper Trail.  It was a one way raised metal walkway, with gorgeous views.  It's supposed to take 2 hours but we're pretty sure that we did it in one hour.  

Then we took the Lower Trail.  They called it the Inferior Trail but we think that just means Lower ha ha.  This trail went through the jungle and was equally as beautiful.

We finally saw the Brazilian racoon we had heard about.

Amanda asked what we wanted to do after the park.  We said if there was time we would like to visit the Bird Park that we drove by yesterday.  We're pretty sure she interpreted that as we didn't want to finish the Lower Trail????  So we headed to the entrance feeling a bit bewildered and disappointed to possibly not finish at the Iguassu Park???

We actually had to cross back into Brazil for the Bird Park.  We just gave Amanda our passports and she took them in, they didn't even need to see us.

Our disappointment went away quickly once we got to the Bird Park!  They had some birds in caged areas, some free, some areas had huge netting, and there was a butterfly house and a hummingbird garden.  And some nice koi ponds.

We spent an hour and a half there and loved it.  Our favourite part was getting to the macaw area just at feeding time!

Afterwards when we were waiting for our driver, we ran into Maurizio again, which was fun.  He told us that he would have been our guide again today, but he was needed to do a French tour for somebody.  

Amanda and the driver dropped us off at the teeny tiny Iguassu airport.  The only thing Frankie could find to eat was a bag of chips.  And then we translated the ingredients, and the chips were coated with wheat.  Sigh.  

This morning we had contacted our Buenos Aires hotel and they arranged an airport pickup for us.  Then when we were boarding, we all of a sudden realized that we told them the WRONG airport!!!  Can you believe that Buenos Aires is so big that it has TWO airports?!?!  So we quickly updated the hotel (everyone uses WhatsApp here!) and hoped for the best before we put the phones into airplane mode.

Our 4th flight in 4 days!  After literally weeks of stress trying to get the luggage AND carry on under a certain weight just for this one flight, they didn't even bother weighing anything. Sigh.

Another 2 hour flight, at 7 pm.  This one was the worst by far.  It was a flying tin of coughing people.  We think it was some sort of tour group and they must have all shared.  The lady in front of us was so bad that Frankie caught her eye and pointed to the masks that we were wearing.  The lady caught on and put on a mask, good for her.  Then to make matters worse, when we disembarked the plane, we had to take a bus to the terminal.  Full of the same coughing people.    

We picked up our luggage (again) and lo and behold, there was Walter waiting for us holding a sign with our name.  It was a very quick 30 minute drive across the city to our hotel, for only $35 US.

Another late night!