Buenos Aires/Iguazu Falls

Yesterday and today, we visited Buenos Aires (pronounced “bwenos ajɾes“) Argentina. Buenos Aires’ name translates to “Good Winds”. With a population of 16.5 million folks, it is the capital and largest city in this South American country. The primary language is Spanish, but nearly everyone speaks English as well.

A couple of interesting facts, Buenos Aires is the home of Avenida 9 de Julio, the widest street in the world. Its 16 lanes span an area longer than a football field! Also,The tango originated in the mid-nineteenth century in the brothels surrounding Buenos Aires. (Oh my!)

The city center, Plaza de Mayo, is lined with 19th-century buildings including the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace where Eva Perón spoke to the citizens from her iconic balcony. Eva (Evita) was Argentina’s First Lady from 1946 until her death in 1952. Although she died in her 30s, Evita was probably the most persuasive individual in the country’s 600 years of existence. She had the palace’s balcony lowered to the third floor in order to be “closer” to her destitute subjects, who often came from far-and-wide to hear her speak. To the dismay of the country’s outspoken wealthy population who lived in the area, after walking for days, these persecuted citizens sat and soaked their tired feet in the plaza’s beautiful fountains awaiting Evita’s encouraging appearance. In response to the entitled socialite’s protests, Evita persuaded her husband, Presidente Juan Perón, to “reappropriate” much of the wealthy citizens’ property and riches to subsidized her deprived subjects. Evita, the 1996 Academy Award-winning movie (starring Madonna and Antonio Banderas) does an excellent job at depicting this fascinating First Lady’s life.

So, upon arriving in the city, I headed to the airport to visit another Wonder of the World. Karen opted to attended a cooking class at a local restaurant and to go shopping with friends instead. She learned to prepare empanadas, and the chef selected her delectable creation as the best in the class. (That’s my gal!)

Meanwhile, I headed out to an overnight trip to Iguazu Falls. Getting there (with our group of 150 folks) was quite the trip. It included:

• Getting off of the ship at 7:15am and taking shuttle bus to the port’s main building 
• Taking a different bus to the Argentina airport
• At the gate at the airport, a bus took us across the tarmac to the plane
• A pleasant two hour flight into a jungle airport
• Taking a bus to the Argentina border authority, where they checked our passports before allowing us to leave
• Taking the same bus a mile or two to the Brazilian border, where they stamped our passports
• Taking a different bus to the parks entrance
• Changing buses to a bus that was approved to go into the park
• Taking a “jungle tram” (a tractor pulling a mid-sized covered wagon) several miles
• Taking a jungle buggy (A side-by-side ATV pulling a small 10-person covered wagon) several more miles before arriving at 5:30pm

There were two reasons for this nonsense. One is the fact that, apparently, due to long-standing water-rights issues Brazil and Argentina hate each other. They refuse to cooperate with each other with regards to anything associated with the falls. The other reason is, both governments are taking extraordinary measures to not remove any more of the rainforest than they have to, the trails turned from pavement to dirt, and got narrower and narrower as we went.

When arriving, we were not actually at the falls, but at a cliff overlooking a river. Here, we would take our “Wet Boat” ride. After riding the funicular down to the river, we boarded a boat with about a dozen folks, and proceeded to ride a several miles through the rapids before arriving at the falls. Now, I’ve been on several wet boat rides, but boy did we get soaked. (We had to store our cameras/phone/etc. in our dry bags.) Hence no photos of this part of our journey…

Afterwards we eventually ended up back at the bus, which took us to the top of the falls where we hiked for several miles. Very pretty, but the sun was just so and prevented any good photos there either.

After a nice dinner and a show, we spent several hours playing the bus-hopping/wait in line at customs game before arriving at the hotel at 12:30am, where we were told that the morning bus was leaving at 4:15am. Yikes!

So Iguazu falls is remarkable. “Iguazú” means “Big Water” in the indigenous language. It is one of the Seven New Wonders of the World, and they completely dwarf Niagara Falls. The falls are made up of 275 individual falls, capable of moving up to 450,000 cubic feet of water per second.

This morning was fabulous. For the first time in the (Argentina) National Park’s 90-year history, the park agreed to private tour for us before the park opened. We were able to access the park and take sunrise photos from the upper trail. Then they had a catered breakfast waiting for us when we arrived back at the ranger station. Afterwards, we hiked the lower trail, just as they opened the gates for the other park visitors. (This really was a big deal, because this part host literally 50,000 visitors a day.)

The trails were cool, because they we raised steal grates that Chris’s-crossed the river and jungles for miles. Lots of critters too.

While we were driving on the narrow (paved) roads leading to the falls, I saw several signs warning to watch for Leopards. (Yikes!) I also saw a toucan, but I was not fast enough top get a photo… Lot of critters at the falls, but I only saw black capuchin monkeys and nasua nasuas (described below). One of the monkeys got ahold of one of our fellow traveller’s backpack, and dragged it a ways into the jungle before pulling out the lady’s snackies and giving them to her babies!) The South American Ring-Tailed Coati (also known as a nasua nasua) is a members of the raccoon family, and is sometimes called a “tree-hugger”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one (maybe at the Kokopelli Cave in Farmington, but I can’t say for sure) but these critters can also be found in New Mexico and Arizona.

Back on the bus, we were at the airport by noon, and back in Buenos Aires in time for a bit of sight seeing before returning to the ship before dinner.

Boy, am I going to sleep good tonight…