After a good breakfast at the hotel in Buenos Aires, we sat around in the hotel lobby until it was time to leave for the Airport. Daniel and Eli helped us through the process of check-in (in fact did it all as Princess was paying overweight charges for us. On Andes airlines, you can only check 33 pounds and, of course, everyone had more). The plane was late leaving, and Alan and I didn’t have seats together. I did have a window seat and took pictures of the myriad of rivers that we were flying over.

Mr. Tooth at the Hotel das Cataratas

Once at the Argentine Iguazu Falls airport, we were met by our local guides and ours on bus 2 is Nuxa. She is a small bundle of energy and very enthusiastic about her home area. Originally, we were to go directly to the falls across from our hotel, but because the plane was late, the schedule was reworked, and we will go over the next two days. Thank goodness they decided to do this because it turned out that a lot of the hiking was rather strenuous, and nobody was up to doing it right away. We crossed the Argentina border and the Brazil border and Nuxa handled both crossings as quickly as possible. Since she lives and grew up in the area, she probably knows all the guards well. The Hotel Das Cataratas is stunning and the only one in the park. It is run by the Belmond group which is the same group that runs the Cipriani in Venice and the Orient Express train.  It is directly across from the Brazilian side of the falls and we got a breath-taking first view.

We are not at the glaciers or in the desert anymore!

Truly rainforest

That night we ate at the hotel which has a huge buffet dinner. Way too many choices! Finally, to bed with an 8 AM wakeup call wakeup call.