Day 8: Ushuaia – Iguazu
After having breakfast in our hotel, Dante picked us up at 9:45am to take us to the airport (450 ARS +50 ARS tips, 9€, cash).
Many of the flights in Argentina must be through Buenos Aires and ours was not the exception. We landed in Baires at 2:55pm and without getting out of the airport, we took the next flight at 7:00pm to go to Iguazu to land at 8:50pm.
We have a friend that came to Argentina a couple of months ago and she recommended us the Remis driver she took, Guillermo. He was waiting for us at the airport of Iguazu and took us to our hotel (Saint George).
The hotel was really nice, it has a lot of restaurants walking distance, pool, spa and a pretty nice daycare.
Since we had a late lunch, we just went directly to bed.
Day 9: Iguazu
To me, this was the best part of the trip. I didn’t think it was going to be that amazing.
After our breakfast in the hotel, Guillermo picked us up at 8:30am and took us to Iguazu Falls (Argentinian side), which was around 45 minutes from our hotel.
There was no line to buy tickets (apparently it can get tough) and we also used our Mercosur passport to get a discount in the entrance (600 ARS = 11€ pp, we paid with credit card but they told us that it doesn’t always work). I also bought the ticket to see the falls from a boat (2500 ARS = 46 € per person).
I went straight to the boat ride (purple circuit on the map) because my turn was at 10:30am. First you take a bus through the jungle, they called it a safari, but beside one or two common birds, you don’t see anything else. Then for the boat, they give you a nice impermeable big bag where you can put all your stuff that can’t get wet (I even put my reflex and nothing happened to it, so it’s pretty safe). There was a lot of people with ponchos (raincoats), but it was useless, you will get soak for sure. I just put all my clothes in the dry bag and wear my bathing suit the whole time.
Of course, with these boat trips you don’t get close to the “Garganta del Diablo” (Devil’s throat), but you get a nice view of the falls and the “baptize” you in two waterfalls. It was a nice experience. Here one of the video:
At 12:30pm I was back in the food court to meet Naty, Andres and Martin that were eating empanadas and surrounded by coatis and monkeys. Be careful with these animals, they try to steal anything from you. I couldn’t seat while eating because I was too nervous. There are cages with tables inside where you can eat properly, but they were full, and we were just having a snack.
Around 1:00pm we took the train to go to Garganta del Diablo (it departures every 30 minutes). We then walked all the walkway loop (Orange upper tour in the map) around Garganta del Diablo (no stairs, perfect for our toddler and the trolley where he had a nice nap), followed by the upper circuit (red loop in the map) that doesn’t has stairs either.
The lower circuit (blue loop), that Naty, Andres and Martin did while I was in the boat trip, has some stairs, but according to them you can skip it because it’s not better than the Garganta del Diablo and the Upper Circuit, but if you have time just do it.
We took the train back to the entrance where Guillermo was waiting for us. On our way to the hotel, he stopped by “hito de las tres fronteras” where you can see the border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay and two rivers.
At 5:00pm we were at La Rueda restaurant, where we definitely had the best meal of the trip: meat empanadas, bife with rustic fries with a nice glass of wine and pancakes with dulce de leche (milky caramel), for a total of 51 € (all of us, in credit card).
Of course, after this meal and all the kilometers we walked today, we just went straight to bed.
We paid Guillermo 650 (airport pick up) + 1200 (Iguazu trip) + 200 (hito de las tres fronteras) = 2050 ARS, 38 € in cash for the three of us.
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Bella Ispirazione 