Sunday:
Promptly at 5 am, we arose and took a cab to the little airport. We got there in plenty of time, and we were even able to check out flights to Mendoza for later in the week. Jon was happy that the flights were cheaper at the airport than at the travel agency ($54 as opposed to $56, but the extra hours of trouble were definitely worth the savings).
The flight was ok. Both Jon and Dash slept most of the time. The meal was a disgusting ham sandwich lathered with butter. Dash didn’t have a bite, but Jon wanted to see how bad it was (as we all know, you have to eat the entire sandwich to accurately determine how bad it is).
Once we got to the airport, we had to figure out how to get into Iguazu. The search was on to find the cheapest way! We asked about a shuttle, and one guy was actually very helpful. We bought tickets for the shuttle but didn’t actually receive the tickets (more on that later). We then asked him about hotels in the area. We had a plan to stay at a particular place, but the place was booked. The helpful guy gave us some possiblities and wanted to book one for us right there but Dash was not having it. He has seen his share of people who seem really helpful just trying to take advantage. So we just found the address and hopped onto the shuttle bus.
Once we arrived in town we saw a hotel and decided to hop off. They asked us for our tickets but we hadn’t been given any (although we had paid for them). Before a big fuss could be made we just walked away. There was a small argument, but nothing major (although Geoff would have said to Jon, "Why does this only happen to you?")
The hotel that we were at looked nice, but we asked about prices and it was a little expensive. Maybe $90 a night. Anyway, too much for us. So we started walking but we weren’t really in town. It was incredibly hot, and after 10 minutes or so of walking it was clear that we had no idea where we were. Some kid drew a map for us on a napkin. It was very nice as well as amusing, but at the same time, it did not help us one iota. We saw a cab on the road and asked the guy to bring us to the other hotel. It was fine (Jon said it had a really nice pool but it really wasn’t that great).
After checking in, it was off to the waterfalls. We hired the same driver to bring us to the park. After getting there we promptly bought eight beers so that the walk would be a little less tedious. Here is Dash discreetly checking someone out. We wondered why more women don't adapt a similar dress code.
We took a hike to the waterfalls and it was pretty amazing. It’s probably a little silly to describe it here since we took so many great pictures, but I’ll give it a try. It was so amazing.
After seeing the falls, we had some time to kill before taking our trip in the boat so we had a few more beers and some lunch. Dash took a nap at the lunch table for a bit. We actually thought we were going to miss our boat ride after waiting too long so we had to run down to the boat launch. Here's a picture of Dash screaming, "I'm the king of the world!"
There were countless rainbows.
The boat ride was a lot of fun. We went into the spray of the waterfall and Jon kept yelling "I’m king of the world!" during the ride. The people with us didn’t even seem like they hated us that much. We met our cab driver and went back to the hotel. After bumming around for a little bit we went to dinner at the best rated place in town. It wasn’t expensive but it was actually pretty good. There was a decent crowd out and we had a nice dinner. It included a lot of wine and after dinner we were pretty exhausted. We went back to the hotel and crashed, and on the way back Dash started giving Jon a guilt trip about how two days in Iguazu was actually too much and how we had planned it incorrectly.
Jon’s neck was hurting at this point which severely limited his ability to move. He was in quite a bit of pain that night. Dash was also in pain because the bed was absolutely ridiculous. Somebody could have tried to assemble a worse bed but they wouldn’t have been successful.