March 3 - Leaving Iguazú; Back to Buenos Aires

 After three glorious days at Iguazú Falls, it was time to return to Buenos Aires in preparation for the main event of this trip, the Antarctica Cruise.  Friday morning dawned gray and dreary, but our flight wasn’t until early afternoon, so we had a whole morning left for one last look at this spectacular corner of the world.  I had an early breakfast, and was out before 8 am for a solo walk out in a light drizzle on the one trail that I hadn’t seen yet, down to the far end of the “Lower Circuit,” easily accessible from the hotel, but cut off by construction work from the other part of that walk.  Unlike my previous walk on Wednesday, there was absolutely NOBODY out on the walks at this hour, and this in this weather, so I essentially had the entire park to myself.  Also, when I got down to the falls, the workmen were just opening up the section that had been previously closed, so I got to do the entire loop again without all the detours.  This worked so well, and I was enjoying myself so much that I also re-walked the Upper Circuit, so I had a nice two-hour walk in nearly complete solitude.  The weather being so bad, I was only tempted to take a few photos, since I already had shot most of the scenes under beautiful blue skies just a couple of days before. One nice difference, it being early in the morning before anybody was out, I got to see a lot of monkeys cavorting in the trees, although they didn’t cooperate much for photos.  

The sweet scent of the white gingers in this
spot was overwhelming

After a final lunch at the hotel, we headed to the airport, the rain getting steadily harder.  When we got to the airport, it was really pounding down outside, but the flight left on time and we arrived back to clear skies in Buenos Aires around 6:00 pm, transferred to the hotel, got checked in and just decided it would be easiest to have dinner at the restaurant here, which turned out to be absolutely delicious.  We finished at about 10:00 pm.

This weekend, we are in a totally different neighborhood of Buenos Aires from last weekend, called Puerto Madero, which is built along the old port area and is a mixture of new, modern high-rises, and restored old port buildings along the river.  This is the hotel where the cruise assembles, and while we were checking in we met some folks from Australia who are going on the cruise too, so that was a nice start.  Tomorrow, Jim and I will continue our tour of a few more Buenos Aires highlights, and will get to know a bit more about this new neighborhood.