Sharon and Andy's World Tour 2006

Tuesday 1 - Saturday 6 August

Another one of those much-loved bus journeys brought us to (sadly) our final destination in Argentina - Puerto Iguazu, home of the magnificent Iguazu Falls.

High in the northeast of Argentina, Puerto Iguazu lies near the borders of Paraguay and, next on our list of countries, Brazil.

Arriving at the bus terminal around midday we hopped in a taxi for the short ride out of town to our chosen accommodation, the Hostel-Inn Iguazu. This place is highly rated by guidebooks and travellers alike, and as we drew up we could see why; this place is more like a luxury hotel than a backpacker's hostel.

Once checked in, we wasted no time in arranging a trip to the Falls via the in-house travel desk, for the following morning. Then it was time to relax by the pool (Yay! A hostel with a full-size swimming pool!) with a few beers, write some postcards and just chill out for the rest of the day.

Wednesday 2 August

A forty minute trip by minibus brought us to the entrance of Iguazu Falls Park, and at just after 9am tour buses were as yet scarce. Inside the park, a network of walking trails leads off to waterfalls of varying sizes, but to get to the big boys you need to hop on a train. We'd been advised to visit the most spectacular fall, the Garganta del Diablo ('Devil's Throat') early before the majority of the crowds appeared. We jumped aboard the -quickly full- first train, then spedd off after the brief ride onto the series of metal catwalks which lead to the falls proper.

Despite the day being overcast, our anticipation was aroused by the distant roar of water and hastening to the end of the catwalk we were met by the Devil's Throat in all it's glory.

Well, not quite all - we later learned that Iguazu was suffering its worst drought in nine years and that the falls were far from at their most impressive. Could have fooled us...

We spent a long day investigating as many of the falls in the park as time would allow, but due to the grey weather and the vast numbers of tourists we very quickly decided to return in a couple of days' time for a second look.

Thursday 3 and Friday 4 August

Time for a quick look around Puerto Iguazu itself. As you might expect the town's main emphasis is on tourism, but it's charming enough and not as 'in-your-face' as some of the places we've been. I was particularly taken with a hairdressing salon here called 'Fanny Coiffure' - the jokes just write themselves...

We couldn't have chosen a better rest-stop for our final days in Argentina; after almost a month of terrific adventures and not-so-terrific bus journeys, the creature-comforts of the Hostel Inn coupled with the hot sunny weather and beautiful surroundings gave us a real 'holiday' feeling and we happily whiled away the rest of Thurday and Friday just unwinding and enjoying the view. Oh, and the Hostel Inn's fabulous barbecues... always thinking with my stomach, me.

Sharon chillin'

Saturday 5 August

To Iguazu Falls again. This time, the sun smiled down on us making the Falls seem, if possible, even more spectacular than before. Although the Falls are the main focus for visitors, the park is also home to diverse wildlife such as toucans, vultures and the mischievious but endearing Coatie (pronounced Co-ar-tee)

Naughty Coatie

Exploring the waterfalls that we'd missed on Wednesday, the drought was more evident; some of the smaller falls were little more than trickles. Nonetheless, this did not diminish our awe of the sheer beauty and majesty of our surroundings - drought or no drought, Iguazu Falls is a place not to be missed.

And so our Argentina experience drew to an end, and we felt a little sadness to be leaving so soon; so many positive aspects - the friendliness of the people, the food, the places, the weather - had contributed to our total enjoyment of the country. We're already planning the return trip.

Sunday 30 July

As I may have mentioned in the past, it's not all adventure and excitement in this round-the-world travelling lark. Inevitably, we will encounter times and places where sufficiently little of interest happened to enable the writing of an enthralling blog entry (difficult to believe, I know).

Posadas was one such place. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that Posadas is a fabulous place to spend time in; it's just that we were only passing through and didn't get the chance to make the most of the place. Matters weren't helped by our choice of lodging; a four-bed wooden dorm in a campsite (the Aventura) right on the outskirts of town.

A long journey from Mercedes, with a change of bus at Corrientes meant that we didn't arrive until 6pm. Thankfully, although out-of-season, the campsite offered all the amenities we required for the night including a very nice restaurant which overlooked the Rio Parana and gave views to the distant city of Encarnacion in Paraguay.

Monday 31 July

Did I mention my dislike of long bus journeys? One of the best ways to overcome the tedium and discomfort of these unavoidable journeys is to bury your nose in a good book. The bad news is that English-language bookshops in South America seem to be rarer than hen's teeth.

Our trusty guidebook (published 2003) suggested that such a bookshop ('Liverpool Libros'!) existed in downtown Posadas, so rather than spend the day mooching around the campsite, we took a two-hour mooch into town instead.

Such was our desparation for decent reading material that we spent the best part of three hours searching for Liverpool Libros, at one point asking the Tourist Information Centre for help. Finally, on the point of giving up, we found the address given in our guidebook. To spare potential embarrassment for anyone else looking for Liverpool Libros, you should know that it's now a lingerie shop...!

Tired and hungry, we headed for lunch to a steak (what else) restaurant on the main square. Typically for Argentina, the meal was fabulous even at lunchtime (although it was 3pm when we left). The highlight though was an innocuous sounding dessert called a 'Copa Don Pedro' ('Cup of Don Pedro). This turned out to be a dessert dish filled with whisky into which a tiny amount of vanilla ice-cream had been dissolved, and sprinkled with a few chopped nuts. Brilliant! The alcoholic's dessert!

As July drew to a close we neared the end of our time in Argentina, but of course the reason we had been heading North all this time was to leave on a spectacular note.

Tuesday 25 - Saturday 29 July

Our next stop, Mercedes, was really just an overnighter to give us chance to arrange an onward journey to the tiny town of Colonia Carlos Pellegrini from which access to los Esteros del Ibera - a marshland nature reserve covering 13,000 square kilometers - is gained.

Mercedes is another charming Argentinian town, and we spent a sunny Tuesday just exploring and unwinding.

But after a great time spent at las Aurora del Palmar we were keen to do yet more 'outdoorsy' stuff. With now customary Argentinian helpfulness and efficiency, our host in Mercedes - Graciela - arranged our three-day trip to Colonia Carlos Pellegrini (hereafeter CCP), including accommodation and activities and presented us the tickets without batting an eyelid.

One terrific steak supper and a bottle of wine later, we settled in for a good night's sleep.

Wednesday 26 July

The road to CCP is 120km of bumpy, potholed red dust only traversible by 4x4.

With the midday sun beating down as we travelled, we had the car windows open but hastily shut them every time another vehicle passed to avoid being engulfed in the ensuing thick red cloud. We shared the journey with a nice-enough young American couple who had met whilst travelling. They seemed preoccupied with furthering their acquaintance and so chat was minimal.

Arriving in CCP, we dropped the couple at their campsite on the edge of one of the many lagoons which comprise los Esteros, and continued on to our accommodation - a beautiful pousada owned by our driver and run by his family.

We spent the afternoon settling in and relaxing in the large garden, spotting some of the diverse range of birds for which Los Esteros are famous.

In the evening, our Spanish skills were again tested - none of our friendly hosts spoke English - but we enjoyed the first of many terrific (and huge) home-cooked meals before retiring to our comfortable room.

Thursday 27 July

At 8 o'clock this morning we were picked up by a local guide in his battered Citreon 2CV and driven across the rickety wooden bridge

which connects CCP with the rest of Argentina, to the Visitor's Centre.

From here we began a two-and-a-half hour walk through an adjacent patch of forest, spotting monkeys high up in the dense treetops and catching our first brief glimpse of a Capybara, the world's largest rodent. We thought ourselves really lucky to have spied this creature, assuming it to be rare and shy...

Several more spottings of birds such as the turkey-like Southern Screamer, various butterflies, plants and flowers and suddenly it was lunchtime.

As mentioned, the Esteros are comprised of a number of lagoons and the best way to explore them in detail is by boat; this afternoon was our chance.

Our particular lagoon was dotted with largeish green islands,and drawing close to them we had the inescapable feeling of being watched...

Alligator-like Caiman lurked on every shore, occasionaly slipping into the water to eyeball us more closely.

We landed on a (thankfully) Caiman-free island. The islands are naturally-occurring and are composed of densely-matted vegetation. Walking on them is a bizarre experience; a bit like walking on foam rubber - if you jump up and down you can feel the island vibrate!

Here, our notion that Capybara are shy was completely dispelled - the little devils are absolutely everywhere! A family of three happily munched the nearby vegetation, seemingly oblivious to us even when we virtually stood on top of them.

Less forthcoming were the graceful Marsh Deer living on the islands, which fled at the first sighting of a camera.

As the light began to fade and afternoon drifted toward evening, so we drifted back to our pousada to share a bottle of wine and enjoy tonight's full scale belt-busting culinary onslaught.

Friday 28 July

Another early start today as we were met by Andrea, a local riding instructor, who quickly allocated us a horse each and led us out for my third horse-riding session in a month.

The morning was hot, but the ride was a sedate affair taking us through the village of CCP and out into the surrounding fields to observe a few of the many species of birds found hereabouts.

In the afternoon, we decided to revisit yesterday's walk from the Visitor Centre in the hope that with only the two of us rather than a group we might see more wildlife. Alas the day was too hot and most of the wildlife, excepting some butterflies and the now inevitable Capybara, sensibly remained out of sight in the shade.

After one final sumptuous meal, we bid our hosts goodnight and turned in early on our last evening, since the return bus to Mercedes was picking us up at the ungodly hour of 4am the following morning.

Saturday 29 July

Bleary-eyed, we staggered onto the minibus in pitch darkness. Sadly, sleep was impossible not only because of the continual bumping of the minibus over the potholed road but also because of the incessant rambling of some bloke behind us.

Mercifully, some time after dawn broke we reached Mercedes and flopped into our hostel, not regaining consciousness until after midday.

We spent the rest of the day planning the next leg of our journey northwards, booking a bus trip to Pousadas for the following morning.

Sunday 23 - Monday 24 July

A short bus ride away from Colon, we arrived for a couple of days' stay at La Aurora del Palmar, a private wildlife reserve just across the road from the Parque Nacional el Palmar.

La Aurora del Palmar is home to the largest remaining area of Yatay palm trees outside the national park, and provides a natural habitat for a diverse range of flora and fauna.

During July, the state of Buenos Aires has a two-week holiday when a large proportion of the five million denizens of the city disperse themselves over the rest of Argentina. Thus, the reserve was packed with holidaymakers and for our first night we had to take the only available accommodation; an enormous chalet-style affair with two floors, five beds(!) and an en-suite bathroom - luxury!

A number of activities are included in the price of a stay here, and so on Sunday afternoon we set off for a relaxing canoe trip up the El Palmar Creek. We shared the trip with a bunch of friendly Argentinians, but conversation was limited due to our respective lack of language skills. The bandying of phrases such as "Margaret Thatcher - stupida" and "Maradonna - Hand of God" broke the ice though, raising laughs all round.

Monday 24 July

This morning we moved into accommodation more befitting of our budget; a train carriage cunningly converted into an en-suite double bedroom! This took us back to our time in the "Santos Express", another converted train on the beach in Mossel Bay, South Africa.

Our first activity of the day gave me my second taste of horse riding this year, as we took a leisurely two-hour ride through sunlit orange groves, across a river and into part of the palm forest.

Whilst riding, we struck up a conversation with an American schoolgirl called Rebecca who was on holiday with her Argentinian mum. Her dad is a lecturer on films and so we talked endlessly about our favourite films, directors, what made us laugh and so on all the way back to the camp. Shortly afterwards, Rebecca's mum invited us to a barbecue lunch with the family as her daughter had so enjoyed our company!

We parted comapany at 2 o'clock to take a jeep safari into the heart of the palm forest. Here our guides explained that because of the pressures from cattle grazing and commercial forestry, the palms are struggling to thrive in new habitats, hence the need for privately-owned reserves such as the Aurora del Palmar which take the proceeds from ecotourism and use them for conservation initiatives.

Friday 21 - Saturday 22 July

As if to reinforce my dislike of overnight buses, about an hour after leaving Cordoba last night the bus came to a stop next to a police truck with its lights flashing. Uniformed cops began pulling bullet-proof vests from the back seats of the truck and we began to worry. In fact, they were clearing space in the truck to accommodate a passenger on the bus who had seemingly suffered a heart-attack and needed rushing to hospital. By the time the bus crew and police had completed an hour's worth of form-filling at the hospital, the patient - now upright in a wheelchair - was looking decidedly better.

After two big cities, the small, pretty town of Colon (pronounced co-lon, before you get any ideas for smutty puns) made a nice change, and our host Marcela at the Hostel Sophie could not have been more helpful; not only in giving us invaluable travel advice but also booking our onward journey from Colon and actually walking to the bus station to pick up the tickets for us!

Colon Harbour

With a warm sunny afternoon at our disposal, Marcela directed us to a local tour company with a perfect-English-speaking (and delightfully nutty) tour guide called Charlie Adamson. Charlie, a third-generation Argentinian of Scottish descent took us on a terrific boat trip along the Rio Uraguay,

The sunlit Rio Uruguay

stopping at islands to allow us to explore the sand dunes

and to look for semi-precious Jaspers and Agates. I was particularly pleased to find a sizeable chunk of fossilized wood, estimated by Charlie to be 65 million years old.

With his expansive knowledge and infectious sense of humour, Charlie made the perfect day for us -

Is that a beard or have you been glue-sniffing on the carpet again?

and we were even more delighted when, once back on dry land, he invited us to dinner! We soon learned that this kind of unthinking hospitality is commonplace in Argentina.

That evening, Charlie cooked us the most unbelievably succulent beef (what else?), kept our kidneys afloat with good Argentinian red wine and regaled us with jokes and anecdotes. We rounded the night off by watching the Terry Gilliam film 'Brazil' (Charlie's personal favourite) with the sound turned up around 3000 decibels. Despite this Sharon still fell asleep, and so we left Charlie to it with thanks for a wonderful evening.

Saturday 22 July

Up bright and early for another sunny day, we took a long an enjoyable stroll along the 'beach' which forms the bank of the Rio Uraguay on the Colon side.

Saturday is the day that traditional Argentinian gauchos come into town, and we saw no shortage of these smartly dressed cowboys as we made our way back to the hostel after a pleasant evening out.

Although having spent only two days in Colon the place, the weather, and the people we met all contributed to its inclusion on our 'places we were sorry to leave' list.

Time, though, to continue our journey north.