Friday evening, the District Conference of the Buenos Aires Rotary district began with a rousing rendition of the Argentinian national anthem followed by dinner and dancing. The girls did not sit down while the band was playing. Those Argentinian men can sure dance (sorry guys.)

We feel that our presentation at the District Conference went well even though we prepared it over wine the night before and had only four hours of sleep. People were engaged during the video on Idaho and even laughed at our jokes.

Now we are in the jungle with limited internet access and they just told us it is 74 cents a minute to make a call to the US. Nobody is getting calls tonight.

Last night, we went into Iguazú town for dinner and tried to find shorts. But apparently, nobody over the age of 10 shops in any of the stores we could find. We did, however, find some street vendors with some great jewelry and enjoyed an amazing dinner in this town of 30,000 people.

Back to the shorts, none of us packed well for the jungle. Beth considered the weather “up north” and packed sweaters. Of course, we are now closer to the equator than we were in BA and it is 80 degrees F and very humid. We have now been wearing our exercise clothes for two days.

Before going to town last night, we took a stroll through a bird sanctuary located next to our hotel. It used to also be a place for a family of monkeys that it turns out they were killed by our hotel owners for pestering the guests. They are remembered by a monument in the park. It seemed like they are doing a good job rehabiliting the birds who have been hit by cars, shot or smuggled onto airplanes for sale as pets. There were toucans, parrots, eagles, hawks, owls and other types of interesting birds.

This morning we got up early and enjoyed eggs for breakfast for the first time in a month. We took a shuttle into Iguazú National Park and took a train to get our first glimpse of the world famous falls. It rained buckets all day long but it didn’t stop us from enjoying every possible view of the falls from the Argentine side. We would have gone over to Brazil as well, but found out that a visa would have cost us over $100, imposed by Brazil as a reaction to the tough US visa requirments for Brasilians.

We were also able to see the waterfalls up close and personal “underneath” one of the falls in a jet boat. Needless to say, we took more than one shower today. In the jet boat, we hit some whitewater on the way back as well.

Back on shore, we had another tour of the jungle and learned about the flora and fauna of this region. There are giant blue butterflies called barboleta which reach 15 cms. in size. Coati are also here and they are similar to raccoons. Apparently there are pumas, jaguars, snakes, large spiders and monkeys, but we haven’t seen any yet. We have heard the monkeys shrieking at each other in the bird park though.

Tomorrow we have another jungle tour with some sort of tree climbing activity.

It has been nice to get out of the city, with no schedule and enjoy the fresh air!!

Thanks for reading!
Beth, Jen and Alecia

And Bryan says Hi!

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