Iguazu Falls are huge!

Denise and some of the falls

 From Buenos Aires we did a quick jump north to Iguazu Falls. The weather up there was way hotter than anything we got so far. It wasn't quite as humid as in the amazon thankfully, but the sun was pretty unforgiving.

The falls are right at the border between Argentina and Brazil. A bigger part of them is in Argentina but a very dramatic fall, known as Devil's Throat, is more easily visible from the Brazilian side. Looking at both options the infrastructure on the Argentinian side is a lot more developped with many walkways and view points, and even a 1km long walkway above the water to reach the Devil's Throat. We decided to start with that side. Unfortunately we didn't get the time to make it to the Brazilian side as well afterwards, since it's actually 1 hour later in Brazil and it's a 50kms drive to go from one side to the other.

Buenos Aires, the comedy of errors. Looks like Paris but sounds like Argentina

I loved Buenos Aires.  Maybe it's because it looked and felt like Paris (in most places) but a little more gritty.  Maybe it's because it had almost all the modern conveniences of a developed country, but probably it's because we had such an excellent hostess (Katixa Aboitiz) and great travelling company (Jamie Ruth).  We were welcomed to the Aboitiz household in a lovely suburb just outside the city, where we were given our own private suite (usurped Katixa's bedroom), had 2 excellent homemade meals with great wine (thanks Sean) and dinner table conversation that was even better than the food.  Katixa was such a trooper, she stayed up late with us every night and woke up early the next morning for a full day of work.
 We were there for 2 full days, and didn't quite get everything we wanted to done.  It was 2 exasperating days, a comedy of errors....

The Amazon: It's better than National Geographic

Welcome to the Amazon!

(edited by Denise)
We just got back from 5 days in the Peruvian Amazon and returned to Cusco with many fun memories.
The trip included a plane from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado (far east side of Peru), a 3 hr boat ride (with a breakdown in the middle) from Puerto Maldonado to the first lodge, Refugio Amazonas, with an overnight stay there. The next day we took the boat again (which was 3.5 hrs late) for a 4hr ride to the second lodge, deeper into the Amazon at the Tambopota Research Center (aka TRC). We stayed 2 days at the TRC then had another night at the first lodge.