Around town

3 Sept Admin day. Our hotel is not nearly as close to the town of Iguazu Falls as the map indicated on line, which is a little frustrating. However it is nice and quiet here at La Cantera Jungle Lodge, so I'm not complaining, it just requires a little more planning. We found a laundry in town this morning and dropped off our clothes before 9 and were able to pick up at 2. Laundry is a necessity, when you're each traveling with just one medium size suitcase for over a month. I just wish I had thought to pack our swimsuits, as the hotel has a very nice looking pool and we had a hot day walking around town. We walked down to Hito de 3 puntos, which is a point where you can see the Rio Paraguay merge with the Rio Iguazu and the three countries of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. There's a ferry that operates between Paraguay and Argentina and a bridge between Argentina and Brazil. We aren't going to Brazil, because the USA charges Brazilians for a visa, so there's a reciprocity visa fee for USA citizens to enter Brazil, even for the day. And you can't get the visa at the border, you have to apply 24 hours in advance in Argentina. We also had to pay a reciprocity visa fee to come into Argentina when we flew from Santiago. All's fare in tax collection. The town map has two orchid sites listed, so naturally we had to go to both. The free one had a lot fewer orchids than the one that charged 10 pesos a piece. It's not really optimal orchid season, which is October-early December, but we did see quite a few. We also saw from a distance lots of humming birds, but they don't smile for the camera when they're in pursuit of nector. My feet are tired from all the walking. The streets are made up of cobblestone, but not rounded cobble stone. The stones are more geometric in shape like fat irregular flagstones, layered close together. The ground dirt is colorado, red sort of like blended clay and sand. Regardless there's plenty of rain and the jungle encroaches everywhere a machete is not regularly active.