Argentine Iguazu

The first real day of our tour had us up early for breakfast and a 5am departure for the Buenos Aires domestic airport. The drive through the darkened street was pretty with lights picking out features.

Getting through the formalities was straightforward however there was a very long trek to our gate.

View from our gate lounge toward the city

Once up in the air it was apparent that there had been a lot of recent rain. Rivers were running full, a brown, and lots of areas were covered in water.

Approaching Iguazu was announced by a plume of spray rising above the falls.

Down on the ground the large party took some time to be organised onto buses and transported to our hotels. The 140 odd people were spread over two hotels. We ended up at the Amerian Portal which was pretty comfortable and fairly well located.

Our guide from the airport gave us a wonderful briefing about getting a taxi to take us into town and also to visit the point where the three countries, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, meet.  We were later to discover that we were only a km from the centre of town and less than 100m to the three frontiers. Just as well we forewent the taxi! No points for Elizabeth the ignorant guide.

Trevor and I walked into town and eventually found an ATM that was willing to give us cash. It was good to have some local currency.

Later I went for a walk and discovered that our hotel was right next door to the 3 frontiers.

The reddish river was the one coming in through Argentina. The colour caused by high iron levels. The blue river was from Brazil, I think

Trevor and I took advantage of the hotel spa and we joined a large group of our fellow travellers, all Aussies, for dinner at the hotel.

With such an early start to the day and still adjusting to the time shift we dropped into bed early.

Our start to our Argentine Iguazu day was early with our bus scheduled to leave at 7:15am. After another early breakfast it was out the door.

At least our guide today was knowledgeable and Veronica took good care of our large group of 50 or so.

A number of trails loop through the national park to take visitors to view points for the array of falls that make up the Iguazu complex. Fortunately for us there was a train to take us out to the furtherest trail head and to return us to the middle of the park.

The sheer number of falls, volume of water and breadth of the falls is hard to describe. Capturing them in photos does not do them justice so bear in min that the following photos just give a feel for Iguazu.

 Note: the water was a reddish brown

Spray was an ever present hazzard. We all managed to get quite wet as the misty spray drifted over us

That is enough for this posting.

All up we walked over 9kms during our waterfall meanderings.

The next post will look at the Brazilian side of the falls as well as some of the birds and animals that were encountered in the parks.

Off to South America

Back in late January Trevor received an email about a trip to South America. While we had spent much of the summer of 1985-6 in South America what was on offer included a cruise which would take us to places that we had not visited on our earlier excursion. Needing to make a decision within 48 hours we decided to go for it. It was surprising just how quickly the months flew past and all of a sudden it was time to leave.

Micahel dropped us at the airport just after 6:30am for our 7:20am flight to Sydney. A quick cup of coffee was the order of the day ahead of much sitting on planes.

An announcement came over the PA stating that our flight was delayed due to an technical issue and an update would be issued shortly. This was not unduly concerning as we had a 3 hour window between our scheduled arrival in Sydney and our departure.

Our flight kept getting delayed and a mild panic set in.

When Trevor had made the booking he was told to book our travel from Canberra to Sydney himself as it would be cheaper than the travel agent doing it. With that adive I had made the flight bookings between Canberra and Sydney. This was a very bad move. Our Canberra-Sydney flight was not on the same ticket as the Sysdney to Buenos Aires. Qantas was not responsible for ensuring that we made our connection. Great. We finally left 2 1/2 hours late. When we arrived in Sydney we needed to collect our bags and get over to the International terminal. We did this in almost record time but alas the flight was closed and we were no shows.

After hanging around the airline offices until the LAN Chile staff returned from seeing our flight off we did learn that it would be possible to get seats on the flight the next day. We needed to get our travel agent to do the necessary booking change.

Many phone calls followed. If the travel agent had been more astute they could have got us on a flight through Melbourne, leaving Sydney at 5pm and arriving in to Buenos Aires at 3am on The Friday morning. All that we would then have needed was the name of the hotel (the tour group was spread across two hotels and our documentation did not indicate which one we were at) and a taxi ride to the hotel would have meant that we could hve done all the things scheduled for the first real day of the tour.

The travel agent was not overly helpful and in the end we were booked on the same flight that we had missed but the following day. Oh, yes, we had to pay the full fare for the new flight, too.

Late in the day we were informed that we would be met on arrival in Buenos Aires and transferred to our hotel. At least that was one less thing to worry about.

In the meantime we had checked in to a hotel near the airport, yet another additional expense.

After a frustrating day we hit the sack with an early get up time so that we would have time to have a decent breakfast before fronting up at the airport to check in.

We awoke to a miserable day.

It was a relief to check in and know that we would be on our way ... a day late but at least we had not missed too much.

Without too much fuss and bother we got through all the formalities and were off. The first hop was to Auckland where we had a leg stretch before the long haul to Santiago.

I did manage to see the sun rise. My only photo was a disaster.

Approaching Santiago we were presented with great views of the Andes ringing the city.

On the leg from Santiago to Buenos Aires we were allocated seats in the middle of the plane.  The seating configuration was 2-3-2. A family with a nursed infant were in a pair of outer seats. The problem was that there were only two oxygen masks for the pair of seats. There were four masks for the 3 centre seats. We were asked if we would mind swapping. Not at all ... so I ended up with a window seat.

On leaving Santiago we had more great views of the snow capped mountains.

On arrival in Buenos got through immigration and customs fairly quickly. We duly found the travel agent who had come to greet us and take us to our hotel. Great. Then came the next bomb shell. The meet and transfer was not covered by what we had paid for the trip. Cost US$125 thanks.

So, less than happy we set off to the centre of the city and our hotel. To add to our general state of misery there had been an accident on the autopista and the traffic heading towards the city was a crawl.

By the time we finally reached the hotel we were pretty tired but it was too early to eat in any of teh restaurants so we ended up grabbing a Subway and ate it in our room which overlooked the central cemetery ... definitely a sight to behold.

As we had to leave the hotel at 5am the next morning, fortunately the hotel had organised breakfast to be available from 4:30am, we collapsed into bed and were dead to the world by the time our heads hit the pillows.

This was not how we had expected the trip to start. Still, we had made it to Buenos Aires and we were now on track.

Next up: the Argentine side of Iguazu.

Scottish wanderings - part 7

Wednesday 21 June - Ballachulish (Glen Coe) to Fintry (and our castle stay)

Culcreauch Castle

When in Scotland why not stay in a castle? Jen's daughter Annette had suggested a castle stay and we were fortunate enough to find one quite near Glasgow which was reasonably priced. This was where we would be staying on our last night in Scotland.

Back in Ballachulish, we had a pleasant breakfast before setting off. 

Gey clouds hanging over Loch Leven

A view out from our B&B

Clouds coming down on the mountain tops

The weather was not looking promising so we needed to make the best of what the day offered.

We called in to the Glan Coe Visitors Centre, which wasn't actually open when we arrived. This did not deter us as we did a short walk through an area that has been reclaimed and is being revegetated with plants and trees as it would have been before it was taken over for forestry.

Glen Coe had some amazing scenery which unfortunately did not show up in the photos due to the inclement weather. Here is a sample of what we saw.

Camping was permitted as evidenced by this group of campers (they are the dots down on the valley floor).

Originally I had anticipated doing one of the walks in Glen Coe, there is a feast of available walks and a heap of munros (mountains over 3,000 feet) to climb, however with the weather looking increasing bleak and not wanting to dirty Jen's lovely clean hiking boots nor cause any other problems for her feet when she was flying home the next day, we decided not to attempt any of the hikes.

There was still plenty of wonderful scenery to see.

The parking areas along the rod through Glen Coe were crowded with vehicles

We stopped to get a good view of this waterfall.

It also allowed us to look back up the valley along the road.

We were on the A82 and it took us to Bridge of Orchy where we had stopped for lunch during on West Highland Way walk. It seemed a good place to stop for a coffee as we knew they did a pretty good cup and, by then, it had started to rain.

We spent the rest of the day wandering the Scottish countryside. Being the driver on this leg I got very few photos.

When we finally stopped for lunch we ordered sandwiches. In most places you don't just get sandwiches but garnish as well.

One of the tree lined roads we drove along

While there were still ridges the country was somewhat flatter

Sheep dotting the countryside

It was finally time to head to our castle and, after traveling along yet more single lane roads we finally arrived.  The road in to the castle took us through a forest before we came out on an expanse of lawn.

 After checking in we did a walk around our home for the night and its extensive grounds. Part of the estate is farmed by two tenant farmers. Along with the 10 rooms in the castle proper the estate also has a range of other accommodation. We were in the castle proper. We had booked the rooms when Trevor was intending to be with us. Jen's was a single room at the top of the Keep.

My room was just a little lower (and we did have fun getting our luggage up and down the winding staircases!)

My room came with a four poster bed.

 The castle had a long history and had managed to survive and be modified across the centuries.

We enjoyed a farewell to Scotland dinner in the castle dungeon. A fitting conclusion to our time in the northern reaches. The fare on offer was locally sourced and well prepared and presented.

The next morning we had a lovely breakfast before we dragged our carefully repacked bags out to the car and headed off to Glasgow Airport from where Jen headed home and I headed south to London.