Aside from that life is good in the southern hemisphere. We'd hoped, during jungle walking days, to spot a toucano (more commonly known, to us, as merely "toucan", - you know... the Fruit Loops bird) and finally, as we entered the parking area of the Iguazu airport, we both saw a couple of them, cavorting ina tree beside the road as our car stopped.
We'd spent the majority of this day at Puerto Bemberg, a posada in the jungle across the Paraná Rio from Paraguay, near Puerto Libertad. John Fernandes, our host at the Secret Garden B&B had arranged for us to spend the day at an old maté plantation, long since returned to jungle. Now it's a classy botanical showpiece of a hotel/retreat with a large native plant nursery, truck garden, and an old chapel beside which we drank sugarcane juice, fresh squeezed from a hand cranked "trapiche" as you see here.
We ate a delightful lunch there on the patio. We had surubí, a very tasty river catfish and fried manioc, a potato like tuber of the cassava plant (from which also comes tapioca. Also on the menu was paca, a local jungle pig-like mammal related to the agouti, one of which crossed our path in the jungle near the the falls yesterday. (We did not eat it, either.) That paca is served at a nice restaurant should bolster John Folse's promotion of nutria as delicacy.
Coatis, long snouted, ring tailed, raccoon-like scavengers of the Missiones jungle were in noxious abundance yesterday. One climbed onto the table of a European tourist, grabbed her unopened bag of potato chips and was immediately joined by 3-4 others who snarled at each other as they fought over the goods.
We're back at our B&B in Buenos Aires tonight until we leave for home Wednesday night.
L&J
Location:Pasteur,Buenos Aires,Argentina
Very nice! Thanks for posting and keeping us mesmerized.
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