15–16
June 2013
It turned out that the hotel
receptionist who assured us that we didn’t need to book a taxi to get us to the
airport was wrong. With a big car race on in town, taxis were scarce and roads
were closed. While the concierge tried his best to call one, we went outside to
try to hail one and were saved by a lovely Bolivian man and fellow hotel guest
who agreed to share his taxi to the airport with us when I asked him to. He (well,
his company) even paid for it! He also turned out to be on the same flight as
us to La Paz, and happily shared his favourite tourist hot spots with us.
The flight went off
without a hitch this time. Chris even had his eyes open for take off! The views
on our way to La Paz were gorgeous – mountain ranges as far as you could see,
with detailed lines of different minerals (mostly red) along the mountainsides.
Some mountain tops were covered in snow, while others just had a light dusting
of it.
We opted to stay in
the five-star Hotel President again, and were set up on the 13th
floor, in a huge room with views of the city and main square. We spent our
afternoon doing last minute shopping in the markets, eating and drinking, and
swimming in the hotel pool. With an early start in the morning, we opted for
room service, bad TV and an early night.
Our journey to Iguassu went via Lima, and was thankfully uneventful again. We had
some time to kill in Lima airport, which we spent shopping and
drinking cocktails. It was a surprisingly comfortable and interesting airport.
The flight to Iguassu itself was with LAN, and it was lovely to be
on a ‘proper’ airline again. They even had vegetarian food and decent
whisky on board, and I spent the trip writing while Chris napped.
Hotel Del Ray,
where we were staying in Iguassu, sent a car to pick us up from the airport, so
our arrival went very smoothly. The hotel was simple, but clean and modern,
with great customer service. We explored the local area by foot, ditching the
restaurant recommended in Lonely Planet for the one next door to it (a huge
sports bar that just happened to have US basketball playing on huge screens,
much to Chris’ joy!). We topped off our fajitas and quail egg salad with huge
ice creams, then made our way back to our room to watch bad TV. We were absolutely
exhausted again – although it was lovely to be at sea level once again (or near
enough to it).
Our plan was to spend
the next two days exploring the falls – day one from the Brazilian side and day
two in a tour that goes to the Argentinean side – before staying in a super
deluxe hotel in the national park next to the falls, then heading to Rio for
our final week.
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