Scenes From The End of The World and "Poor Niagara"

In the National Park there is a pier on a lake with the southernmost post office.  This guy, the postmaster puts a stamp in your passport then a big ink stamp under it.  His picture is on the stamp at the top so I had him hold up my passport to take a photo.  The post office is about a 10 X 15

room.  You can see the pier and lake through the window.

                           Looking down the pier from behind the post office.

        A Patagonia fox,  not very shy.  There were several of them running around.

                    Looking over part of Ushuaia into the Beagle Channel

      View to the left,  you ride into Ushuaia through these Darwin mountains for about fifty miles  

    Everybody uses this channel,   Cargo ships

                    Antarctic expeditions

                                          Cruise ships

                                               The Argentine Navy

                     and the local boaters

     Beagle Channel,  Beagle Beer.  Sorry Lisa, space is limited or I would have brought you some home.  In case anyone was wondering, Darwin sailed through here on the USS Beagle, now you know why so much "beagle"

                                                            This ones for you, Lisa.

There happened to be a jail break while we were there

as well as some other shady looking characters.

The day we headed north we woke up to fresh snow cover in the mountains.

    Don't forget it is summer down here..... 

I am going to skip right to Iguazu Falls at this point.  I have too many pictures around Buenos Aires, so I plan to break them up into several posts at a future date.

The flat grazing lands of cattle ranches started to roll as we headed north of Buenos Aires

The land reminded us of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi with the rolling hills, red mud and tree farms

The rolling hills gave way to bigger hills and large scale tree farming

The tree farming gave way to jungle near Iguazu

So as Eleanor Roosevelt said " Poor Niagara".   We must agree, Iguazu Falls is amazing. Another UNESCO World Heritage Site,  read about it here while I load the film.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iguazu_Falls

First a few of the "critters" around the falls

     One of the largest rodents on the planet called a Capybara

              Giant ants

                       I don't think the iguana wanted to come out and play today

                 These critters were everywhere.  Its called a Coatamundi

they look all playful and fun but there were some warning posters around with some pictures of really nasty gashes from the cute little things ripping people's flesh off their hand

     I almost walked into this one.  He had about five inches toe to toe

Now on with the show

Waterfalls don't need much in the way of captions but this shows how muddy the river is from all of the slash and burn deforestation devastation up river.  This mud is from the top soil being washed away.

    Brazilian side on the left, Devils Throat on right.  US visa is $160 so we passed on the Brazilian side

We took one of these out to the falls... The Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls is a kiddie ride compared to these high powered motor boat.  They take you right into the falls for a shower.  I have the camera in a clear plastic bag so the pics look a little hazy

                                     Right up in there, closer than this

     That is the edge of the falls in the top left hand corner.

After our shower, we took the train to the other end of the park for the biggest attraction

                                                 The Devils Throat

This metal catwalk was about half a mile long,  kind of like walking out on the Susquhanna River north of Harrisburg.

                                 Righ to the edge of Devils Throat

                    and then we were out of there......

Back in the town of Iguazu there is this sign for a marker or milepost for three frontiers

Paraguay on the left,  Brazil on the right and standing in Argentina.  You can see where the two rivers meet in the front of the picture

Ferry and dock over to Paraguay,  another visa needed.  Pass!

Brazilian ferry dock on left and Argentina on right. If you look close, at the tree line/horizon above the river you can see the bridge between Brazil and Argentina.

We have been in Buenos Aires for two weeks waiting on the correct documents to ship my motorcycle home.  Nobody wants to admit they screwed up so the boss at customs came up with a "solution"

Latin American style.  If I sign a letter that's states I "lost" the original document,  then he can make me a new one.  Hell, you could have done that two weeks ago.   I signed the paper, got my new import document and out the door I went.  It only took from 9:30am until 4:30 that afternoon, after two weeks of Argentine finger pointing.  To make a long story short,  I took the documents and the motorcycle to the airport today,  got everything arranged to ship,  lined up our airline tickets and away we go.  This is Thursday night,  we fly out Friday night, arrive in JFK, in New York on Saturday morning, catch the train to Philadelphia then Lancaster and will be home Saturday afternoon in time for Super Bowl Sunday.  That is if Murphey doesn't get in the way.  Keep an eye out for the next few installments, of time spent in Buenos Aires.  They should be posted soon enough.  Then a final post to wrap it all up.  See ya