JDPFu.com 2025

Part 2

Siesta

Ok, we take the city bus (AR$4) and Fleur gets off at her hostel as I continue back to the terminal. I know now that I should have stayed on the bus all the way to my hotel, but at the time, I didn’t. And we are walking … I see some of the town, learn the map and hike for 30+ minutes directly towards my hotel – The Esturion about 1.5 miles outside the city center, but still in the town. On arrival, the hotel claims to never have heard of me or my Travelocity confirmation code. They give me a 2 single bed room, ground floor for the same rate. I take a hot shower and nap for 90 minutes or so.

City Bus to Park

I ask the hotel which buses to take to get to the park – ’’Cataratas’’ is the name and it stops out front and heads to the park through the terminal, same price for the entire trip. I believe that I’m just a little late getting to the bus stop. About the time I’m convinced I missed the bus that Fleur and I agreed to meet on, a few taxi drivers offer me a ride. AR$15 to the park – mucho dinero I say and decide to wait for another taxi to catch. Just then – 1 minute later – the bus comes. It is running 15 minutes late. Fleur also catches the same bus – bonus.

Moonlight view of the falls – Garganta del Diablo

8:30pm-ish. ‘’Wonderful.’’ Don’t experience it alone. Bring a camera with high ISO manual modes and a tripod. If you can set the exposure manually to 2 seconds, you can capture photos of the water falls. The full moon lit the falls beautifully – none of my photos turned out. We met a couple from Israel who helped make the evening even more fun. Eitan and Inbar had an SLR camera and used a 2 second exposure to get the photos. I hope to get those via email in a few days.

10:30p-ish Diner was surprisingly good. A buffet with a good selection of different salads, side dishes, 1 chicken dish and a Carne (beef) window. I didn’t have any red meat – not my bag, but the other 3 did and said it was good. Overall, we were pleased with the meal. Catch the bus around 11:30p back into town. Say goodbye to my new friends along the way. I wish we weren’t so tired from the very long day and could hit a cafe or bar and chat some more. Alas, email will have to do as we’re all headed to different parts of the world later this week.

The bus stopped at the terminal and everyone got off except me. I moved to the front and told the bus driver my hotel was Esturion – he drove to the main drag in the correct direction and opened the door saying – 6 blocks in that direction. I’d walked it already and knew the way. 15 minutes later I’m just entering the hotel compound. To bed.

Hotel

Yawn. 10am checkout time. Nice shower. The toilet seat is a really cheap plastic model. A bottle of water is AR$20 – ouch. The A/C is very loud, but works well enough to remove the humidity. Simple and mostly clean. I won’t stay there again after my overall experience. Free wifi, but only in some part of the hotel that I wasn’t.