AR1725 IGR-EZE 16 NOV 12 (FIRST)
Posted: 16 Jan 2013, 00:33Our trip was booked with the same company as the day before and indeed many of the people on the bus had also been with us to the Argentinian side of the Falls. There had been a minor glitch for us personally prior to leaving when Chris realised that as a US citizen, he required a visa to go into Brazil. His passport and the required documentation had been sent the previous week and we held our collective breaths that his passport and visa would arrive before his departure to Argentina. It did, by a cat’s whisker and he now has a 10 year visa which can take him to the Olympics and World Cup, neither of which he has any intention of visiting! For my part I was just grateful that my EU membership took me all over South America without any extra payment for visas or reciprocity fees on entry or exit from some countries. It seems the Land of the Free isn’t so free after all!
Anyhow back to the trip. We were among the last to be picked up, the last being a Colombian called Fabregas whom I was convinced was a Premiership player until Aer John witheringly disabused me of that notion informing me that the said player was Spanish and caucasian!
We headed to the land border where we handed over our passports to our tour guide - a different person from the previous day. She headed off with all of them in her hands which seems to make a mockery of any form of border control. We had experienced this a couple of years ago in exiting Israel and entering Jordan and I still find it odd that the officials didn’t ask to see you. At the border there were many buses passing through along with private cars. Also, quite near was a massive Duty Free shop which we had seen the previous day but had not visited. It was purported to be one of the largest in the southern hemisphere. We were soon to find out that one of the families had visited it. After about a 20 minute wait our guide returned to the bus and spoke with the said family. There was a long convoluted conversation in Spanish with them and as they had only presented ID cards, Chris and I surmised (wrongly) that they had the wrong documentation. There were long discussions and the father and daughter descended from the bus. in the meantime we waited and waited and watched bus after bus sail through. 
At one stage the daughter was seen with a wad of notes in her hand and Chris suggested it was a bribe! LOL! What actually had happened was that they had visited the DF shop the day before, had checked in but had failed to check out so that they owed the duty on the goods bought! All this took over an hour and apart from being bored with the concrete jungle that was the Argentinian/Brazilian border I was becoming a tad concerned as to how this would impact on us as we were flying out that evening back to Buenos Aires. Eventually it all got sorted and we headed across the bridge into Brazil - except that because we were part of a group that had entitlement to entry into Brazil, I have no stamp in my passport and Chris, who needed a visa, does. 
The trip to the Falls was much shorter than the previous day’s and in fact was curtailed by the hour long wait at the border as we and another couple had flights to catch that evening. The walks there are shorter and the number of falls smaller but you had a wider vista of all the falls and it truly was an amazing sight.
We arrived back in the hotel and had a late lunch/early dinner which was stand to us later on in the day as events were to turn out. When we returned to the lobby to await our driver to the airport, it was suddenly invaded by a tour group of Twitchers led by a group leader who reminded me of one I had encountered on a flight from JNB.
This guy announced at the top of his voice that their rooms were not quite ready but told them to which rooms they had been allocated. I resisted the urge to run down to the bar and put bottles of Malbec (or stronger) on their tabs. 
They eventually drifted off to settle in but soon returned complete with binoculars, cameras and all the accoutrements for bird watching and headed off for the garden just as our taxi arrived. As we left, we espied these refugees from them!Iguazu has a small but nicely formed airport with 3 gates, a handful of high-end shops and a large coffee shop whose biggest attraction was the free wi-fi. We were in First on this flight and so were quickly checked in and headed for the coffee shop to catch up with all that had been happening in cyberspace. Near flight time lines began to form at the gate where ID was checked and then we went through security. At the gate area, although our plane had not arrived, two lines formed a la Ryanair, one for economy and the other for First. In the fullness of time the aircraft arrived, turned around with the speed of a Ryanair plane and First were allowed to board. We were in 1A and C which was very typical of, say, Club Europe. There was no pre-flight beverage but then trying to serve drinks while Economy is boarding through the front door is not always an easy task although Virgin America seem to manage it.
After take off we were given snack boxes as sugar-laden as the outbound ones and coffee. The cabin crew looking after us decided that the coffee wasn’t warm enough and brewed fresh coffee for us.
OK, I can hear you saying, “honey lamb and coffee?” Well apart from the fact that the coffee in Argentina is absolutely delicious, Argentinian airlines do not serve alcohol on their domestic flights. The flight was uneventful and soon we landed in EZE - and that’s where the fun began!Our flight had left early and arrived early but there was a long wait for bags to come through. Nonetheless, arrive they did and we headed out to meet our driver as organised by our travel planner. Oh, there were plenty of drivers there with their placards but none with our names on it.
We waited and waited as more drivers drifted in to meet later flights but still no sign of one for us. Chris went to the Information desk to see if they could help but the number rang out. The staff there suggested that he try the other domestic terminal (we were in C; B is another domestic one and A the international one) and leaving me with the luggage he headed off there and I waited and waited and waited. Some thirty minutes after the flight was scheduled to arrive a rather scruffy guy arrived with a sign with Chris’s name on. I cornered him and pointed out that he was 30 minutes late but it fell on somewhat deaf ears as his English was not great - well actually it was virtually non-existent. He tried to manhandle the bags out to the car but somehow I managed to make him understand that there were two of us, but where was Chris? I tried calling him but his phone was switched off and so there was nothing to do but wait. Some twenty minutes later Chris turned up. He had had the same joy from the Information desk in terminal B and they had suggested that he try terminal A. He had not expected any result there but in fact had been directed to a driver from the same company who had managed to make contact with an out-of-hours number. From there he learned that the driver had turned up and had met up with his “wife” and was waiting for him. 
We were duly installed into the car but our woes were not at an end as the driver, when leaving the airport drove to a booth to pay the exit fee where there was a dispute in progress! 
It took some time to realise we weren’t going anywhere soon but eventually he reversed and headed to another one and eventually over an hour later than expected we were back into our apartment.That however, was nothing compared to what else was to befall us, so keep reading!
