GoneToSee

Today is my last day in South America.  I have a taxi picking my up at 9:30 for my trip across the border back into Brazil.  I expect to get my helicopter ride in today.  Yesterday I spent the day at the Falls on the Argentine side.  It had rained the night before and was very overcast yesterday morning.  As the day progressed, it turned very sunny and warm.

My hostel is about five blocks from the bus station so after breakfast I walked to the bus station and bought a round trip ticket to the park (100 pesos-about $10).  The cost to enter the park is 260 pesos…cash, no credit cards, no US$…just cash in pesos.  Depending on where you exchange your money that’s about $25-$27.  The official bank rate is about 9 pesos per dollar but people want US dollars so badly, you can get up to 16 pesos for the dollar on the street.  The most I got was 14 and several times I got 10-11 pesos per dollar.

Anyway, at Iguacu Falls-Argentina there is a lot more walking than on the Brazilian side.  From the entrance there’s a train that takes you close to the largest falls…Garganta del Diablo (Devil’s Throat) then there is a walkway of about 250 meters (750 yards) to the edge overlooking the falls.

While strolling through the ruins of three Jesuit missions here in San Ignacio and nearby in Santa Anna and Loreto.  I thought I envisioned the future of my hometown, Girard.  This vision may hold true for some of the cities and towns some of my other readers may live in.  Those from places other than Girard may not find this funny but then, my readers from Girard may not either.  I’m going to take a chance.

Buses will disgorge visitors to see what Girard used to be.  This photo was taken as a group left what used to be Girard National Bank.

Most of you will recognize this as the old State Farm Insurance wall after it collapsed onto the old Sauer’s lot.  Unfortunately, the Masonic Lodge above has already vanished from the second floor.

This, of course, is the former Chamber of Commerce office and Civic Center.  I can envision Julie Smith’s car parked in front.  So sorry it rusted away and isn’t in these historic scenes.

This is inside St. Michael’s with a sign showing were the stained glass windows used to be and the alter at the top.

Close-up of the alter.

Front of St. Michaels after a future addition was added.

Who would miss the drive-in window at First National Bank of Girard.  I can almost see John Lehman’s office toward the back.

Finally, three hundred years from now people will be flocking to our city.  Until then, I’m going to enjoy it as it is.

I leave tomorrow to return to the Argentine side of Iguacu Falls.

More later….

Just in case you haven’t seen pictures of last night’s blood moon anywhere else, here’s mine.

Going to tour some ruins in and around San Ignacio today.  The three hour one on one tour is costing me AR$300….that’s about $15 US.

Will be staying here one more night then I head back to Puerto Iguacu to shoot the Argentine side of Iguacu Falls.  I couldn’t see trying to shoot them in the rain yesterday.  Hope there’s sun or, at least, clear skies Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday.

More later….

Yesterday, as you recall, I was out early to shoot the falls before the crowd started arriving.  That was successful.  I left the falls area and returned to my hotel just before noon and worked on the images I’d shot and did yesterday’s blog.  In the afternoon, I did a very touristy thing, I went on a boat ride that takes you under a portion of one of the lesser falls.  You get drenched.  It was raining but when you’re going to get drenched, it really doesn’t matter.  It reminded of a couple jet boat rides at Niagara-on-the-Lake in southern Ontario near Buffalo.

Also, yesterday morning while shooting at the falls, a couple stopped to talk photography with me.  They were serious amateurs like me and they spoke English.  Actually, the king’s English.  They are from Kent, England.  Later, I ran on to them at the hotel and we decided to have dinner together last night….and continue our photography discussion.

They were a delightful couple.  Both are recently retired family doctors in a town of 320 people.  We talked about lenses, cameras and where we’d like to go next on our travels.  All in all it was a very pleasant two hours.

This morning I was up at 6 for another chance to shoot a sunrise. It was overcast and threatening to rain.  I have quite a few of those kinds of shots taken yesterday so I decided to pack up, check out and head for Argentina.  The hotel provides transportation to the main gate of the park which is six miles from the hotel. From there they had a taxi waiting to take me to the bus terminal in Puerto Iguacu, Argentina.  What normally should have been about a 15 minute drive took nearly an hour and half.  They were running the Foz do Iguacu Marathon this morning and it started in town and ended near the hotel in the park.  Traffic was a nightmare but I wasn’t trying to make a plane so we sat and sat and sat until we could continue.

Bought my ticket at the bus terminal for $18 US and left at 11:30 for San Ignacio about four and a half hours south of the border.  Made a reservation at a hostel here (town’s about 2 and a half times the size of Girard…about 6300) and hope to shoot the blood moon tonight and visit the ruins of a couple of missions tomorrow.

I also caught up on my NFL picks for the weekend and followed a couple of games on line.  Isn’t the Internet wonderful.

Just took a look outside.  May not be a blood moon visible tonight.

More later.  Have a good week.

I used to live about three miles above Niagara Falls and I’ve been there dozens of times if not a few hundred.  Everyone who came to visit got a tour of Niagara Falls.  I was impressed every time I went there.  I’d still be impressed with Niagara Falls but THIS is a waterfall.  Actually, it’s waterfalls. Plural.  

Yesterday I went for my first visit.  I’m staying at the only hotel inside the national park in Brazil….It’s a very nice place called the Hotel das Cataratas.  I’m certainly paying more (a lot more!) that the $25 or $35 I would typically pay for a hostel for a place that allows me 24-hour access to the park grounds.  The park is open to the public from 9am to 5pm.  Yesterday, there were bus loads of people all along the walk ways and viewing areas.

Last night I stayed after closing…and by showing my room card to rangers…I was able to stick around until sunset.  Not a great sunset but you take what you get.

Then a little later….

And finally, about 20 minutes after the sun had set and I was getting reflection into the clouds.

This morning I was up at 5am for an official 6:25am sunrise.  Unofficially, there was a sunrise but so much overcast that there was no sun to see.  Here’s an assortment of shots I got before the crowds started showing up.

When the sun did begin to break through the clouds, I got this rainbow.

This afternoon I’m scheduled to get drenched on a boat ride that takes visitors under a portion of the falls.  In reality, I don’t think we get under the falls but into a drenching mist.   Here’s one of the boats preparing to go under the falls.

More later…..

After lunch Tuesday, we headed out for a boat ride on the river.  It seemed there were a lot more birds at Jaguar Camp at Port Jofre but here we’ve seen some of them fishing and were able to photograph them making the catch.

This hawk swooped down and picked up a piranha and hurried off to a nearby tree for lunch.  Yesterday on our trip from Jaguar Camp to Posada Rio Claro, we stopped at another fazenda (farm/resort) for a bathroom and drink break.  There our guide used a cane pole to catch a piranha.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t expecting this and my camera was in the van but when we looked at the piranha teeth, they looked like a saw blade.

We also saw a family of capuchin monkeys moving along a vine from one tree to another.

We were about 20 feet from this fella.  They all walked the same vine one at a time.  We also saw a tree with bats attached to the bark.  You have to look closely because they really blend in.

Tuesday evening we had a safari truck ride looking for anteaters and were unsuccessful.  We went went out again about dusk on Wednesday and still didn’t see anteaters but we picked up one screeching owl.  Saw a few marsh deer and a few raccoons but unless you are relatively close, it’s hard to focus and shoot at a high enough shutter speed to get a sharp image.  That, and I think we all know what a raccoon looks like.  Our guide, stood and ran a high powered light around the fields looking for eye shine.  On the front with him are Shawn and Willma. (yes there are two “l’s”) She said her parents wanted a son and he was going to be called William so she became Willma.

Thursday morning, our last day here, we took another boat ride.  We took along some piranha to use for bait to try and photograph some other birds catching them.  Tito would spot a hawk, I’d tell him how to have the boatsman position the boat and he’d whistle to get the hawk’s attention, throw the fish and we’d hope it would come flying by to pick it up.  Got a few and missed a few and a few didn’t seem to care.

A few, like this cormarant, got his own by diving into the water.  We were nearby and he’d just surfaced with his catch.

Here’s a series of photos of a Jakiru Stork with his piranha.  He spears it in the water and then proceeds to crush it in his beak until it is soft enough to swallow.  Eventually, he brought it into the water hyacinth near shore to finish the job. In the last image, you should be able to see the outline of it in his throat in the red part.

I believe I’ve mentioned that during the rainy season the water level rises tremendously.  The water pushes so far into the trees that there’s no shoreline and therefore it is nearly impossible to see jaguar.  Here’s a photo that illustrates how high the water gets.  Look at the water line on the trees.

That’s about 8-10 feet about the current shoreline.

Lastly, here’s one of my better shots of a toco toucan.  I’ve seen several but they never turned out very good.

I flew out of Cuiaba last night about 5pm.  The plane was loaded with a lot of people who I couldn’t understand.  Half of them was a German tour group headed to Iguacu Falls.

We arrived just before midnight local time.  It’s two hours later here.  Midnight is 10pm in the Central Time Zone.  I had a driver waiting to pick me up and deliver me to my hotel.  I got a good night’s sleep, had breakfast and will be changing hotels inside the Iguacu National Park.

More to follow.

Jaguar Camp is owned by Ailton Lara.  The 34-year-0ld built this camp over the past two years.  It’s rustic and comfortable.  According to Lonely Planet, he is one of the best local jaguar guides in the Pantanal.  He’s a typical business owner.  He’ll be in the kitchen, clearing tables, serving drinks, entertining customers after dinner playing guitar and singing American songs and keeping tabs on our purchases.  A very likeable guy!

The four-room lodge. Very basic but clean.  Air-conditioning which is wonderful after a day on the boat sweating.

The dining hall where you get a good assortment of food with the exception of white rice and beans.  That’s something you get with just about every meal in Brazil.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner.  In the winter, this becomes a mud pit.  Water extends up the shore 6-8 feet.  You can see water marks on the trees along the shore.

Anyway, our driver picks the four of us up and the three sisters, me and our guide, Tito, head north to Posada Rio Clara.  Along the way we stop to photograph caiman…

A great horned owl…

and a little further up the road.  These beautiful blue hyacinth macaws.

There’s five of them in this next image.

and my favorite shot.

We arrive at Rio Clara in time for lunch.  This is a much larger place than Jaguar Camp.  Lots of tourists from Germany, the United States and a mixture from other parts of the world.  There’s hardly anyone here from Brazil.  Right now, there is a nationally known nature and wildlife photographer, John Shaw, here with eight clients.  There’s a pool and every room has a hammock outside the door.

Late in the afternoon, when the temperature has dropped to 99 or so we go for a 2-3 mile walk.  We see a fox…

A pigmy owl…

and some of the local livestock which looks like they could use feeding.

There are also fields full of these…hundreds of them.

Termite mounds….You think you’ve got problems.

This morning…Wednesday…Tito, Shawn (one of the sisters) and I went for a morning walk in the forest.  The most interesting find was the Marmoset monkeys.  There were a couple of trees with them swarming everywhere.   Including one Mom who was carrying two babies on her back.

It looked to us like Dad had joined the party.  He then headed off.

Here’s two images that come straight from the camera with no editing.  It’s a jumping monkey that I was just barely able to capture jumping and just before it lands on a neighboring tree.

A little further up the trail we spotted a chicken snake.  It was about 6-7 feet long.  Won’t hurt humans but chickens are too fond of them.

Tito, the guide and one of the three sisters, Shawn.  Nice lady.  She’s a PhD nursing professor in Seattle.  We celebrated her 63rd birthday at Jaguar Camp.

That brings us up to date.  Just had lunch and this afternoon we are headed out for a boat ride at 3pm…after it cools down.  If you haven’t tried this, you should be able to click on any image in the blog and see a much larger version of it.

Last night we had a night safari ride looking for anteaters.  We weren’t successfull.  It was interesting.  Kind of like coon hunting in Kansas.  Ride in a truck and shine a light looking for eye shine reflections.

Tomorrow is my last day with this part of the trip.  We’re doing another boat ride in the morning.  I’ll have lunch and leave here about 12:30 to catch my 5pm flight in Cuiaba for Foz do Iguacu, Brazil.

I appreciate all the nice comments that you’ve sent.  So far, it’s been another great experience.

Ron

We had some internet issues yesterday and I wasn’t able to upload my images.  Today, Tuesday, we moved from Jaquar Camp to Posada Rio Claro about three hours north of Jaguar Camp and about an two hours outside of Cuiaba.

Yesterday, after a great day on Saturday spotting two jaguar and Sunday when we shot a lot of colorful birds AND saw three jaguar I was beginning to wonder if we’d seen all we were going to see.  We’d ask our guide, Tito, to try and find hyacinth macaws, howler monkeys, a swimming jaguar and an anaconda.  As we cruised a small inlet off the main Rio Cuiaba, we spotted the howler monkeys and some capachin’s in a large tree next to the river.

Howler monkeys are black, brown and red.  I saw a red one in Ecuador two years ago but I was probably an eighth of a mile away.  It looked more like a red blob.  These were maybe 30 yards up.  Thanks to a long lens, I was able to see them and recognize them as monkeys!

I think we saw four howlers in the picture on the right on one limb.

The capachin’s are much smaller monkeys.

We also came upon the jabiru’s sitting on a nest.  The female appeared to be shading the nest and we assumed there were babies in the nest but we couldn’t see them.

We moved the boat around to the front and the two messed with whatever was in the nest and eventually they pulled up a small fish that they proceeded to fight our.  The female won.  No suprise there.

I’ve been working on the blog since lunch at this new place.  We are headed out on a walk shortly.  After dinner tonight, we’re taking a ride in a safari truck to see if we can spot a giant anteater.  There’s more from yesterday but I’m out of time.