Passing Time in Puerto Iguazú

This is a completely inadequate photo that shows a small portion of Iguazú Falls, or Las Cataratas de Iguazú in Spanish. They are stunning. They span 2 km, which is over a mile.

It is an Argentine National Park at the intersection of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, and while cars are not allowed, it is Disneyfied in many other ways, complete with a cute little train to ship the crowds in closer. We both tired of the multitudes quickly, and left sooner than we might have. The best part of my day was a hike on the only nature trail in the park, which was topped by a lovely serendipitous siting of a group of Caí Monkeys. They travel in groups so it provided a fabulous opportunity to watch them watching us, though they mostly fed and groomed themselves.

That was yesterday. Today we went to an this, well, Wood Museum. Not that it's called that, but it is this big ole collection of trippy buildings made out of the stumps of the old growth rain forest that is long gone from this region. So, while fantastic, it is also sad and sobering. The picture at the left here is a roundhouse made out of tree trunk slabs. To give you an idea of scale, you can see the chairs perched on the table in the center, while each dark section of the wall is a slab of a tree trunk. Really enormous. The guy who built the place managed to get all these huge stumps out of the clearcuts before they were burned to make way for tobacco plantations.