Coati Chop.

Sadly, we had to say good-bye to all our besties at the Glu Hotel this morning. We considered them besties; I think they considered throwing a parade to celebrate getting rid of us and our artificial sugar packets. We made it to the domestic airport by 6 a.m... just in time to have a bit of a run-in with TSA... the last people you want to have a run-in with. Pretty much ever. The lady kept repeating something that was in Tracy's bag, and this time all three of us stared blankly (no one speaks Buenos Aires TSA Agent). Tracy eventually had to relinquish her bug spray, along with her weapon against Zika.

We made it to the northern part of Argentina without further ado by 10:00. We had to wait a bit for the shuttle driver... a debacle that led to what could possibly be a sizable phone call charge on Shandon's bill. Alejandro eventually picked us up and we were off. Alejandro doesn't speak English. I can't say with any sort of confidence that we speak Spanish. Therefore, when Alejandro got pulled over by government officials and was asked questions about us, he couldn't answer. Turns out we were chosen (WINNERS!!) to pay a government tax of 25 pesos each. All we could do was ask Alejandro, "Normal?" To which he replied, "Normal." Who knows. Not us.

Post tax stop and pre-hotel arrival, we saw many animal crossings. You guys. Coati. They look so cute in the photo. Shandon proceeded to say they like to attack humans. Tracy proceeded to say they are a raccoon-monkey mix. I proceeded to say SOMEONE should have warned me about these things that apparently hang out at Iguazu Falls for food dropped by humans. Not so cute. I spent a significant amount of wi-fi time looking into coati rabies. Alejandro drove us through the jungle on a couple of unmarked roads until we arrived at our hotel. It is PARADISE. It was all hands on deck when we arrived to introduce us to every Argentinian employee on site, as well as bring us delicious freshly squeezed mango juice. I'm making that up... I haven't got a clue what flavor it was, because unless it's SIN PULPA, no thank you.

We worked out at the hotel gym which overlooks the jungle and the pool area, followed by lunch at the hotel. We got ourselves a map to the "town" and set out to see what we could see. When asking for directions to town, we were told, "No problem. Right, left, left." Right-left-left got us all the way out of the jungle to the main road (some of us were armed with coati sticks, just in case). The main highway included a huge traffic circle with a class of school children having PE. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable spot to log those PE minutes. The traffic circle and a couple of markets pretty much made up the town. At the supermarket, they wouldn't let us in with our backpacks. Shoplifting issue, you might think. No problem. We took out our wallets and handed the cashier our backpacks... which he put into one giant bag, zipped it up, and handed it to me. More like lugged it over to me; we then had to lug it all over the place... Tracy making HEE HAW sound effects all the while. At the second supermarket, the nice elderly cashier didn't speak a word of English, but pretending to fight a coati has no language barrier. Which she did and we understood.

Back at the hotel and spa, we thought a soak in the spa would be just the ticket. It was actually a Roman bath, with many, many rules and regulations. First step, dry sauna. Fifteen minutes, they said. It will be nice, they said. I lasted somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 seconds. Second step, steam room, two thousand and three degrees.. NOPENOPENOPE. We had to sneak past the lady to the spa because she meant business when she said 15 minutes in steps one and two, but we do what we want. We even try to bring bug spray into the jungle.

Early night tonight and bright and early to Iguazu Falls in the morning!