Welcome To The Jungle

Iguazú Falls, one of Argentina’s most cherished attractions, is finally getting a hotel that lives up to its dramatic setting. Jacqueline Gifford checks in, only to discover that even more natural wonders await.

Oddly enough, it didn’t smell like rain. The sky had turned from blue to silver to a deep, dark grey as our trio of kayaks explored a remote stretch of Argentina’s Yacuí River, a tributary of the larger Iguazú. With its milky green waters and banks lined with the towering palmito and palo rosa trees of the Atlantic Forest, the Yacuí, set in the northeastern province of Misiones, is about as far from the cosmopolitan streets of Buenos Aires as you can get.

We’d driven 90 minutes due east from the town of Puerto Iguazú, on the unpaved Route 101 that runs along the border of Iguazú National Park, to reach this remote location.

After clambering down a makeshift pier, we’d dropped our kayaks in the water and begun paddling upstream, with no end point in mind—our destination was the magical rainforest that straddles the river, once a vast wilderness that covered more than 100 million acres of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. My Argentine guides, Paula and Pancho, noticed the darkening sky too, but I told them to press on. The metallic tang I’ve always associated with an approaching storm was missing from the air, and after coming all this way I wasn’t about to give up.

Then raindrops the size of quarters started falling fast and thick. The shallow seat of my kayak began to fill with water. All three of us made a swift turn for the pier.

“Are we there yet?” I shouted ahead to Paula, wiping the rain from my face. “Almost!” she replied, poised and unflappable, even as lightning flashed in the distance. Behind me, Pancho looked equally cool and confident in his Ray-Bans and wide-brimmed hat.