Iguazú Jungle Tour

I admit it – I love cities. I like visiting beacoup de boulangeries in Paris, staring skyward at skyscrapers in New York, and tourist-watching in my hometown of San Francisco.  But sometimes I manage to drag my city-centric ass out of the urban jungle.

Mix a lot of rain, high temperatures and sweat-inducing humidity : Voila! – a tropical forest more intoxicating than a Pisco Sour in Peru and with greater diversity than the restaurant scene in San Francisco. The jungle surrouding Cataratas del Iguazú reminds me of something I often forget.... Mother Nature never fails to impress.

An incredible canvas of color is on public display in Iguazú. The soil, full of iron oxide, glows red in the afternoon sun.

Look skyward to see soaring birds and flitting butterflies. (Okay, I actually saw most of these winged creatures while looking into trees, over rocks and down upon man-made railings.) But with nearly 450 species of birds and 350 species of butterflies, there’s always something colorful to catch your eye.

Admittedly I’m no ornithologist or lepidopterist, so I can not name the species of birds and butterflies I saw overhead.  But I did see a “zipliner deutches” fly above.

Though I’m pretty sure this is a “dorkus americanus.”

Disappointed not to see any jaguars or leopards, which still purportedly roam the area, I did encounter a couple ferocious coatis, raccoon-like mammals that hunt insects and fruit. Okay, maybe not ferocious, but these omnivores are potentially aggressive in their search for empanadas and table scraps.

The jungle is also home to a variety of reptiles – lizards and caimans and other things that crawl through the water.

Look closely, it's about 5 feet long.

 Some creatures crawl. Others repel.

After the jungle tour and “eco-adventure,” we tourists board our ozone-choking, smog-spewing jungle-tour-truck, and bounce up and down the red-dust road, past the shacks of locals selling hand-crafted souvenirs, and make our way back to the big cities we came from.