My Underwear Goes to Posadas

Well, yesterday turned out to be a bit of an adventure. Dave and I flew from Buenos Aires to Iguaçu (as the Brazilians spell it; the Argentinians opt for Iguazu) in the morning. We got to the airport in plenty of time, checked our bags, had some coffee, and had a leisurely, pleasant flight.

Coming in to land, we could see a heavy carpet of trees and vegetation. Iguaçu is a national park and it is green and verdant, and here and there were a few trees blooming bright pink. I hope I get a closer look at those today.

We went to the luggage belt and collected Dave's bag. Then we waited for mine, and waited. Everyone else got their bags. The belt shut off. My bag was nowhere to be seen.

So we found our driver, and he went with us to the Aerolíneas Argentinas lost luggage desk, where an employee was waiting with a photo of my bag on her iPhone. It had been sent to Posadas by mistake, she explained, and should arrive in Iguaçu by 7:30 p.m.

I didn't stress too much about this. My bag doesn't contain anything very valuable and the airline knew where it was, so I figured odds were good I'd get it back. At some point I realized I could check its location on my iPhone using the Apple "Find My" function, because my AirPods were in my bag.

Sure enough, there they were in Posadas, 300 kilometers south of us.

Dave and I checked into our hotel, a place called El Pueblito on the edge of Puerto Iguazu. That's the lobby, above. Cute, right? We have a big, spacious room with a tile floor and, weirdly, a brick ceiling. That seems like a bad idea but I'm bargaining that it won't choose to collapse on us in the brief time we're here.

We ate lunch in the hotel restaurant where I ordered what I thought was a sandwich but turned out to be more of a charcuterie board. Definitely one of the strangest lunches I've had in a while, but a Quilmes beer helped.

Then we explored the grounds.

That little chapel is right behind our room. When we look out our window, that's what we see. Maybe they give this room to sinners?

There's also a sort of nature trail around a pond, a few caged specimens of turtles and reptiles, and a butterfly house.

These two butterflies were looking for some privacy. Sorry about that, butterflies.

In the afternoon I checked on my bag again, and saw that it was at the airport in Cordoba, about 1,500 kilometers south of us. And as I watched it over time, "Find My" began telling me that my AirPods were out of their case. This pissed me off, because I assumed they'd been stolen. In fact, maybe my whole bag had been stolen. I had an angry meltdown imaging some smug baggage-handler in Cordoba using my AirPods and was pretty certain I was never going to see them again.

We cracked open our fancy wine from Buenos Aires and then went to dinner, where I had pacu, a local freshwater fish. I was picturing some dainty little thing like a bream I'd catch in Florida, but no, this was a monstrous slab of fish-meat. Pacu, it turns out, are related to piranhas and although they eat plants, they have disturbingly human-looking teeth! (Fortunately mine no longer had its head.)

After dinner, "Find My" gave me better news -- my bag was at the airport in Iguazu, along with my AirPods (still supposedly out of their case). I relaxed about theft, and began wondering about the accuracy of the "Find My" function, but I was losing my patience. I couldn't brush my teeth. I had no pajamas. I couldn't read, because my book was in my bag. And that bag sat at the airport for a couple of hours. I tried to call the airline, but I could barely read the printout of contact information they gave me because the ink was so ridiculously faint, and no one answered any of the numbers.

Finally, finally, just as I was going to bed in despair at 10:30 p.m., the desk clerk knocked on the door and said the bag had arrived. And my AirPods were inside it, not out of the case at all. Whew! I can finally change my clothes!