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AIRPORT TO HOTEL
Walking from the plane to baggage claim outside in the open air, I could just smell the fresh air and wet pavement. It was a great feeling. A hotel driver, which we’d pre-arranged, was waiting for us as planned with a placard. He grabbed our bags, took our passports -- including our Brazil exit card, which we filled out when we first arrived into the country -- and we were off. The hotel has a fleet of new Mercedes so we were styling like rock stars. It took about 10 minutes to get to the Brazil border. The driver left us in the running car while he went inside to get us processed. A few minutes later, he came out and we each had a fresh Brazil exit stamp. We then drove a few hundred yards through no man’s land, stopping halfway on a deserted bridge over the Iguazu River to see the exact Brazil and Argentina borderline, depicted by painted flags. On the other side was the Argentinean drive-through border. The agent and driver spoke Spanish and didn’t ask us any questions as he entered our information, then stamped our passports. We were now in officially in Argentina and from the border to the hotel was a quick two-minute drive.



CURRENCY
Crossing the border means getting new currency. At the hotel, there were a couple ATM machines in their casino. $1 USD = 3.71 ARS (Argentina Pesos) or 1 ARS = 0.26 USD. So as you can see – Argentina is a huge bargain for Americans.

IGUAZU GRAND HOTEL RESORT & CASINO
We checked into the Iguazú Grand Hotel Resort & Casino in the middle of the night. The hotel is a member of the Leading Hotels of the World but I thought it would have been a bit nicer. My first impression was that it had kind of luxury tacky, Reno, Nevada hotel feeling. Don’t get me wrong: The hotel is nice but they need to make some minor improvements, mostly with the food and service.

ARRIVAL
The service started out fantastic but with the exception of the front desk crew, it went downhill from there. When we arrived at 3am, a bellman came right out, grabbed our bags, escorted us to the front desk then brought us welcome drinks (orange/mango juice). We filled out a few lines of paperwork and then were whisked up to our deluxe room.

ROOM
The room was huge but it had two old-school TVs and not many English channels – maybe two out of 60 Spanish ones. But the bathtub had cracks, a long black hair stuck to the side and there was mould on the shower ceiling. But the bed was comfortable and they offered fast high-speed Internet (not wireless) for free. FYI: The electrical outlets are the same as in Brazil. WhatPlug.info will help figure out what adaptor you need no matter what country you are from or where you’re going.

HOTEL SERVICE
The front desk always provided outstanding service and they spoke perfect English. However, the restaurants needed help. We had one or two excellent waiters and meals out of five. In the main dining room, we loved their delicious squash soup with honey in an edible bread bowl, followed by above average pasta (cooked anyway you like it) and freshly made watermelon juice. But the people dining at the two tables next to us were both complaining of the food, service and hotel. Both couples were American and one was rudely yelling in Spanish that their food took too long and their steaks didn’t come out as they had ordered. Obviously, yelling isn’t the way to go but I can see where they were coming from -- a Leading Hotel of The World should meet certain standards.

BREAKFAST
I actually felt like yelling at breakfast the following two mornings. Both days, my eggs were overcooked. When I asked the waiter for hot sauce after he brought my ham and cheese omelet, he cleaned some tables, went into the back room and came out five minutes later, still with no Tabasco. He forgot and I ate the burnt eggs cold. The next day, that same waiter was calling people using the bar’s speaker phone and it was so loud and annoying and was such a disturbance to the guests. But the waitress made up for his ignorance and was a star. Breakfast was much more than burnt eggs. There were some interesting tasty goodies – I loved the fresh squeezed peach juice and OJ. Most of the buffet was filled with a variety of pastries, fresh fruit and cereal. Yum!

POOL SERVICE
Later that afternoon, Natalie and I ordered room service out by the plush pool. We were starving and I could see our order sitting on the food line to be picked up and delivered by the waiter. But he was nowhere to be found and by the time our food arrived, it was cold and nasty. My ham and cheese sandwich was lukewarm, the French fries were cold and they didn’t have ketchup. Natalie’s pizza was also cold and nasty. I would have complained but the waiter didn’t speak English and I wasn’t going to have my new order spit in. The pool boy could have been more on top of things, too. There were dirty towels scattered around and he never offered us clean ones. There were also floating noodles abandoned in the pool and the net of the skimmer, which one of the Argentinean guests picked up and handed to the pool boy, while saying something nasty to him in Spanish.

MAIDS
Despite the lone black hair in the tub and the mould in the shower, the maids did do a great job cleaning and they come into the rooms in threes like a S.W.A.T. team. Other amenities of the hotel include: a casino, a modern workout room, tennis courts, a spa and an indoor pool. The hotel offered to give me a free facial, which I would normally say no to, but I’d had this persistent blackhead on my nose. I’d actually cut it the week prior trying to dig it out. So I figured, what the heck? I hadn’t had a facial in years and I didn’t know what to expect. Natalie told me I needed to shave, which I did 10 minutes before the appointment – not a great idea.

SPA TREATMENT
I was sitting on the table stark naked with a towel over my you-know-what. The female therapist started putting some coarse cream on my sunburned face. It hurt. Then she put a local herb cream on my face and let me lay there with towels all over my body for a good 20 minutes. I woke myself up with a snore. Then she came in and washed it all off. That was followed by putting some kind of lukewarm cheesecloth on my face, which made me look like a mummy. It actually smelled like cheese and started making me hungry. The therapist didn’t speak English and me, well I no habla Espanol so I had no idea what she was saying. She left the room again and I just wanted to go back to my room and be done with it but I was afraid I would scare the other guests. Finally, she came back in put some kind of makeup cream on me and that was it. The worst part? The blackhead was still there.

DINNER AT PANORAMIC HOTEL
For a change of scenery, Natalie and I went over to the resort’s sister hotel for dinner. The Panoramic Hotel was originally built in the 1940s and has just undergone a refurbishment. The hotel features colonial architecture with modern decor and it’s located on a hill with a panoramic view of the Three Frontiers Landmark -- stone and cement obelisks that establish the territorial limits and built with the respective colors of the three countries. The drive was eight minutes from our hotel and we ate outside and had a delicious mini BBQ of chicken, sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes. The English menu had a lot of misspellings and I was going to offer to correct it for a free meal but it actually adds to the atmosphere of being far away from home. This hotel also has one of Iguazu’s three casinos. There are four other ones in town, about 45 kilometers away.

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