Location: La Lorenza
The hotel supplies a buffet breakfast as part of the room price. It was nice, but the surprise was the honey. When they say it’s fresh, it is FRESH. That is an actual bee honeycomb, crushed by the servers, which then drips down the funnel to fill the bowl at the bottom. This is the first time I’ve actual seen a honey dipper used.
It was an hour drive from the hotel to La Lorenza, 40 minutes of that on dirt road. It rained two days ago, which is fortunate, as if it rained yesterday I’m not sure how on-time we’d arrived at the Casa.
This whole area, including the park, is a kind-of recent development. In the 19th century this land was wholesale cleared for farming. Only in the last 100 years has the rain forest been allowed to re-grow, so there is very little “old growth”. Which is a bit amazing as the forest is quite thick. As a tourist experience for me it was a bit redundant, but how would the tour agency know that I’ve visited rain forests in Australia, Komodo, Madagascar, Costa Rica, etc. There was not any mammal wild life, but there were some interesting fungi and butterflies.
I find it odd how in a forest full of greens and browns that bleach-white mushrooms thrive so easily. We found the remains of a cicada. My guide explained there are so many kinds of cicada here there is no pause – every year is a cicada year.
There were many types of butterflies. Here one is showing off their wings.
The locals call this butterfly “popcorn”, as they make *snap* noises when they get near each other.
At the mid-point of the walk I got to enjoy mate, pronounced “maa-te”. It is a kind-of tea from a local tree (remember – tea comes from a bush). The hot (not boiling) water is poured directly into a mug containing the dried and crushed leaves. You drink it with a straw that has a filtering construction at the bottom – typically made of metal (stainless steel?), but sometimes bamboo.
The traditional mate mug is made from a local gourd. As the drinker’s status increased, metal and fancy stuff was added to the mug, and the gourd gave way to wood.
I returned to the Casa for a light lunch. The house is in view of the Parana River, which flows from the falls, and is the national boundary between Argentina and Paraguay. As part of the tour they gifted me with a bamboo mate straw.
