Yacutinga Lodge

At 2 pm you meet your driver and a group of 8 to 12 at the meeting point in Puerto Iguazú. Luggage goes on, and the van heads 80 km (50 mi) out to Yacutinga Lodge. Along the way the soil turns red, the greens change shade, and colonist farms and yerba mate fields roll past.

A guide welcomes you at the lodge and explains the Yacutinga Reserve, what the lodge does to protect its plants and animals, and which activities you can take. Dinner is at the restaurant, with Guarani, Paraguayan and Argentine flavors built on ingredients from the lodge's own farm and from local producers.

After breakfast, kayak the San Francisco stream into the reserve for three hours. The water is calm, you slide along the gallery forest in near silence, and you learn how the roots cope with flooded soil. Salt patches line the banks and animals come to them, so look for footprints in the mud.

In the afternoon, an expert guide leads an interpretive walk: old-growth trees, medicinal plants, orchids, bromeliads, butterflies, beetles, birds and mammals.

After dinner comes the night walk. The owls start up, the forest sounds like a different place, and on a clear night the Milky Way is your ceiling. The point is to sharpen your senses.

Breakfast brings fruit from the rainforest, and the rest of your stay is yours to spend at the lodge. If you want to put something back, join the lodge's orchid rescue program and learn more about this ecosystem while you do.

At mid-morning you check out and drive back to Puerto Iguazú, arriving around 1 pm.