The bus driver saw the sign, slammed on his brakes, and pulled over on the side of the highway to let us off.
The Güirá Oga animal rehabilitation center is sandwiched between the town of Puerto Iguazu and the main Iguazu Falls Park entrance. We could have easily missed, but I’m glad we didn’t.
As the only visitors there, we got our own personal tour guide. José, the son of a national park tour guide, grew up in Puerto Iguazu and recently returned from university in the province of Neuquen.
To begin the tour, we rode to the head of the trail in a wagon attached to a Güirá Oga truck.
Güirá Oga’s mission is to rescue, rehabilitate, and reintroduce injured or endangered animals to Iguazu Falls National Park. They function as an animal hospital and rehabilitation center focusing primarily on birds, although plenty of cute fury animals are also rehabilitated at the park.
During our hour long tour we got to see up close many of the animals we saw at Iquazu Falls, plus others like the Capuchin Monkey and Oso Melero (both pictured below).
The most surprising and confusing part of the tour was when José showed us the nutrition/food preparation building. He told us about how Güirá Oga grows partridges and mice. Despite José’s excellent English we didn’t understand right away — they breed the partridges and rodents at the center to feed to the other animals!
Unfortunately, because it was a Sunday and during siesta hours we didn’t get to see any of the hospital veterinarians in action, but we learned a lot about the animals and the park during our tour. Güirá Oga does excellent work and we enjoyed supporting it.
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Going to Argentina first week of September and this is one stop I will definetely NOT MISS!