The falls are a two hour plane right north, which we took first thing on the morning of Mel's third day here. We arranged for a taxi at the airport, and got a driver, Ernesto, who ended up being a great help for the remainder of the trip. It seems that the drivers there do some side work of their own, offering to essentially chauffer you from place to place, day or night, for a fixed fee. Any other trips are extra, but you have his number and can call whenever you want a familiar face to take you somewhere new.
Brazil and Argentina have their own parks dedicated to the falls, and between handing us a pile of maps and brochures, Ernesto explained the best way to visit both in the day and a half that we had in the area. After checking into our hotel, we called Ernesto to take him up on his offer: $80US for the duration of our stay, which meant the ride from the airport, across to the Brazilian park, to the Argentine park and back to the airport. We still had a whole half-day upon our arrival, so we chose to cross over to Brazil for the afternoon.
This in itself was exciting, because technically Brazil requires US citizens to have a $100US visa to cross its borders. My research online brought no clear answers, though the Brazilian embassy did reply to an email saying that we were expected to have the visa in order to visit the park, even for just an hour.
Someone was misinformed somewhere, because we went through a standard immigration checkpoint, filled out paperwork, got our passports stamped, and went on our merry way with no trouble at all.
And so it was, our first views of the falls were in Brazil, at the Parque Nacional do Iguaçu.
I've tried to stall on describing what we saw, because it truly is one of those visions that could easily be spoiled by a single word out of place. So, instead, this is what I'll do:
We made our way around the park
by open-sided, double-decker buses that take you from one path entry to the next along a paved road through the forest. The entire park system, with paths that wind along above the perameter of the river and lookout points for great views of the falls, can be done easily within a few hours, assuming you aren't on crutches, 95, or lugging a pack of easily distracted children with you. If the latter is the case, though, they do have a cartoon map that is entertaining to 5 and 26 year olds alike. Speaking of lunchtime, that's when we had a very up-close encounter with a coati, which resembles a raccoon, but has a long, ringed tail and elongated snout.
They roam free throughout the park, but mainly surround the stops along the trails that offer food for the tourists. These little guys aren't shy about their begging...in fact, they don't beg at all, but jump up into your lap and/or onto your tray, then proceed to eat all of your food. There's virtually no shooing them, though park attendants will come through now and then to clap loudly, which seems to do the trick for a minute or two. Unfortunately they came too late for us -- we had to surrender a good half of our food to one coati that seemed to particularly like mayonaise packets and gatorade. (There is a video, but you'll have to go without until our internet stops seizing as soon as we try to upload to youtube...)
Mel and I have a game that I pretty much always lose, and that's sad because all that's involved is spotting deer. Seeing as how deer aren't exactly jungle animals, our game - which I STILL lost - revolved around various jungle-dwelling creatures. His first major win was a gorgeous toucan hanging out in a tree near the lunch area, which he managed to snap a picture of before it flew off.On our way back to the hotel, we asked Ernesto for restaurant suggestions. "The Panoramic" was his immediate reply. The restaurant is actually called Doña Flor, but is housed in the Panoramic Hotel, a posh spread situated at the top of a hill that apparently has an amazing view of the Iguazú and Paraná rivers. It was too dark to see that part, but the hotel and grounds themselves were impressive enough.
The food was good (anything served in a coconut gets a gold star from me,) and after two months of Argentine-style restaurant service (also known as "bad service," in the US) it was nice to be able to relax and not wonder where everything was all the time.
After dinner we hopped into the hotel's casino - one of Mel's favorite vacation activities - but were disappointed that they only had a variety of slot machines. We went to another about 10 minutes away, but with no tables to play Mel's dearly beloved craps, we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.
The next day was the big one: a full day spent trekking around the Parque Nacional Iguazú. Though the acreage (or hectare-age?) of the Brazilian park is significantly larger, the Argentine side has far more explorable area,
(not to mention even more kick-ass views) and so takes a lot longer to work through. We had Ernesto drop us off there around 10:30am and arranged for him to come back at 6:30, which was only a smidgeon more time than we needed to walk the two major hiking circuits and see virtually all there was to see. We signed up for the big adventure package, which meant we got to do all of the guided tours as well as our own exploring. We were in a group of about 28 other people for the first leg of the trip, an 8km ride through the jungle in an open-topped truck. Our tour guide alternated between English and Spanish, giving us a history of the park and pointing out various flora and fauna.
It was interesting enough, but I was preoccupied with trying to spot a monkey before Mel, so I think I missed a lot of important information. Oh well. The ride ended in a draw - no monkeys to be seen - and I learned about where hearts of palm come from, so all was not lost.
The next step was definitely one of the coolest things I've done, and I was looking forward to it for weeks before the trip. After being handed waterproof bags for all of our belongings and donning the ultra-stylish life vests, we all piled into a Zodiac-style airboat with twin 200+hp engines and headed up the river, straight on toward the falls. After stopping for a few photo ops, everyone was told to stow their cameras and prepare. Because I happen to be a genius, I used Mel as a stuff-I-need-from-home mule and had him bring along the underwater housing I use for my camera when I go diving. So I kept my camera out, thinking "oh man, I'm going to take the best pictures ever!"
Well, I tried. The boat really
does go right into the falls, or close enough to soak you clear through to the bone, so there isn't a whole lot of room for fiddling with camera settings or even aiming the thing properly, for that matter. I did get a few good shots, as well as a bit of video footage (on its way, on its way), so it was definitely worth it to have that housing.It was a super hot day, so the water felt awesome and it was a blast just to listen to everyone screaming and laughing while being pounded by all this water, then cheering when they took us in for another round.
Important note for anyone planning to take the same plunge: either wear clothes you'll be happy to wear soaking wet for hours after the ride, or bring extra dry stuff with you. I have no idea what 75% of our boatmates were thinking, with their jeans and frilly little skirts, but apparently they didn't do their research before signing up for that trip. On second thought, you should just wear stuff you're willing to wear wet no matter if you do the boat thing or not -- a lot of the coolest lookouts are so close to the water that you get wet just standing there.
Moving along, we took a water taxi deal over to a small island, walked around, taxied back, then hit up the main walking circuits. These wind along the edge of the jungle to overlook the rivers and larger falls, but also dip back into the jungle so you can see more secluded falls and try to catch glimpses of the animal life. There were definitely a ton of lizards, some tiny and some large enough to block whole paths, which was pretty cool.
Back to the animal-spotting game, Mel made his biggest score yet toward the end of the day. This victory, however, was not one I was going to huff and puff about, because it was what I'd been waiting for the whole day:
OHHHHH YES, IT'S A MONKEY!!!
'Nuff said.
After a stop for some lunch and some more hiking, we took the jungle train (an eco-friendly touring train brought in from England) to the stop-off for the big kahuna: a 1130 km catwalk that leads across the upper part of the river, through a number of jungly bits, and finally stops with a grand overlook at the Garganta del Diablo, or Devil's Throat,
arguably the most impressive and powerful system in the whole of the park. The overlook is right at the edge of the falls, which makes it an incredibly dramatic place to be. It's hard to see too much, as there's too much vapor and backsplash (from 80m down!) to catch more than the upper edges of the falls, but between the roaring of the water, the fizzy vapor and, of course, the rainbows, it's a really amazing experience.We took the train to our next stop, which was the boarding point for our last big adventure - an eco-tour along the upper portion of the river. For this leg of the trip all we had to do was sit and listen, except that we were listening to a solid block of Spanish and so didn't glean a whole lot of information. It was a relaxing float, though by that time I was so tired and sunburned and HOT (at one point it was about 40 degrees celsius, which is just over 100 fahrenheit) that it was a struggle not to either fall asleep or "fall" out of the boat and into the cool river.
By the end of the day we were a pair of tired, somewhat testy tomatoes, but that's really a non-point considering all that we got to do and see. We called Ernesto to take us back to the hotel, got some drinks and snacks by the pool, napped for a bit and then went into town on another E-suggestion. This time it was El Quincho del Tío Querido, a traditional parilla joint that seemed to be as popular with locals as it was with tourists. I liked my whatever-I-had (sorry, I didn't write any of this stuff down), Mel was okay with his but not thrilled, but either way we left fed and happy.
We had drinks on the terrace of our hotel (thank goodness, a place that makes a proper mojito!!!) before heading to bed. Our flight left the next afternoon, and after a fruitless stop at the huge duty-free complex on the Argentina-Brazil border and a stressfully long wait in line at the airport, we made it back to Buenos Aires by early evening.
I don't think we could have done that trip any better. The hotel wasn't the best ever, but then again we were rarely in it, so in the end it didn't make much of a difference. Getting to see both parks was a great surprise, and while we agreed that the Argentine side is way better, it was nice to have the chance to even make a comparison. It was a perfect amount of time to see everything we wanted to see, do everything we wanted to do, and pause for enough time to soak it all in.
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There are a lot more pictures of this trip on my Flickr site. Just click the link to my November pictures on the right side of this page.
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