We'd had a lovely time in Paraguay, and were now on a bus heading east, to Argentina. Our bus travelled
through a little piece of Brazil without stopping, and 20 minutes later we were
at the border of Brazil and Argentina. There was a quick border process,
then soon after, we arrived in the buzzy Argentinian town of Puerto Iguazú.
We were there because it provides access to the Iguassu Falls (Iguazú [Spanish/Argentina]; Iguaçu [Portuguese/Brazil]; Iguassu [English]).
The Falls are the largest waterfall system in the world, and a UNESCO World Heritage site. They are on the Rio Iguazú (Iguazú River) which forms the border between Argentina and Brazil.
We planned to visit both the Argentinian and
Brazilian side of the Falls, with our first stop being the Argentinian side.
So, after arriving at the Puerto Iguazú bus terminus, we made the short walk to our hotel (Hotel 125). It had a beautiful and inviting front entry, a great restaurant, and very welcoming staff.
We especially loved the restaurant because we were able to get a meal that included green vegetables, which we hadn’t been able to do in Paraguay. However, the loveliness of the place stopped
behind the restaurant, as we found the bedrooms to be in bad repair and noisy. Despite that, we enjoyed our stay.
The next morning, we caught the bus to the Iguazú National Park to see Iguazú Falls (Cataratas del Iguazú).
The National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site. There are several walking trails and we aimed to do them all. The trails are surrounded by lush forest and they are full of very cute monkeys.
We walked the Circuito Superior or upper trail first which took about an hour. The route was not crowded and everyone just followed the well-defined and signed trails at a steady pace, toward the noise of the waterfalls.
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| Coatis at Iguazú National Park (UNESCO) |
On our walk, we came across a family of coatis. These
are small mammals related to the racoon, and they are everywhere in the
National Park.
While they don’t seem to be afraid of humans, they are wild.
There are signs throughout the Park suggesting they not be patted or fed.
As we walked on, we came across little lookouts to show you the first waterfalls, or salto's as they are called here.
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| View from Iguazú Falls Circuito Superior trail |
The further we walked, the better the view,
then suddenly, we were looking out along a string of massive waterfalls. The power and amount of water was amazing. We were completely blown away by the sheer
size of them.
After admiring the falls, we caught a quaint little train up to the Garganta station, then headed toward the Garganta del Diablo (Devil’s Throat) Trail.
It was quite a long trail, eventually taking us to a lookout where we were above the seething maelstrom of water that gives La Garganta del Diablo its name.
This is where water from the Río Iguazú pours into a narrow-necked gorge. As the water escapes this bottleneck, it sends up a deafening roar and plumes of spray, that render the surroundings almost invisible.
There was just so much power in this heaving mass of water it was almost beyond belief!
After that, we caught the little train back down to the
lower station and decided we had enough energy left to do the last trail,
called the Circuito Inferior or Lower Trail.
This trail went down below some more thundering falls that were just as spectacular as the earlier ones. After a great day, we walked back to the park entrance and tiredly caught our bus back to town. What an amazing day we'd had.
The next morning, we caught a bus to take us over the border into Brazil so we could visit the Iguaçu Falls.
The bus driver waited while we were stamped out of Argentina, but not when we were getting stamped into Brazil. So when leaving customs, we had to grab a taxi into Foz do Iguaçu township.
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| Us at Tres Fronteras |
We negotiated with our taxi driver to stop briefly a Tres Fronteras en-route to Foz do Iguaçu. Tres Fronteras is the landmarked border between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil - the three borders.
The taxi driver was lovely about the detour, and because he had not been to the Tres Fronteras landmark before, we invited him to visit it with us.
He was really excited and phoned his wife on a
video call to say where he was, and to show who he was with - people from
New Zealand!
There were lots of squeals and happy sounds on the other
end of the phone, and the obvious excitement delighted us. It was quite a lovely moment.
We soon arrived at our hotel, which was rather quaint, and in much better condition than our previous one. Luckily our room was ready early, so after settling
in we headed off by local bus to visit the Itaipu Binacional Dam.
On the way there, we ran into an impressive
thunder storm and the temperature dropped dramatically. We hadn't bought our raincoats or jackets, so we bought a
white plastic raincoat each at the Dam information centre. Not sexy but they did
the job.
The Itaipu Dam project has been designated as one
of the seven wonders of the modern world.
It’s jointly owned by Paraguay and Brazil, and
while it is not as big as the massive 3-Gorges dam that we had visited in
China, it apparently has the capacity to produce a lot more power. We found it quite impressive.
The next day after a leisurely start, we caught the local bus to the Iguaçu Falls (Cataratas do Iguaçu).
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| The boardwalk at Iguaçu Falls (UNESCO) |
The Brazilian side of the Falls was very well
organized with double-decker shuttle buses transporting people from the entrance,
to the short walkway and lookouts.
The walkway took us right down under a big
fall. Further out, the view was spectacular, as we looked downward and over to the main body of the Falls.
The spray was lovely and cooling as the day had become hot and sticky.
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| Marg at Iguaçu Falls (UNESCO) |
This Brazilian side of the Falls was different, giving more of a full-frontal view. But we were glad we'd gone to the
Argentinian side first as they really were quite spectacular, giving a sense of
the immensity of the Falls overall.
We had finished our visit after a couple of
hours so we walked 500 m across the road to the Parque das Aves.
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| Birds at Parque das Aves. Top (L-R): Macaws & Grey Crowned Crane. Below: Scarlet Ibis & Flamingos & Curassow |
This park is home to a huge number of
colourful birds, most unique to Brazil. They were in either massive cages, or in the
open surrounding forest.
About half of the birds had been
rescued, sadly, from injury and trafficking. The rest had been hatched at the Park.
The park was well laid out in a circular
fashion and we saw so many birds up-close. At one stage, we even had some beautiful
toucans on the path right in front of us. It was Amazing!
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| Toucan at Parque das Aves, Iguaçu, Brazil |
We spent a happy couple of hours there, then caught the bus back to our hotel.
With another fabulous day behind us, we
prepared to catch our flight to Cuiaba in Brazil the next day. We were going there so we could visit the famous Pantanal, our next stop.
The above blog is part of our
4-month tour of South America. The first blog on this tour is called "Buenos Aires here we come".