South America Day 8 - Iguazu National Park

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Today we are going to Iguazú National Park on the Argentinian side of the falls. For a local, this trip is simple; a bus to the Argentinian town of Puerto Iguazú and a second bus to the park. For a foreigner is more complicated as you have to disembark for immigration twice and the bus doesn’t wait, so it involves taking 3 consecutive buses on the same route, then a 4th bus to the park.

We walk to the international bus stop and wait. A bus to Paraguay pulls up and everyone else gets on. This happens a few more times before eventually a bus driver asks why we’re sitting at the bus stop and explains that buses to Argentina depart from the other end of the road. On our complicated journey we have fallen at the first hurdle or rather, tumbled rather awkwardly out of the starting blocks.

We find the correct bus stop and once a group of foreigners are assembled, a taxi driver offers to take us direct to the park for the price of 5 buses. And so we set off to Argentina by taxi with two Poles and two Colombians. This is the first test of my Spanish with the added pressure of having to translate into English for the Poles.

We reach the park entrance, queue for tickets, then have to take two separate trains to the waterfall. In all it takes almost 3 hours to reach our destination; La Garganta del Diablo – the Devil’s Throat. Surrounded by signs warning of crocodiles, we set forth on a rickety walkway over the river to the edge of the waterfall. It’s incredible, the sound and scale of water rushing down the Devil’s Throat is immense.

We take a second less busy trail (Circuito Superior) along the river for further views of the falls, meeting a family of monkeys who have mugged a small child eating a sandwich along the way.

Just time for a drink in the food court (an area teaming with baby coatis hoping for spillage from the tables above) before returning to our hotel in Brazil, via the Argentinian Hito Tres Fronteras border obelisk, for one final night. Tomorrow we depart for Paraguay.

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