Iguazu Falls

20th to 25th March

Oh if every journey could be as pleasant as the night bus we took from Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguassu. We had seats that reclined fully into beds with so much leg room they´d give thew M.D. of any airline a heart attack. We were served a three course dinner with wine & then given a nightcap of champagne (for me) or Whisky (for And). We arrived after 14 hours refreshed from a good nights sleep with our stomachs happily full of a good breakfast, how very civilised!!!

We relax for the morning at our hostel then after lunch walk to the nearby bus station to catch a bus to the falls. We were quite surprised when we arrived as the entrance seemed more like Alton Towers & the theme park feeling continued as we joined the large queue for the little train to the falls, We walked through crowds along elevated walkways over water which to our surprise had a cayman & few Capybara in the water nearby. There were lots of oohs and aahs from the Argentine tourists!

Finally we made it out to the main waterfall. We can hear it before we get to it. It´s fairly deafening and we understand why when we get there. We are right at the mouth of the Diablo the water is crashing down below us with incredible force, drenching us with spray. We gaze open mouthed for a while then walk along the upper walkways taking in the views of the Argentinian side.

The next day we were up early to head back into the park for a boat ride up to the falls. First we were taken by 4wd through the forest with a guide pointing out interesting plants on the way then we arrived at the river where And & I stripped down to our swimming costumes before donning life jackets & climbing into a large speed boat. It was an exhilarating ride down the river climaxing in several drenchings under one of the falls (we were very glad to be just in our swimming cossies). After the ride was over we took a much shorter boat trip across the river to a Isla St Martin we swam & lounged in the river for a while then climbed to the top where the views of the Argentinian side were amazing & we got lucky & had the place to our selves (which was lovely).

We caught the boat back over & spent some time walking on the lower walkways before heading back into town. It had been a fantastic day.

On the morning of the 22nd we said goodbye to Argentina & caught the bus to Foz de Iguassu in Brazil. We stopped at the Argentinian border & were stamped out of the country If you are just going to Brazil for the day you don´t have to go through their passport control so we told the driver we were not coming back but for some reason he didn´t stop at the Brazilian border so we suddenly found ourselves illegally in Brazil, in the middle of a city, with no Brazilian money, no Argentinian money (as we had made sure we spent it all before we left) no clue where the nearest bank was & no way of communicating as we didn´t speak a word of Portuguese & no-one seemed to speak Spanish. Eeeeeeeek

Our luck had not completely left us as there on the corner was a travel agency with a sign in English saying that they sold bus tickets. We went in & to our delight found a nice man who spoke good English so we were able to organize the next leg of our trip, find a bank & he even wrote a note for us in Portuguese to explain to the taxi driver & Brazilian passport control what we needed to do. Finally we were stamped into the country & delivered safely to our hostel.

Hostel Natura is out of town in a beautiful location in the countryside. It has a swimming pool, pool table, playstation dvd player & two of the nicest hosts you could ever hope to meet (Rabi & Anoin). We spent the rest of the day just relaxing after our hectic (if short) journey & eating rabi´s amazing cooking

The next morning Rabi gave us a lift to the entrance of the falls, another theme park like affair. We decided to take a helicopter ride over the falls & I was very excited as it was going to be my first ride in a helicopter. Unfortunately it was just too expensive for us to go on our own so we waited hoping someone else would arrive to make up the numbers & just as we wee about to give up a huge German man (Wolfgang) appeared & we were off! The flight was short but I loved it. We flew over the rainforest then swung over the falls a few times, the helicopter tilting so much that they were below us. It gave us a really good idea of the layout of the falls, the main falls are a huge horseshoe shape with more smaller falls falling over the cliffs stretching down the Argentinian side. All too soon it was over & we were back in another theme park queue this time for a open top bus to take us to the falls. We walked along more walkways which gave us amazing views of the falls along the Argentinian side & ended in a walkway right out into the mouth of the Devils throat. This was definitely our favourite place to experience the full might of the falls. The water thundered down around us & of course there was the usual drenching from all that spray. we loved it so much that after lunch we went back for a second drenching before waving goodbye to the falls & heading back to the hostel.

Later that evening disaster struck. Anoin was burning our photos on to CD for us & somehow manged to wipe half of our Antarctic photos out of existence (thank god we had already uploaded our favourite to our travel blog). We didn´t realize until the next morning when we were checking back the CDs. We had a rather depressed morning as we tried to find our photos on Anion's laptop but it was no use they were gone. We were a bit shell shocked & couldn´t face the long journey ahead of us that day so we decided to stay as extra night. Rabi & Anoin did everything they could to make us feel better including going into town to change our bus ticket for us which was really sweet especially as they were really busy preparing for the concert that was to be held there that evening. after another of Rabi's amazing dinners And & I went to our room for a nap & woke up to the sound of a band playing. We wandered out to watch. The concert was supposed to be three bands, we must have slept through one of them, the second was a young rock band who weren´t really that good but the third was a really good blues band, We sat back drinking Anoin´s Knockout caipirinha´s listening to the music & people watching the crowd (some of whom were very, very drunk at the time & were very amusing viewing), a very enjoyable evening.

We spent the next day lolling around the pool & after the best meal yet, a knockout barbecue we packed up our stuff & Rabi gave us a lift to the bus station. We were sad to say goodbye as we had felt very at home there but it was time to move on (and try to forget about our antarctic photos). So we boarded a night bus that would take us deep into the centre of South America to the vast wetlands of the Pantanal ......

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