Detour to Iguazu Falls

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So I am off traveling with my Mum. In order to ensure that we appreciate the crisp Antarctic weather later in the trip, we first headed up to be in 35 degree humidity at Iguazu Falls.

First up, we set off early from our lodge in Puerto Iguazu and caught the bus to the Argentinian side of the falls. The park is fantastic - the falls are made up of around 200 different waterfalls and there are walkways around, beside, over the various falls. At some of them, you get saturated - like the 'devil's throat'.

We came across a few coatis, which I thought were very cute. They are a bit like raccoons and hang out in the food areas. There are lots of signs warning of coati attacks though and we saw a coati take off with a plastic bag containing some guy's lunch at one stage.

The next day we missed the direct (tourist) bus from Puerto Iguazu to the park on the Brazilian side of the falls so decided to jump on a local bus. The confusion started at the border. No problems getting exit stamps from Argentina, but our bus then dropped us at Brazilian immigration and then took off! After getting our passport stamped, we waited for at least half an hour for the next bus in the same company, which took us to the town of Foz de Iguacu. On the advice of a lonely planet book, we crossed the road and got on another local bus to go to the park. It was at this point that we realised that we had no Brazilian $real and couldn't speak a word of Portuguese! But we managed to pay in Argentinean pesos and get off at the park.

The Brazilian side takes much less time to see. There are better panoramas of many of the falls, but much less ground to walk. However, given it took us over 2 hours to get to the park, we didn't have much time anyway.

Mum didn't seem to have learnt the lessons from the previous day and I had to have stern words with her for carrying a plastic bag full of her snacks, in which the coati took an immediate interest. Fortunately no attack was launched by the coatis - possibly because her snacks were hoardings from previous lan flights, hotels etc and weren't very appetizing!

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