Iguazu Falls

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So, the 20 hour journey was fairly miserable! It was our first overnighter, which wasn´t so bad in itself, but on this route, we didn´t have the option of the fancier busses that are available, and we weren´t even supplied with a pillow or blanket, never mind the glass of champagne on boarding or dinner with red wine that we´ve heard other people talk about.

The last 5 hours or so were fascinating, however, as we travelled through the sub-tropical region of Misiones, with increasingly jungle-like landscape, like nothing else we´ve seen in S America so far. The rain we had in Uruguay was nothing compared to the thunderstorms that arrived that morning, but the people in the little villages we passed through were still in shorts, so we could only imagine how hot and humid it must be. If I tell you that Neil said it reminded him of home, it´ll give you no idea whatsoever of what it was like, although he later changed his mind and said it was more like Nam. But this is the man who declared the next day that butterflies were scary and 'kind of like dinosaurs'. The butterflies he was talking about were in the Iguazu National park, where the Argentinian side of the Iguazu Falls are located, and while, admittedly, there were thousands of them everywhere, they were absolutely gorgeous and not even a bit scary. I felt a bit like Snow White myself walking through them.

We´d arrived at the Park on the Sunday morning with a very full-on taxi driver, who was very helpful to begin with, a mine of information and tips on the journey there. It all started to go a bit wrong, though, when he got out of his taxi and came into the park with us. We´re still not sure what was going on really, whether he was hoping we´d hire him as an unofficial guide or what, but for a good 20 minutes or so, there was no shaking him. Every time we tried to ditch him by going into a souvenir shop, making a real point of saying 'right, thanks very much, bye' he´d be outside waiting for us when we were done. We were on the verge of being blunt and asking him to leave us the hell alone, when we finally shook him by spending a long time looking into one of the expeditions on offer, and sneaking away from the stall afterwards. And yes, we had already paid him for the journey!

The Falls themselves were spectacular, and I´m not sure our photos will do them justice, whenever we finally get them uploaded. Of nearly 2km of Falls, the star of the show is the huge horseshoe shaped Garganta del Diablo, the power and noise of which is incredible. Not to mention the spray - as you probably will see from the photos we got soaked just standing next to it. Although that was nothing compared to what was in store for us in the afternoon - the trip we´d picked to go on included a speedboat ride along the Iguazu River, to get up close to some of the Falls. The boat was a total blast, even if we didn´t know just how close to the Falls we were going to get, and we ended up going right under one of them. Twice. Being from Northern Ireland, we weren´t quite prepared to strip to our underwear like some of the other passengers (all ages and sizes) so we just ended up WET!!

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Photos

It's a bit windy
On the boat-ride

Still drenched
And this was about half an hour after the boat ride had finished.