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Unfortunately, I was already on a bus bound for Puerto Iguazu before I remembered the above sage advice from TLC. I considered jumping off at the next stop, but it was the middle of the night and I didn´t really feel like it. By the time the bus arrived in Puerto Iguazu, I wondered why I was ever considering taking the advice of a dodgy early 90s girl group over virtually everyone in the world who say that the Iguazu Falls are incredible, and went to find myself a hostel.
Fact of the Day. My dad owns the TLC album. How embarrasing.
So Puerto Iguazu. The first thing I noticed upon arrival was that I had well and truly arrived back in the tropics, and had worked up quite a sweat just on the walk from the bus station to my hostel. As I was tired from the journey, I decided to save the falls until tomorrow, and instead wandered down to the Hito de Tres Fronteras, a point from whioh you can see both Brazil and Paraguay whilst standing in Argentina. I decided against swimming across however, mainly because it would have been kind of illegal.
Sadly,
Tres Fronteras
Brazil right, Paraguay left, Argentina bottom the next day it bucketed it down, so I decided against visiting the falls, and instead spent most of the day watching the waterfalls dropping down from the awning outside the hostel. However, towards the end of the day it cleared up a little bit, and together with a couple of Americans from the hostel I went on a meander to a place where they rescue injured birds and a few other animals from around the national park. It was alright, but I was very disappointed that the toucans weren´t there.
Fortunately, the sun put his hat on the following day, and a bus whisked me to the Iguazu Falls national park. After paying my ticket to go in, I suddenly found myself whistling the Alton Towers theme tune. You see, it really does feel like a theme park there, complete with cheesy miniature railway. Sadly, there was no Nemesis or Oblivion, so instead I made do with the waterfalls (although I guess you could call it Oblivion if someone was to jump over the railings).
There are a good number of trails on the Argentine side, each meandering its way around to different viewpoints of the falls.
I took them all on in turn, being suitably impressed by each (well apart from the one that led to a waterfall without any water). However, I certainly saved the best for last, wandering right upto the edge of the Devil´s Throat, which is certainly the centrepiece of the park. The power of all that water tumbling into such a confined space was quite impressive to say the least.
Having completed all the ´waterfall walks´, I spotted on the map another little trail around the jungle. As I had nothing else to do that day, I went for a meander, which it seems put me in a very select group of visitors to the park. You see, whilst the rest of the park was hideously crowded, in the 2 hours I spent on the Macucu trail, I saw just 6 people. It was very pleasant, and I spied a few monkeys playing in the trees, and narrowly avoided stepping on a tarantula.
Back in Puerto Iguazu, it was my last night in Argentina, and that could mean only 1 thing. Steak. I´d actually had steak the past 2 nights aswell, and the butcher had been steadily increasing the
amound he´d give me, despite me asking for the same amount each time. This final one weighed in at 400 grams, and was the best of the lot. How I´m going to cope without Argentinian steak for the rest of my trip I just don´t know. I´m going to have to somehow, but first I had to further laugh in the face of TLC by going to see the Brazilian side of the falls.
Stewart
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