We all Falls dorm!

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Iguassu is a different beast entirely to Rio. While technically a city it comes across more as a sleepy little town, Iguassu nevertheless is an important urban centre as it straddles the borders of neighbouring Argentina and Paraguay. It is also within spitting distance of the Iguassu falls which I will get to shortly.

As Rio took both our wallets and steadily drank them dry we decided to economise and get dorms, Niamh staying in the girl’s dorm the other side of the complex from me which means each of us is sharing with six strangers. Being the ladies dorm, Niamh has informed me that each bed has the occupants clothing folded neatly upon clean sheets and the room smells slightly of perfume.

My dorm in the boys section in stark contrast has a generous scattering of mucky hiking boots disgarded throughout the floor and when night falls the steady drone of the tree frogs outside is mimicked by a similar cadence of loud flatulence from those within the dorm.

The first night my roomies were Scots and today they seem to be German. While they are friendly enough neither of us knows enough language to hold a proper conversation. While I can use the opening salutation of Guten tag my only other German phrases are cultivated from a childhood of Lee Marvin movies and playing far too many video games until the present day. I am certain I would not be able to hold a polite or coherent conversation using “Die amis swinehound” “sneill scneill and “acthung actung grenaden”.

The only odd man out in the room I have dubbed the sloth, I have never seen his face as he is continually asleep in the far corner of the room shrouded in darkness, the only sign of life is when he tut tuts at me when I get something out of my locker or the sounds of him eating something unidentifiable, presumably some unfortunate small animal he caught on his midnight walks in the in the wee hours of the morning. Bear in mind when I need to go through my locker after hours I use the maglite my brother gave me so I can keep disturbance of the rooms other occupants to a minimum. Funnily enough the sloth has a double standard in this regard as when he gets up at 4 am he turns on the main dorm light and wakes everyone up. My brother also gave me along with the maglite a distress whistle, which I keep under my pillow, which I shall blow in case there is any chance of me becoming the sloth’s next meal.

This hostel has a lovely heated pool and free wi fi throughout the decking area complete with sun loungers. In the rapidly advancing times of the 21st century, the Germans seem to have added to their internationally renowned trick of throwing their beach towels over the choicest sun loungers by plugging their international socket adaptors into the few plug sockets available throughout the decking area for laptop charging in the early hours of the morning.
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We took a shuttle bus to the Iguassu falls and they are so breathtaking and utterly incredible you stare at them and think you smack bang in the middle of teaser trailer for Avatar 2, the occasional helicopter flyby adds to this effect although sadly there were no 10 foot blue people.

You get dropped atop a small trail that meanders through the jungle before you come across an opening that gives you your first view of the falls, once your satisfied you simply follow the trail and come across ever more incredible vantage points. The Iguassu falls are not simply one large waterfall but a whole series of massive waterfalls spanning a large valley that stretch for nearly 3 kilometres. The largest ones are so massive that the spray of the water hitting the base of the valley forms a vast mist of water visible from miles away. All around the falls are wild jungle and rock formations the same colour of ground red terracotta.

The jungles themselves full of wildlife and it’s an interesting site to see a very happy monkey dangling from a tree looking bewildered at the big throngs of his fellow clothed primate’s all jostling for photo vantage point at what can only be described as his home.

After the falls we went to the Bird Park which led to much cooing and cawing, not from the zoo’s occupants you understand but from Niamh who spent the entire trip giving every bird a pet name and no doubt imagining what sort of baby cloths she could subject them to wearing. The a zoo that lets its visitors into the aviaries with all the various species so we got to hold parrots and Naimh pet a toucan, the same toucan tried to take my hand off mind you! On one of the trails I heard a very uncharacteristic string of sheer expletives come from Miss Power as she was eagerly strutting toward the walk in parrot aviary a massive scaly monitor lizard crosses the path no more then a foot in front of her. Needless to say I am kicking myself I don’t have video evidence to put up on you tube as I got great slagging mileage from the incident for the rest of the day.

We are booked into the hostel for one more night and from there it looks like we are heading for Argentina, of course this plan changes almost daily. Especially with me changing suggest destinations on a whim. I recently suggested Peru but Niamh said there wasn’t much point considering we haven’t booked the Inca trail and what other reason could we have for going there.

Apparently “But honey I’d like to eat a Guinea Pig” isn’t a good enough reason

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Photos

The falls
look close and you can see the argentine border!