Foz do Iguaçu

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As with Rio, this blog begins with a flight and its conclusion. The scenery changed fantastically after leaving the beaches and the favelas of Rio. I was above pure green forest. As the plane came to land, I caught a glimpse of a huge field of mist rising between a break in the trees. This was my first indication of the sheer size of the falls.

Over the past few years I have definitely been far more traveller than anything else, other than perhaps a bum. As a consequence it may seem strange that I virtually never watch any travel programs. It's a simple principle of hoping that I will reach every place that I want one day and wanting to retain the surprises of the places that these places may hold. The falls are one of the places where this really works. I am glad that I didn't see them before I went.

After getting off the plane I backpacked up and headed to an English spoken tourist shop and took some advice for my afternoon. The falls are closer to the airport than the town of Foz do Iguazu, which are in opposite directions of the airport. I decided to head to the falls before the town if possible and put my backpack into a locker, keeping just my passport, camera and money with me and jumped on a bus to the Brazilian side of the falls.

Shortly before the falls is a a three way frontier between Brazil (Foz do Iguaçu), Paraguay (Ciudad del Este) and Argentina (Peurto Iguazu). The falls themselves though are split between Brazil and Argentina. and can be visited on both sides for contrasting views. Unfortunately, to see them on both sides, does mean you have to fork out twice.

Anyway, I arrived at the Brazilian side of the falls, paid a small fortune considering it's a natural site and grabbed the bus a few km up from the entrance to the beginning of a relatively brief trail. The glimpses of the falls grow in size and you get closer to this vast spread of falls. Wild coatis pop up out of nowhere in search of an easy meal from a tourist.

Towards the end of the trail you arrive at the bottom of an enormous panorama of waterfalls with numerous rainbows printed on the mist. The scale of the falls is just ridiculous. To put in perspective a little, here are some facts:

* Iguaçu Falls consist of around 275 waterfalls where the river splits up over the huge chasm.
* The falls that make Iguaçu vary from 60 to 82m tall.
* A mean volume of 1756 litres of water make their way down the falls every single second. This is the second largest mean flow of any falls in the world, only behind Niagara.
* Overall, the falls are 2.76km in length, one of the widest in the world.

After spending much time attempting to take photos of the panorama, whilst covering my camera from the mists I left the low panorama view and heading up an elevator to a fantastic view of the top of the falls before heading out to get some food.

Eating was good entertainment. The coatis are cute, but hunt for food in packs. I witness one, then two and then a whole pack swarm the restaurant, pull food of peoples plates and climb into the bins, grabbing what they could. Excellent show to go with a meal!

I left the falls, got my backpack from the airport and heading to the nearest hostel in town. Here I met a German - Freddie, a Scot - Mark, an English guy - Ciaran and and English girl I can't remember the name of now, we chilled out watching the Tooth Fairy on cable - a lousy lousy film.

Next day was lazy, but me and Freddie eventually headed for Peurto Iguazu - the Argentinian border town. This took a bus, two border posts and another bus. On arriving in the town I was surprised to see how different it was, the streets were clay coloured and the whole place had a nice small town feel. For some reason I felt safer, I have no idea why exactly.

We ate a wonderfully cheap lunch (Argentina is significantly less expensive that Brazil) and grabbed a bus to the falls.

Two thirds of the falls are in Argentina and they have developed a huge amount of trails and paths to visit them. The only thing that isn't impressive is that they sell pizza cones (urgh) and the transport to the falls is lame. Lame is definitely the correct word to use. They have a train, the kind of thing you get at a theme park to transport you from the car parks to the entrance, except it's about half the pace. I'm not sure if this train is actually faster than walking, but having to wait for it to arrive first definitely makes it so! On getting to the top end of the park a lengthy board-walk took us to the top of El Diablo, a massive curved waterfall impossible to describe properly. This was the big one.

Nothing could quite top this waterfall, but as we walked around for the next few hours in the jungle were spotted many coatis and birds along with an insane amount of other stunning and huge waterfalls. The Argentinian park is absolutely superb and an enormous amount of fun to explore.

At the end of the day we headed back across the border to the hostel and had dinner in a small corner restaurant. During the evening everyone from the night before played some pool and discussed travel plans.

I decided I would join Ciaran in heading to Paraguay the next day and so went to bed a little drunk with that intention in mind...

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Comments

[mum]

a brief but interesting visit to the falls, love the coatis,, don't recall seeing all those pics of the falls on face book i'll have to go back and take another in case i missed them. definatley did'nt see the bird or coatis in the restuarant. looking forward to the next chapter... xx