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Published: March 5th 2007
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Home to Iguazu
Av & Suzz After a pretty late night in Paraty, it´s a fairly early start to catch the local bus to Sâo Paulo, which takes about 6 hours. Here we have about 2 hours reprieve before the night bus to the town of Iguazu, which takes a whopping 12 hours! The bus isn´t too bad as it has reclining seats and there is a footrest that you pull out from the seat in front to rest your feet and legs on. However it´s still a bit cramped so we don´t get a great deal of sleep. We also stop every 3-4 hours at bizarre little service places along the way so people can use proper toilets and get a bite to eat and then at about 1am the air conditioning system breaks when we´re in the middle of nowhere and we stop for about an hour to try and fix it. Unfortunately the driver can´t do anything so we have to travel for another hour or so to the nearest town with only 2 small windows to ventilate us (and a great excuse for extra mozzies to join us for a snack!).
Eventually we arrive in Iguazu at about 9am, where we´re
picked up by a local guy who runs a private taxi service (amoung other businesses we suspect!). We´re taken to our hotel, which is the best place we´ve stayed so far, and have about half an hour to dump our luggage and get refreshed before we head straight to the Brazilian side of the Iguazu Falls (about 20 minutes drive away).
A few of us opt to take a helicopter flight over the falls where we get our first view of this amazing natural sight. The falls are made up of over 260 individual falls, all crashing into the same river. Unfortunately the flight only lasts about 10 minutes but now it´s time for us all to get up close and personal.
We have to follow a couple of paths through some of the forest before we finally encounter the falls, face to face. There are walkways going right out over some of the falls so you can literally stand amongst them, hearing the water crashing around you and feeling the spray on your face - awesome! The last walkway takes us up to a section of the falls called Garganta del Diablo (the Devil´s Throat) where both
sides of the waterfall meet to create a huge, thundering wall of water. Although the power of the falls is so close at hand, bizarrely it actually feels quite tranquil being surrounded by the power of nature! We also have a close encounter with an unidentified snake on the way out, which is lying just a couple of feet away on the edge of the path - a guide from another group says that it´s extremely poisonous, but we later discover he was just joking!
The highlight of the day now behind us, we stop for a while at a bird park nearby to see a variety of colourful parrots, macaws and other types of bird that are found in South America (you actually go into a couple of the aviaries and have the birds flying right past you).
Now absolutely exhausted, we eventually get back to the hotel where we collapse and are soon asleep.
The next day it´s time to visit the falls from the Argentine side. Unfortunately, Suzz is still feeling exhausted from lack of sleep on the night bus, so opts to stay at the hotel for the day instead. This proves to
be a good choice in one respect as the temperature hits 43 degrees!
The Argentine side of the falls is more organised with a museum, nature trails, guides and a noddy train.
To get to the falls we trek for about 2 hours, take the train for a distance and then trek once more along paths and bridges to get to the edge of the falls and the action!
You quickly realise that the Argentine perspective is very much more beautiful. the viewing platform at Devil´s throat is literally on the edge -lean out and you´re over the edge! A stunning view down the river and of the other falls which create this amazing natural wonder.
We trek back via the other smaller falls to our next adventure - a boat ride up the river and in to the falls - an experience I will never forget. We don lifejackets and head out up the river for an initial glimpse of the smaller falls whilst the skipper shows off the power and agility of the boat pulling some really tight turns soaking everyone in the process as the boat banks left and then right! Sight-seeing over the skipper
ominously dons his wet-suit and we head straight in to the nearest fall. One moment feeling the light spray of the water then a total white-out. We retreat and continue up the river to an even bigger waterfall for another "power shower"! Simply Awesome!
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