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Published: March 16th 2009
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Iguassu Falls Writing this aboard the flight from Buenos Aires to Bariloche, the beginning of our tour to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.
It´s Monday morning here, Monday night in Australia and we have just spent a terrific couple of days exploring Iguassu Falls from both Argentina and Brazil.
We arrived in Puerto Iguazu on Friday afternoon and straight away decided that the hotel we had booked did not live up to its website description, so we booked into another more posher one.
We had a few hours to spare so armed with a tourist map that wasn´t to scale and very little information, we set off on a local bus to have a look at the Brazilian side of this little waterfall. Got our passports stamped out of Argentina and into Brazil and then we were stuck. After much sign language and a phone conversation with someone who thought we were German we realized that it was too late to go to the falls as they would have been closed by the time we got there....so we did what any good Aussie tourist would do....we went back to the hotel and sat by the pool with
a beer...well, Julie had a Gin & Tonic, made to her fathers recipe i.e. all Gin and no Tonic.
We got our act together on Saturday, spending the whole day exploring the Argentine side. A short train ride from the entrance of the National Park led to a network of paths and boardwalks and we explored all of them. Amazing scenes as the Iguazu River falls of a plateau and into a huge canyon, not just one waterfall but dozens of them.
Finding a photograph in everything I see was ridiculously easy and we both spent ages chasing birds and butterflies, guinea pigs and coatis, a bit like an over grown possum.
Pizza and a beer for dinner finished a pretty good day.
Brazil still beckoned so we organized a guide and driver, at great expense and very up-market of us, to take us to the Cataratas, that´s local for a waterfall, and a bird sanctuary. Our guide took us the park entrance, fast tracked the purchase of a ticket and then we were on our own for a few hours to explore. The commentary on the National Park bus tickled our sense of humour when
the statement "don´t touch the animals, they will bite and you might get rabies" was immediately followed by "Have a nice day"!!!
The falls were just as spectacular as before, but there is one section that really takes your breath away as a board walk gets you very close to the immense power and thunderous roar of squillions of litres of water falling off a cliff.
The Bird Park, Parque des Aves, was brilliant. I´ve wanted to see a Toucan since seeing a picture of one on a Fruit Loops packet and now there´s one trying to eat my camera.
Lots of different species, many parrots and several types of Toucan all housed in a sort of open plan zoo. Only chance to get close to some of these birds.
Nearly in Bariloche now, a bit like the Swiss Alps rather than the tropical jungle of the past 2 days...the air hostess has just said it is only 11 degrees (just like home!)
Will write again soon.
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Zane
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Fantastic Photos
I hope Bob didn't take too much of a shine to the bird's hair do!!!