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Published: January 15th 2008
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Our final stop before heading back home - Iquazu Falls are located at the northern tip of Argentina and borders Brazil and Uruguay.
We have finally posted our pictures from the last leg of our trip. It was the perfect place to hit last. We stayed at the Sheraton Hotel, the only hotel that is in the national park. We had a birdseye view of the falls and direct on site access to all the walking trails. We headed out the afternoon we arrived and took a hike through one of the many walkways. We saw some cool looking blue and yellow birds and lizards. We even spotted a guinea pig. Whats nice about this place is that even though there are a lot of tourists, it doesn't seem to be overrun by them as there are so many different areas to walk. You are totally enclosed in rain forest. Unlike Niagara Falls, which is so commercialized, this is raw nature at its finest. The falls are spectacular.
On New Years eve, around 6:00 pm we decided we would like to take a journey to go into the town of Iquazu. It turned out to be quite the ride.
Coming in for a Landing
A view from our plane just before we landed you can see the falls in the middle of the junglle. Since we weren't taking part of the New Years Eve party at the hotel, we thought we would go into town and pick up our own wine, beer and snacks. We were told there was a bus that travelled from the end of the hotel driveway right into the town (about 6 km away). So away we went. We picked up the bus (spotted a Toucan while waiting) and headed into town. As we rode into town we found out that the last bus coming back to hotel was at 7:15. We barely had enough time to find a grocery store and get back on the bus to return to the hotel. When we got off at the bus terminal in the centre of this town, we head right to the grocery store where they closed the door on us. They were closing at it was 6:50 pm. We recalled seeing one as we came into the beginning of town, so we raced down a couple of blocks to have the same thing happen to us again. They were letting people out not in. Dani begged the guy at the door in spanish to no avail. He too pointed to
another location down the street and around the corner. We couldn't believe it! It was 7:05 and had 10 min left before the last bus came through town. We ran as fast as we could and found it to be open. Darlene stood in line while Gary & Dani plucked beer and wine from the shelves in a record two or three minutes. For a very small sum (I think about 23 or 26 peso's, about $8.00, we bought 3 long neck beers, two bottles of wine, and some variety of crackers). It was going to be a cheap night. While we were checking out, the cashier and a fellow who was bagging was telling us something in spanish (which we still have no idea) that we could not leave the store with the liquor. After going back and forth and accomplishing nothing, Dani used sign language to double bag the bottles and we would each carry one. That seemed to suffice so off we ran. We only had a few minutes to run two blocks. We made it to the bus stop in time and were the last ones dropped off on the route. We are laughing about the
episode now, but at the time, it was total stress!
We had a great night hanging in the bar lounge, playing cards and enjoying our beer and wine that the hotel had no problem opening for us. Happy New Year!
The following day we picked up a ride on the park train and then decided (Dani's idea) to go on a 3 hour hike on one of the jungle paths. Dani was hoping to see some monkeys. What we didn't see was any monkeys, or any people. After 2 hours of walking we finally passed a couple. We'd gone to far to turn back. As we finally came to one of the falls listed on our map, there was a sign that we could get down to the bottom of them, only another 400 feet further. It was very rough, all down hill, bare tree roots, and rocks. Dani held up with her flip flops and we all made it to the bottom. It felt like the Inca Trail in Peru all over again. No sweat! We got our exercise in that day and headed back on the secluded trail to end our day by the pool. Our
only day of laying in the sun. It was terrific and depressing as our day was coming to an end and we would be back on a plane tomorrow morning. We enjoyed our evening of the second story outdoor lounge watching the sunset.
Iquazu Falls are simply beautiful.
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