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Published: April 7th 2008
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Day 148: Puerto Iguazu
I woke up rather early this morning and so went for a walk in town to get some breakfast and try and find an internet cafe that was open on Easter Sunday so that I could check in online (a bit optimistic, but at least I got breakfast), before getting a taxi to the domestic airport and boarding a plane for Iguazu a few hours later. The flight was only two hours and with the plane half empty, the journey wasn't too stressful at all. Disembarking at the other end, the sweltering heat was a little beyond 'pleasantly warm' and having found the bus into town, I was looking forward to a nice cool room with aircon where I could curl up with a book and finish my Easter egg.
Thirty minutes later, the bus dropped me off halfway down a red dusty road in one of the suburbs ten minutes walk from the centre of town, where I was soon checking into my hostel. The dorm was a slightly odd arrangement consisting of a timber room with two bunkbeds overlooking a double bed. I've seen a few strange set ups since I left England,
but this one was particularly unsual. Fortunately for me, the bunks were all taken and so I had to go in the double, quietly hoping that noone else was due to arrive and take the other half of it!
I popped into town for a little while in the afternoon, but it was pretty empty in the sweltering heat with most shops closed for siesta. There were however a couple of icecream parlours dotted around, so it wasn't an entirely wasted journey!
Back at base, I got chatting to a few of my dorm mates, from Argentina, Switzerland, Ireland and France. With three of us able to speak spanish better than English (no, I'm not included in that), that was the language of choice for much of the evening as we all went out for a pleasant dinner and beers at a local restaurant.
Day 149: Water, water everywhere.....
After what turned out to be a rather good night's sleep in the double bed of the dorm, I woke up in time to goto breakfast before leaving the hostel at nine to catch a bus to the Iguazu National Park. First problem as always was
finding the bus station, and having found myself in a random, dusty, dirt road suburb where the streets had no names, I had to start asking around, before eventually finding the station hidden just two blocks away from the hostel. Having been used to the grid systems in the majority of other Argentinian cities, the irregular non-geometric pattern of Puerto Iguazu is proving somewhat problematic to navigate.
Ten minutes later and I was on board the rickety local bus (love 'em), crammed full of locals and tourists, and heading in the direction of the National Park. Given the rising temperatures and the strong sun streaming in through the bus' windows, I was quite relieved that it was only a half hour journey, and having reached the park and paid, I was finally on my way to see Iguazu's world famous giant waterfalls. Deciding to start with the most impressive falls (in case of cascade overload), I caught the minitrain through the jungle to the walkway leading to La Garganta del Diablo (the Devil's Throat). From the 'train station', it was a half hour trek across walkways bridging wide expanses of water, before reaching the viewing point of the falls.
The walk was well worth it. On reaching the end, I was confronted with the most amazing giant cascades as gallons of water fell from a giant semicircle into a river a hundred metres or so below. Looking out across the waterfalls you could easily make out the people viewing the falls on the other side of the river in Brazil. After a good twenty minutes admiring the spectacle, and slightly damp from a rather unpleasant mixture of sweat and hazy waterfall mist, I trekked back and completed the other routes around the many other giant waterfalls in the area, covering upper and lower circuits of the park in temperatures of forty-three degrees centigrade.
As well as seeing the incredible waterfalls, having to walk along extensive pathways through the jungle to get to them meant that I had the pleasure of seeing some fantastic wildlife en route. Critters included a toucan and other some other tropical birds, lizards aplenty, hundreds of big and bright butterflies and some cute fluffy animals called coutis that apparently will have your arm off given half an opportunity!
Having managed to spend pretty much the whole day at Iguazu, I was tired and
sunburnt by the time I got back to the bus stop. Again, having arrived at the bus station, my sense of direction failed me, and this time I managed to keep walking until I ran out of road and hit the countryside. If I hadn't bumped into someone to ask directions, I'd probably have kept walking until I reached Paraguay, but fortunately the person I met along the way (and two others subsequently), pointed me in the right(ish) direction, and an hour later, I finally got back to the hostel.
The evening was quite uneventful, I popped down to the supermarket to get some bread, cheese and salad for tea, and spent the rest of the evening chatting to my new dorm mates, a couple of Canadian girls, and the Argentinian guy and swiss girl from the night before, who had bought back a whole load of Amethyst stones from a nearby market town and gave me one of them. Normally I'd be adverse to carrying rocks in my backpack, but I think on this occasion I can make an exception it being my birthstone and all!
Day 150: Soaking up the sun
After yesterday's exertions
I didn't have much on the schedule for today, and having dropped my laundry off at the laundrette and had brunch in town, I spent most of the rest of the day lazing in the shade by the pool (all hostels/hotels have pools here) pretending to learn some spanish, but not really getting much done in the heat. Apart from heading back into town to pick up my clean clothes and some scrummy fresh pasta and veggies to cook up for dinner it was a complete non-event of a day (but very relaxing all the same).
After all my relaxing I was quite knackered by the evening and so tried to get an early night. Although I got off to sleep ok, my new dorm buddies were clearly fans of cold climates and a night time battle ensued, with them reducing the temperature of the air conditioning to truly arctic levels (ok, maybe I'm exaggerating just a little, but it was very cold), and me turning it back up again when I woke up shivering. My bed was directly underneath the air conditioning unit and so I think I got the brunt of the cold air. By the end
of the night I was wearing thermals, two jumpers, had a blanket on the bed, and felt lousy.
Day 151: Back to the big city
After the climate control battles during the night, I wasn't feeling so fabulous this morning, but had to pack up my things and check out by ten. Better too early than too late, I caught the bus at half-ten, arriving at the airport two and a half hours before my flight was due to leave. Having developed a perfectly rational fear of falling asleep at airports, I sat in the cafe drinking coffee until the plane was ready to leave.
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