Advertisement
Published: June 23rd 2008
Edit Blog Post
Any weekend that starts out with nearly being kicked out of an airport Duty Free Shop is bound to be fun no matter what else happens.
If they don't want you to take pictures of yourself trying on hats, they should post a sign, really.
Anyhow, I spent the last weekend with my friend Sebastian in the semi-tropical rainforest that is the province of Missiones. Missiones is home to Iguazu National Park, the site of the largest waterfalls in the world. We arrived in time for dinner on Friday. The hotel was much nicer than I had imagined. The best part was the dining room (this lodging included both breakfast, which turned out to be a full spread, and dinner, which was a three course meal. To get from the hotel to the dining room, you had to cross an elevated catwalk over the pool area. The dining room itself looked like a tropical hut, but with very elegant furnishings and place settings.
Saturday morning we woke up early to go to the park, where we spent the entire day from open to close. We bought the Green Passport, a multi-excursion pass that pretty much filled our day.
Coati
photo credit: Sebastian Naon We spent the morning hiking on the two main trails- The superior trail (above the falls) and the terribly mis-named Inferior Trail (below the falls). I cannot possibly describe to you the feelings when the trail turns and for the first time you see the falls in front of you. All I can tell you is that as soon as we reached this point, we both started squealing and jumping like twelve year old girls who have just spotted their favorite boy band singer. And he's seen it before! About five years ago, he spent two weeks volunteering as an assistant park ranger. Not that I'm jealous, or anything.
We hiked around the base of the falls. There was a spot where you could walk out almost directly under them, and close enough to get fairly soaked. We took turns going to the end of the ramp and playing there while the other stood back, took photos, and stayed with the bags that needed to stay dry.
Anyhow, after being nearly trampled by a herd of Coati (imagine, if you will, what would happen if a racoon were to mate with an aardvark) in search of people
who didn't read the Don't Feed The Animals signs, we made it to the top of the hill, where sits the Park Sheraton, one of the fanciest hotels in the world. It has a twin across the river on the Brazil side.
We entered the lobby under the guise of acting like we wanted to find out about spa services. The building wasn't much, but the views were incredible. While we were walking around, we came across a room that housekeeping had left the door open to. We walked out on the balcony and could see the falls.
After a lunch that was as pricey as it would have been in the US ($10 for a ham and cheese sandwich and a can of soda), we started the formal part of the excursions. We took a train out to the end of the park, to the top of the largest of the waterfalls, called Garganta del Diablo. From there we crossed back over the river on a catwalk to reach the bank where we boarded a raft that took us back to the main part of the park through a grove with all sorts of different exotic birds.
Then came the best part. We covered ourselves and all of our belongings in plastic and got on board a motorized raft that took us directly under the falls. The boat was really fast, and the driver made all kinds of sharp turns over very heavy current. It was equal to, if not better than any rollercoaster I have ever ridden. Of course, I have no pictures of this part of the journey, as there was no way I was going to risk my camera getting wet.
After they made us get off of the boat, we climbed up a hill where an open-top jeep was waiting for us. It drove us deep into the jungle where we saw all kinds of wildlife, including monkeys. Unfortunately by this time, my camera battery was completely dead.
After a whopping 10 hours of sleep when we returned to the hotel, we woke up Sunday morning to drive to the river delta (the convergence of the Parana and Iguazu Rivers) that separates the three countries of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. We had known in advance that I would not be able to cross into Brazil (US citizens need to purchase a
very expensive visa to enter that country) but were hoping to cross the footbridge into Paraguay. Unfortunately it was not open on Sundays. Instead, we wandered around the little village on the Argentine side. We found a hut where a man was carving ornate faces out of redwood. We talked to him for a while about his work and his history until it was time to leave for the airport.
To Be Continued
Advertisement
Tot: 0.041s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0225s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb