Big Water Makes You Very Wet

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Well hello again friends, family and bloggers, this week we have been to Iguazu Falls and Ibera Nature Resereve in the heart of Gaucho country (a Gaucho is a S American cowboy). Hels wanted to do it as 2 sepereate blogs so I´m gonna tell you about Iguazu, and later she´ll publish another blog about the nature reserve.

So last Tuesday we got the 18 bus ride to Puerto Iguazu from Buenos Aries on an Argentinian cama bus, now without taking anything away from Peruvian cama buses, which are extremely comfy, cama in argentina is pure luxury. A wide seat that reclines so your almost horizontal, acres of leg room and an attendant that brings you food and drink by the bucketload, so much food I actually stuffed what I could in my bag when I´d finished my dinner... Waste not want not as the saying goes, saved money on food for the next day too. Needsless to say we slept like babies all night long, woke up feeling relatively fresh when the attendant bought us breakfast and put on an Adam Sandler movie-in english-jackpot. And we have a primera classe bus this afternoon to Puerto Madryn, in which you actually get a bed, but thats a story for another time I guess.

So we arrived around 4pm on Wednesday, walked to the Marcopolo Inn where we were staying, very conveniently situated right accross the road from the bus terminal, and checked in. Another stroke of luck came when as we were checking in, the receptionist asked if we´d like to join Hostelling International. 57 pesos to join, we´d get 20 pesos per night off the price, plus a night free. We joined, and the membership has already paid for itself twice over, with plenty more savings promised as we make our way around the world, this excursion was going very well. As we were getting settled in an intense tropical storm came in over the town. After a while we decided the rain was here to stay an we may as well brave it to try find some dinner from somewhere, ran up the road and into the first place we came to... a very posh looking restaurant. Decided to stay anyway as it was pissing down and went for the set menu to try keep costs as low as possible, cheese n onion quiche to start, the fattest steak I´ve ever seen for mains and a warm apple pie for afters, all for 60 pesos (about a tenner). Probably one of the most expesive meals I´ve had while I´ve been away, but still a hell of a lot cheaper than back home. Scarpered back to the hostel after dinner, had a few beers and watched Argentina Vs Paraguay... Possibly the most boring game of football I´ve ever seen, Argentina winning 1-0 after extra time.

Next came the main event for the trip, Iguazu National Park itself. Got up very early in the morning, torrential rain again, and caught the bus from the hostel to the park entrance. We had booked the ´Gran Aventura' trip around the park with the hostel so after finding the pick up point, we boarded the back of a truck. This truck then sped off into the forest, along a dirt track, in the pissing rain, for about 5 miles. We thought we´d been really clever in the preperation for this and wore our poncho´s-not so, the poncho´s made no difference and by the end of the jouerney we were both completely soaked, ready for the next stage of the journey-a boat ride. Now the usual amount of water that gushes down Iguazu Falls is apparently 1700 cubic metres per second, the day we did it, they told is it was 11700 cubic metres, so you can imagine, this boat ride was pretty rough, pretty wet, and a load of fun. We bounced around over the rapids for about 40 mins checking out the waterfalls from almost underneath them before heading back to (not so) dry land and the trip back to the main entrance. After getting some lunch we had the chance to explore ourselves. First of all we went for the lower trail, about 2 miles which takes you along the bottom of the waterfalls, and then the upper trail, about a mile along the top of the waterfalls. Both with some amazing walkways built so you could get really close in to the spray, although some of these were closed off because of the sheer volume of water cascading down meant that to get to close would no doubt lead to your death.

A top day and another amazing experience to add to the list. After deciding we didn´t really want to come back to Buenos Aires, we did a little research and I discovered the Ibera Nature Reserve was on the way back so we could spend a few days there. This trip did not go so smoothly, Hels can tell you about that in the next blog. Which will probably be published right after this one.

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