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Published: July 11th 2006
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Hey Everyone,
Sorry it has been a while since I 've emailed (World Cup).
In my last travel blog we had left Buenos Aires, taking a bus 20 hours north to Puerto Iguazu on the border with Brazil.
Off the bus we immediately sensed the change in temperature, lovely and warm after so many freezing nights in Chile.
We got a bus to our hotel which really appeared a bit to luxury for us backpackers - swimming pool out front, pool and ping-pong tables.
We smartly checked the weather for the following day and it suggested it was going to be quite cloudy and better the day after.
You can access the world famous Iguazu Falls from the Brazilian side and the more impressive Argentinian side. The following day we went with the hostel across the border into Brazil (we got the stamp - unfortunately due to lack of time this was the only day spent in Brazil - I will be back in the future).
We were in a group with two welsh girls an Irish doctor and a guy who lives in Spain but sounds like a Londoner.
Together we paid the park entrance fee and
briefly explored a museum with information on the legend, history and animals of the national park. We took a bus to the beginning of the tourist trail where we got our first panoramic glimpse of the falls - amazing.
We followed the path to more miradores until we came to a platform directly over one of the falls which was incredible. From here all you could see was water tumbling down, walls of water.
The following day we caught the bus to the Argentinian side, we managed to get there quite early and for the whole day we avoided the tourist groups, at times it seemed like we had the whole place to ourselves. Just as we arrived the clouds parted and the sun came out - thankyou very much weather.com
We took a little train from the entrance to the first walk which goes right up to several enormous falls, completely different experience to the Brazlian side, absolutely awesome.
Some of the views didnt seem real with pretty birds flying through beautiful rainbows over the falls - was like we were walking through a film.
We took the boat to the less visited but wonderful San Martin Island and
walked to a balcony where the falls seemed even more powerful and stunning. We ate lunch on the beach and made our way to another walk you can do on the main island with birdseye views of some of the falls we had seen earler as well as views over the park, to the brazilian side stretching for miles- for me it was like Costa Rica but bigger.
We finished the day with a train ride with some comedy chinese americans to the parks main attraction - La Garganta del diablo - the devils throat.
After seeing so many spectacular views today I was afraid that it would be a slight anticlimax but I couldn´t have been more wrong.
You know when you´ve seen something truly amazing when you struggle to find words to describe it in your first language. This was without doubt the highlight of travelling so far - a semi circle of water diving of the edge - creating the image of sailing of the edge of the world. The spray from the falls rising up and creating a pure white hole of nothingness only disturbed by a semi circle perfect rainbow - I´ll attach my photos
that probably fail to do justice to what we saw.
The same day we booked a bus to Cordoba - bad planning meant we would have to cross Argentina back to Santiago to pick up stuff we left at a friends house.
In the end we spent a day in Cordoba mainly shopping, another day in Mendoza but due to heavy snowfall at the pass through to Chile we were left with the too expensive option of flying or sending our things home.
So we journeyed on another 20 hour bus to Salta in Northern Argentina where one can notice a distinct change as you approach the Andes and Bolivia. We spent three days in which we celebrated Englands and Argentinas opening game triumphs, visited the beautiful town of Cafayate with really interesting rock formations on the way - slightly disappointed that the useless tour company gave us a spanish speaking driver rather than the english speaking guide we asked for.
We then said goodbye to Argentina and went to San Pedro de Atacama - a small chilean town in the middle of the driest desert in the World with travel buddies Laura and Blanche
Hope everyone is good,
one month tomorrow and I am back in the famous Liss Hampshire, looking forward to seeing everyone.
Nathanxx
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Chaz
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Awesome!!
Looks awesome mate gd to see ure having a great time looking forward to exchanging stories when u get bk!! See you soon