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Published: February 16th 2008
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Devils Throat
Water water everywhere! Starting to feel more like the heat of the tropics now as we are at the north tip of Argentina and have finally reached one of the high points of the trip - Iguazu Falls.
In the last episode, we had just arrived in Mercedes and spent the night in a hostel room which had been converted from what would usually function as the bar (most of the bottles were empty so the idea of a Contreu nightcap had to be abandoned). We ended up paying for a package for the national park which included 2 nights accomodation, breakfast, 2 hour walk, 2 hour boat trip and horseriding. We went on a mini bus which took 3 hours along a red dust dirt road. We met Luisa, a Swiss girl who had also bought the same package as us.
On the way we saw loads of different kinds of birds and a weird creature which at first I only saw the tail end of and thought it looked like some kind of weird hippopotamus. Turns out there were heaps of them around where we were staying, named Carpinchos, basically the world´s biggest rat. We arrived at our hostel which
was more like a ranch, and we found out we basically had the place to ourselves with Luisa and the guys who run it. It was so quiet and set in a lovely garden with a little bridge out to the lake. The 3 of us went in search of food and we realised how small the place was, but spread out. It reminded me of that episode of the Simpsons where Bart calls Australia and the little boy goes next door to check which direction the water runs, and takes all night. That felt like the distances between things there as well. We found a cute little food place, we were the only ones there, and waited 30 mins as our food was made from scratch by a boy who looked about 15.
Next challenge was to try and find some food to cook for dinner. We vainly searched for the "town centre" when we realised there wasn´t actually really one, and managed to find a couple of shops with random goods in them, some of which had seen better days. We decided the best option for the next couple of days would be pasta, as there was
Here I am!
This is the one where I got soaked!! little else to choose from and only potatoes, onions, scabby tomatoes, apples and bananas seemed to be fresh produce. Bread was only available after a certain time of the day, presumably coming from Mercedes.
But we still had wine, good, cheap Argentinian wine, and a good chat to our hosts, 2 guys aged 19 who ran the hostel, real country folk who had interesting perspectives on people from Buenos Aires. One of them was the oldest of a family of 9, sending money home to his folks from his job.
In the morning we were up early for our boat ride of the lake, just the 3 of us plus one of the guys, Carlos. It was truely amazing. For 2 hours we didn´t see another boat or human, but shared our time with Caymans (a type of alligator), Carpinchos and birds. We walked on part of a floating island and John got up close to a few of the animals to get some great pic´s (I was too scared!) Truely amazing. In the afternoon we went for a walk to look for monkies but they were all hiding.
The next morning was our scheduled horse ride.
Johnny does Titanic
Johnny in the soaker A bloke rocked up dead on time, a true cowboy. I started getting nervous all of a sudden and by the time I was on the horse I was literally shaking. The cowboy was telling me how to control the horse but I couldn´t understand him, and as a result I couldn´t get him to go where he needed to which made me even more nervous. After less than 10 minutes I had a tantrum and had to get off the horse, went for a nice calm walk instead and saw lots of cool birds, whilst John and Luisa continued with their ride. John came back after 2 hours proclaiming it was "fantastic" and that he was a self appointed cowboy. Both cowboy and Luisa spent the rest of the day complaining of aches and pains. I was silently smug.
At 4 in the afternoon our departure was scheduled for the next big town north, Posadas. We got a cool kind of a 4 wheel drive bus thing and took off down the dusty road which certainly proved to cause a bumpy ride. After 2.5 hours the road changed (thankfully) to tarred road and we arrived in Posadas. We found a really kitsch 1960´s style budget hotel for the night for the 3 of us, complete with chenille bedspreads and an air conditioner that was so load it sounded as though it would take off.
The next afternoon we boarded a bus for 5 hours further north again to Puerto Iguazu, the main town nearest the national park and home to the famed Iguazu Falls. We didn´t arrive until early evening so had to do a bit of ground work for a hostel but eventually found a crummy little one which was ok for the night, again for 3 of us. It had the most miserable excuse for a kitchen, more like a poorly equipped campsite, but we made do anyway. Bedtime was like a school camp, us 2 girls in the bunk bed and John in the single bed, giggling away to German words Luisa was trying to teach us, and to her trying to do an Irish accent.
Luisa said goodbye to us the next day as she was meeting her sister and staying in another hostel, so John and I started early in the day to find a hostel for ourselves. We went to a few but ended up with the best, definitely of the trip so far. It´s an HI Hostel so we got a discount, even though the room was cheap anyway. It´s huge, meant for 4 but we have it all to ourselves, plus private bathroom, aircon. Place has a pool as well. We booked an extra night just for the sake of having found a decent place.
This morning was the day for the falls. On advice from a few people we decided to take the first bus out, to try and beat both the heat and the swarms of tourists. We got the bus at 7.30 and were there by 8, it was already busy. We took the train, packed to the brim (we were squashed in with a group of ageing Japanese people who kept talking about how dangerous the train was because it was open at the sides. The train didn´t go over 7kms an hour mind you) The first stop was "Devils Thoat". Once off the train there was a walk of around 1km over a bridge and at the end is this roaring scene, just amazing, tonnes of litres of water pulsating down the rocks at such a tremendous force, we were covered with water after only a few minutes from the spray, tourists scrambling everywhere.
After that we saw the upper and lower views, every turn is a kodak moment, though trying to navigate around peoples´ heads to get the perfect shot was a little difficult, but not impossible. On the lower view we took photos in front of one waterfall and after only a few minutes standing in front of it, I was totally soaked to the bone! Nice way to cool down though.
We were done with what we wanted to do by midday and back at the hostel by 2. There are loads of different things to do such as boat trips etc but it´s all extra money, one is for only 12 minutes! We´ve decided to go back tomorrow and do a couple of the walks around the park, we get 50% entry for the 2nd day. We were going to do the Brazilian side as well in a couple of days but after seeing what we did today, we´re happy, figure it can´t be any more impressive than that, and we´ll also save a bit of money.
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