Puerto Iguazú

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Hi everyone,

It's Sunday and we are in Puerto Iguazú. Home of the famous Iguazú waterfalls. Puerto Iguazú is located in the very northeastern tip of Argentina. We are right at the border of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. And a long way from Ushuaia. We also just past the 1/3 mark for our trip, but we won't dwell on that.

We left Buenos Aires on Friday for our 16 hour bus ride. It went quite well and very easy. We even got to see two bad movies, Stepford Wives and Shall We Dance in English. Most foreign films in Argentina and Chile are subtitled rather than dubbed.

We arrived in Puerto Iguazu at 11:30 a.m. yesterday and we are now in a sub-tropical climate. The plant life has completely changed and we are very close to the Tropic of Capricorn, roughly the latitude of southern Florida. Fortunately, the weather isn't terribly hot (upper 70's) and there have been few mosquitoes.

We checked into a not very impressive hostel and walked to the tri-border area. The tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay occurs at the junction of the Paraná and Iguazú rivers. Each side has a pyramidal marker with their national colors. There is also an artesianal market with people selling stuff that we have no way of transporting, so we just browsed. We took a good look at Brazil and Paraguay because we knew that this was the closest we were going to get to them. After 911, the U.S. required that all Brazilians get visas to enter the country. So Brazil decided to do the same to Americans (and apparently also Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, and Japanese). So basically, to enter Brazil we need a US$100 visa and probably 45 days to process. This is a bummer because we would have day tripped into Brazil to view their part of Iguazú falls.

The falls are located on the border between Brazil and Argentina about 20 km above the confluence noted above. The falls are about 3 km across and have 275 individual falls. There didn´t seem to be that many today as the water is low due to it being the dry season, but it was still wonderful. The Argentine side takes a full day to explore (which we did today, May 1) and has 3 main areas or platforms to walk around on. Each area takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours to explore. The Brazil side has 1 main area, which takes about 2 hours, that supposedly gives a wonderful view of the falls. However, we wouldn't know because we are Americans and didn't feel like spending US$200 on a day trip to the same falls that can be seen from Argentina. I should also note that Panamanians are allowed into Brazil with no problem. Too bad Ana's traveling with her American passport.

We had a very nice day today at the falls. It was not very crowded even though it was a holiday Sunday. The falls are much more extensive than Niagara. All the little waterfalls are neat to look at. The main waterfall is called the Garganta del Diablo or Devil's Throat. This part is very similar to being at Niagara.

Another neat thing is the wildlife. The Black Vultures are very beautiful to look at (from a distance, that is. Have you ever seen one close up? Very ugly). Plus, we got to meet some coatíes. Or rather, they came to meet us. They seem to be related to raccoons, have a long snout, decent claws and teeth, and are very persistant when coming after food. They are not afraid of humans at all. While we were eating lunch, a pack of 6 came up to us. We had to shoo them away, and it's not as easy as it sounds.

Tomorrow we are continuing on to see some old missions in the area. Over the next week or two we are going to make our way towards Mendoza, Argentina and then on to Santiago, Chile. We have't decided which way to go, but we'll figure it out. Don't worry.

Hope everything is well.
Ryan & Ana

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Photos

Ryan at Iguazú
This was our first view of the Iguazú falls.

The Tri-Border Area
Paraguay is to the left, Brazil is to the right. The river to the left is Paraná and the closer one is Iguazú. The picture is obviously from Argentina.

Lizard
The lizard is about 9 inches long.

More water
Can you see the moon?

Black Vultures
We saw over 100 vultures in the park. Impressive!