The Great Waters

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7th July - from the Brazilian side

Arrived in Foz do Iguacu after another night bus and had a couple of hours to rest before being taken to see the infamous falls. I should point out that we were now in Brazil - well, that’s where we were staying - we seemed to be going in and out of Brazil and Argentina endless times.

Ranked as the world’s second largest falls, Iguazu is located on the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Parguay. The Iguazu River forms a border between Argentina and Brazil with the best place to see the falls being from the Brazilian side looking towards Argentina.

Hundreds of years ago the area belonged to the Guarani people, before the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese. In the Guarani language, Iguacu means ‘great waters’, which is a very apt name.

Legend has it that when a jealous god discovered that a young warrior had fallen in love with an Indian from a neighbouring tribe and had run away with her, he got a little bit angry. In his rage, he parted the earth and created the gorges of the Iguacu. The canoe that the couple were in was swept over the waterfall and vanished. The warrior was turned into a palm tree and the girl became a rock at the foot of the falls and they would never be able to reach each other again.

Today we were seeing the falls from the Brazilian side.

As we walked down to our first view point of the falls, we were accosted by lots of coatis. They are raccoon like mammals that are everywhere in the National Park. They are quite cute and even enjoy posing for photos - one of them decided to muscle in on the action when we were having a group photo. I couldn’t get over how cheeky they were - they were so used to being given food that one was trying to get into Sandra’s rucksack. She wasn’t having any of it and hit the poor little thing. It was quite amusing.

The falls were spectacular and continued to get more impressive the further we walked. It was incredible and Niagara Falls paled into insignificance which is saying something as when I saw Niagara I was blown away by it. There are approximately 270 different falls (depending on how much rain there has been) and it goes on for miles (well around 20km). The roar of the water was incredible and it’s very hard to even try to describe how impressive they were. My photos don’t do it justice either, but hopefully you’ll get some feel for how amazing it was.

8th July - from the Argentinean side

We saw the falls from the Argentinean side today. So we crossed the border yet again! Firstly we went on a little train which went through part of the jungle but there wasn’t much to see - we spent most of the time taking stupid photos.

We then got into a little raft to see some ecological parts of the National Park. We did see a caiman and a few interesting flowers but it wasn’t that exciting. It got more exciting when we got into a 4WD truck to take us through another section of the jungle. Note my sarcasm. It was okay but not really proper jungle and there were far too many tourists around to feel like you were anywhere remotely wild.

We did see a wild toucan though, just sitting in a tree staring at us while hundreds of tourists raced over with their cameras out to take photos. I was one of them. It was great to see one in the wild after having seen a few in the zoo in Ecuador.

The wettest part of the day was going on the boats under the falls. We bought our gorgeous plastic ponchos - it had to be done - and made our way to the boats. We got absolutely drenched and the water was pretty cold as well. It was fun but I think my highlight of the falls was definitely seeing it from the Brazilian side. I just couldn’t get over the sheer size of the falls and the amount of water that must be charging through there every second. It was spectacular.

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