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Published: February 19th 2015
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Despite the arduous overnight bus to get there (a collapsed bridge meant we had to catch 4 buses over 20 hours), it was with great excitement and anticipation that we arrived in Iguaçu Falls. Having heard from many people that it was one of their highlights in the world, we were eager to get a glimpse of the enormous falls that straddle the border of Brasil, Argentina and Paraguay. Before we left Australia, we’d researched a lot and having read up on Brasil decided it might be easier to chose a (relatively) small part of it to focus on in the month we allocated. For that reason and because we would have been on the road for a long time, we booked an organised tour with
Tucan Travel. The “
Falls to Rio” tour was 10 days and would take us from Iguaçu, through Curitiba, São Paulo, to the coastline at Paraty onto Rio de Janerio (more details in following blog posts).
After a ‘happy birthday’ phone call to Paul’s mum, we met our new tour group late that night and headed out for dinner and drinks. The rest of the group had been travelling together as part of a longer tour through Peru,
Bolivia and Paraguay so it was fun to swap stories of the some of our highlights and hear about the adventures our fellow travellers had been up to. The group was lead was the wonderful Wilson, a Peruvian mountain climber by trade who had joined Tucan recently as a tour leader and was making his very first trip to Brazil with us. We were joined by the regular combination of Aussies, New Zealanders and Germans.
Our first full day of the tour was visiting
Parque des Aves (park of birds) and viewing falls from the Brazilian side of the river. We’d heard about the bird park from several of Courtney’s clients and other travellers throughout our trip so were looking forward to the wide variety of birds, butterflies and snakes. The park is an expansive forested area that offers rescue and refuge from animals that have been recovered from shops, cruel tourism, poachers, etc. There were hundreds of birds from various parts of the world but the most spectacular for us were the tropical birds including macaws, parrots and toucans. We spent a couple of hours meandering the path through several large enclosures and could get quite close to many of
the species.
Arriving at the
Parque do Iguaçu to walk along the river viewing the falls was very exciting and truly breathtaking. The magnitude of the falls is hard to comprehend and convey in words as there are just so many cascades with such a forceful amount of water. The path takes you on a lovely stroll along the river where you can view the Argentine side, then it continues with ridges and platforms to stand in the mist of the “Devil’s Throat” section on the Brasilian side. We thought we would get wet when we did the boat ride the next day but this was just as saturating with so much spray coming from each level of the waterfall. Luckily we have a waterproof camera and our clothes dried quickly in the heat!
The following day was our first visit to Argentina and was sure to be another spectacular day viewing this natural wonder. We wandered through the park straight to our mid-morning boat ride booking that would take us to the base of the falls on both sides. We brief drive through the jungle with an informative guide on the size, vegetation, climate and animals of the national
park took us to the embarkation point. The 30-seat speedboat took us first to view the Brazilian side from a safe distance for all electronic equipment then took to for the same view of the Argentine side. Plenty of photos were taken but the crew then it was away with all non-waterproof items as we rode to the base of the falls, a double lap on each side. We took videos and photos in an attempt to capture the experience but it just doesn’t to justice to the immense amount of water plummeting towards you and the intensity of the mist created.
After the boat ride, we had a few hours to walk the extensive paths along the Argentine side with so many separate cascades to be seen. We also caught the train up and walked to the edge of the “Devil’s Throat” for a view from the top of the whole falls!
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