Iguazu Falls

We have come up to Iguazu to see the falls. We arrived at the bus station (after copious quantities of ham and cheese sandwiches, naturally) early in the morning. I had hardly slept on the journey and so T was dispatched to fact find whilst I rested.

In the same way that Niagara falls is shared between the USA and Canada, Iguazu falls is shared between Brazil and Argentina. T had discovered that the bus would go to the park for 66p each; as had just missed one, we got a taxi instead.

Once in the park, we walked a fairly long way, then got a little train and then walked along a raised walkway for about 15 mins to arrive at a viewing platform at the top of one of the falls. It was quite funky, but both of us felt it was missing something. The problem being that all you could see when you looked down was spray. No sense of scale.

The butterflies were cool though.

We had planned on getting wet in a boat under the falls (a kind of Extreme Sports version of the Maid of the Mist) but time was pushing on and my lack of sleep meant that food was more important. We planned to come back the next day and went back to our hotel.

The next day was cloudy, so we decided to do the Brazilian side and hope that the weather improved. Again we took a taxi, this time over a border, to their Park. There was a cash machine, so I got out some Brazilian pennies and we went in.

On this side, there is no train - just a bus system. We got the bus and started to walk along the path. The views were spectacular:

A part of the falls

The thing that is amazing is the sheer scale. Niagara (our common point of experience) is pretty cool, as you can see the whole thing in one vista. Iguazu is a whole series of sets of falls, the volume of water and the number of different places it is continuously falling actually seems to make it less comprehensible. Some aerial pictures capture it, but the lasting impression is just 'big' (or, 'massive' to coin a term)

Five Musketeers

In the lower tier are two sets of falls, on the left are the three musketeers and on the right are the two musketeers. D'Artagnan misses out completely.

Under water

After getting thoroughly soaked (see below) there was an opportunity to take a picture right beside one of the cascades. Pretty stunning (and amazingly noisy).

It was wet down there

As we had got thoroughly wet already (and as the weather appeared to be getting worse, not better) we decided not to go back to the Argentinian side, but went to Paraguay instead. (a whole blog entry in itself)