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Iguazu Falls & ParaguayDec 17, 2005
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Preparing for a bit of a soaking on boat ride
A small part of the falls
The falls
| The Iguazu Falls are near the borders of three countries, Argentina, Brazil as well as Paraguay. We spent our first two nights camping on the Argentine side of the falls, in a town called Puerto de Iguazu. Our first day viewing the falls was therefore spent on the Argentine side only, which is actually the best side to get up close and personal with them. We firstly got on an open sided jeep and had an 8km drive through the National Park sub-tropical forest which was quite informative. We learnt that bamboo is one of the primary succesional species of plant here which is kind of odd (the forest was actually secondary as loggers had been through it previously). Three lucky people at the front of the vehicle (including Shaun), also got to view one of the small leopard skin-like cats in the area which ran across the road in front of us. The truck drove us to our speed boat which then took us up the Iguazu River to the falls themselves. This was an awesome site to see as 275 different waterfalls crash approximately 80m into the river below (the falls are the widest in the world at 3kms, and also have one of the largest volumes of water). Things got even more exciting when we learnt that we would be driving within about 1m from one of the falls. This turned out to be a very wet experience as the spray from the falls was immense. After the boat trip we basically spent the day wandering over the different catwalks to get views of the falls from all angles, both on top as well as at the bottom. We were lucky as three months before we arrived a big flood had been through and washed away the largest catwalk to the Devil's throat. Luckily it re-opened that very day so we were able to walk out to the part of the falls which is the most impressive. This is a semi-circular cliff edge which (there is no other way to say this..), shit-loads of water flows over. The spray back is huge and if you found yourself floating down this particular part, it would definitely be instant death. This is the most impressive waterfall we both have ever seen. The following day we entered into Brazil to view the falls from the other side of the river. This wasn't as good as the Argentine side, however it gave you the best overall viewpoint as you could see most of the falls. As we were walking along the path on this side, we also got to view some of the local anteaters which are very unusual looking. There was even a mum with 6 little anteaters following her. They are basically little hoovers as they suck up the ants on the footpaths! Following this we decided to go to a bird aviary where they breed all sorts of endangered birds from all over the world. This was actually pretty good and we spent 2.5 hours in there as well as in the butterfly and hummingbird house. The aviaries were basically gigantic cages which you were able to walk through and get up close and personal with the birds. Shaun unlukily got a little too close to a toucan which promptly shat on his head!! The best birds were the toucans and the huge macaws (large parrots with fab colours), however we also got to see cassowary, huge eagles, rheas as well as many parrots from Australia?! The butterfly house was also kind of cool. On Sunday we had a free day so the first part of the day 5 of us decided to jump into a taxi and go to Paraguay for a few hours (we had heard that there were cheap electronics). This turned out to be semi-correct and we did manage to pick up a cheap memory card for the camera. The town was basically like the markets in Singapore or Bangkok, loads of people buying products and loads of different electronic shops, all condensed in one building. After a few hours there, that was enough and it was back to the hostel swimming pool for the afternoon. The boys had their nightly game of football again (the hostel organises a game for those that want to play), so us girls sat round the edge of the pitch drinking and yelling insults to the players - great fun! Tomorrow we head north towards the Pantanel in Brazil....... |
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