Thursday 22 – Day 54 Iguazu
We had been a little unsure whether to include Iguazu as it was not a cheap flight to get there but as it is the biggest waterfall in the world we decide to put it on our schedule for 2 days.
We departed Buenos Aires from a different airport to the one at which we had arrived. Aeroparque is actually in the city, adjacent to the River Plate, the flight was just under two hours.
We landed at Iguazu – a very small airport – and got a taxi to take us to the hotel at a standard, and, to us, expensive, rate of 700ARS (14GBP) – by far, the most we had payed for a taxi in South America. The drive was about 20km, took about 30 minutes, and was through a forested landscape with frequent “beware of the jaguar” and “tapir crossing” signs.
We got to the hotel about 13:00 which was quite posh by South American standards – with a porte-cochère and bell-boys to unload and handle your luggage. The hotel was in its own grounds and knowing it was not near much we had opted for half board. We checked in, but couldn’t have our room until 15:00, so we went to the pool bar for lunch.
When we got our room it was lovely and spacious with a small balcony we headed by foot to the small town, about 40 minutes walk away – to get some cash, and to visit the The Triple Frontier – where the Iguazú and Paraná rivers converge, and so do the borders of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil.
It was very warm and humid. At first, we walked through rain forest on a good dirt road, passing a number of abandoned hotels, then after about 15 minutes, we joined a tarmac road, and, a few minutes later, reached a junction where we turned into the town.
The town was a little bit scruffy , after withdrawing money at the bank we walked through the centre, and out the other side looking for the Triple Frontier. It was a bit of a hike; it was very hot and humid; the light was beginning to go; and we were anxious about mosquitoes.
We didn’t really know what to expect at The Triple Frontier, and actually, it was a little bit more interesting than we expected. We arrived at a promontory, overlooking the Iguazu river, that curved around us. Opposite us, the Paraná river flowed into it. Over the Iguazu, to our left was Paraguay, and to our right was Brazil – the two separated by the Paraná. Brazil had a similar touristy lookout point opposite us but. Paraguay had nothing.
On our side, there were a a car park; a monument; viewing terraces; fountains and fancy lighting souvenir shops; refreshment shops; and toilets. There was a guy busking – singing and playing guitar and percussion, and people setting up some kind of musical event for after dark. What there wasn’t was any kind of transport back, unless were were going to hitch a lift. We looked at the view, took some photos, and mooched about a bit. Then, when we were just about prepared to hike back,we spotted a taxi dropping someone off, and we grabbed it. There was a little confusion with the driver about where we wanted to go, until the he realised that “Hotel Iguazu Falls”, as we pronounced it, was, in fact, the same place that he knew as “Falle Wazoo”, as he pronounced it.
When we got back to the hotel, it was 19:00 hours, and we weren’t ready for dinner, so we went to the outdoor pool for an hour. It was very quiet and we had it just about to ourselves while it gradually went dark and the lights within and around the pool progressively came on. We floated and swam around in the warm, luminous water, with bats flitting around the tropical sky overhead.
We went for dinner about 21:00. It was a very good buffet, and we had a couple of very good glasses of chardonnay to go with it.
Friday 23 – Day 55 – Iguazu
We woke up to heavy rain, which didn’t encourage us to get up and out very early. We went down for breakfast about 08:00 which was also a large buffet, with lots of sweet things as well as savory.
We booked a taxi to take us to the falls. Nicholas, our driver arrived in a very nice car with leather seats. The rain had abated somewhat, and we headed off for the falls, about 20km away back in the direction of the airport. We arrived at the national parque at about 09:30, and arranged for Nicholas to pick us up at 15:00.
We bought our tickets, for a whopping $600 each (about £12), and entered the park. There were three pre-defined hikes around the falls national park – The Lower Falls, The Upper Falls, and “The Devil’s Throat” – each around well-marked walkways, with steps and boardwalks where necessary. There was also a miniature railway that joined the walks together and provided some relief for the weary and/or elderly – like us. There was also an option to get a boat out and go up close to the falls but we decided this was not for us.
We set out on the walk around the Lower Falls, which started off fairly flat through dense rainforest, but soon started to descend increasingly steeply into the gorge of the river Iguazu. The rumble of the falls got louder, and the air got damper. As we approached, we saw some minor subsidiary falls, and then started to catch glimpses of the main sequence of falls arcing around above us. T he walkways were not too crowded, and we had no difficulty getting good pictures of the falls without fighting for space. This whole circuit, seemingly, took about 90 minutes.
However, at this point, we checked the time and it was already 12:00, we had another two circuits to hike, and we only had another three hours before Nicholas was due to pick us up. We were surprised that two and a half hours since we arrived had gone so quickly!
We decided to take the miniature train up to the highest circuit, which takes you to the famous “Devil’s Throat”. The train was just boarding as we arrived at the little station and we squeezed ourselves into one of the little carriages next to a couple of locals. The journey took about 20 minutes, and by the time we had got out of the station thirty we decided to message Nicholas via WhatsApp to pick us up at 16:00, instead of 15:00. With this sorted out, we set off for “The Devil’s Throat”.
The walkways are raised on stilts over the lakes that feed the falls. They span from islet to islet, getting closer and closer to the throat, each section being noisier and wetter that the previous one. A couple of sections before the throat, is a wider part, with benches, where everyone dons their water proofs and wraps up anything that they don’t want to get wet. Another couple of spans and we were at the throat, which is a sort of giant sink hole in the middle of one of the lakes that feed the falls, where the cliff edge that forms that part of the main falls is cut sharply back into the middle of the lake. The result is a maelstrom of thundering brilliance, which you witness from a walkway that actually projects over the edge in places. Looking over the edge, you can see nothing in the whiteness except some birds soaring the spray.
Although the “Devils Throat” is an assault on the senses, its almost impossible to take photographs of: firstly, because it’s just featureless whiteness, and secondly because the spray saturates everything in seconds. After a few wet deafening minutes, we headed back along the walkways to the station. We boarded a train back down to middle station where we could do the “The Upper Falls”. Unfortunately the train we got did not stop at the middle station so we had to disembark at the lower station and walk back up.
“The Upper Falls” circuit mainly consists of walkways that follow the arc of the main falls a few meters back from the edge so that they are not too prominent from below. The falls span between a sequence of islets, and so do the walkways. At each islet, there was platform that projects over the edge of the falls so that one can see the overall effect of the overall sequence. This was the walk on which we got the best photographs, partly because the sun had now come out, and partly because the viewing angles were better.
By finished the walk at about 15:15, and we thought that it would take us about forty minutes to get back to the entrance of the park where we were meeting Nicholas – we should make it with about ten minutes to spare. We did not know exactly where we were meeting out driver so WhatsApped Nicholas to tell him that we were waiting. We received a very odd message back to say, it would be forty minutes before he got there because he had been expecting to pick us up at 16:00. This confused us and annoyed us at it was already 16:00. We replied to say we were ready now then realised that my phone had connected to a Brazilian network and automatically set the time to Brazilian time that is 1 hour ahead. So in fact it was only15:00 in Argentina.
It was raining pretty heavily when we got to the hotel, and we didn’t fancy going to the pool in the rain, so we spent the rest of the day sitting in the lounge with our laptops doing some planning and booking of our further travels. We also had some before dinner drinks from the bar.
After dinner, we spent some time packing because we had an early flight to catch the next morning.
