Iguazu Falls (Day 2)
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
The hotel we are staying in at Iguazu is quite nice and the rooms are very large which is a relief (especially since Kellie bought another small cabin suitcase in BsAs and we really need the room now). Started again with breakfast and jumped onto the bus to cross the border back into Argentina. It was a public holiday in Argentina so the traffic was incredible. Our GAP leader Julio, had some ringing around and internet bookings to organise so we were entrusted to our local guide, Antonio, for the day.
On arrival at the border, we noted a little anxiously all of the cars, motorbikes as well as buses and coaches.... lots of buses and coaches. Antonio grabbed all of our passports to take to the customs booth and we waited...and waited...and waited. A couple of nervous jokes about how much an Australian passport fetches on the blackmarket and he jumped back in the bus -- after about a 2 hour wait... Sheesh. The temperature is also climbing and only after we got back to the hotel did we find out it got to 40C which was lots of fun along with the humidity. =)
The Argentine side of Iguazu is amazing and you are able to get really close to one of the falls called the Devil´s Throat (Garganta del Diablo) - a U-shaped, loud, grumbling, roaring, rolling area of the falls. Very impressive and humbling. To get there we had to take a light-gauge electric passenger tram which helped me attain an understanding of how sardines may feel. After that there is a 15 minute walk through the river which is like the mangrove areas back home. There are butterflies everywhere. They alight on your hats, bags, backs, hands, cameras... pretty much anything. After a while you kinda ignore them and they just don´t have the same effect.... then you see one with a completely different colour or pattern and it´s all very cool again. Speaking of plague proportions... there are so many people here you really hope that the platform holds. Almost impossible to get a photo without other people in it too.
We walked back and grabbed some lunch. There were two options a restaurant offering a buffet or a cafe with simple fare. Opting for the latter we were still impressed with our beef sandwiches which were awesome. Even the dodgy cafe in the middle of a national park has some of the best tasting steak.
After satisfying our hunger, we went along the Upper Trail (Paseo Superior) which gave us a great view of both the Argentine and the Brazilian sides of the falls. The walk was only about an hour but by now we were both feeling the heat and humidity as well as getting sore feet. We´d already walked so far.
After a very short rest and a quick chat in Spanish with another refugee from the heat (well it was a *very* quick chat) we headed off for the Lower Trail (Paseo Inferior) which we thought would be a lot cooler. It was cooler but still humid so we suffered all the same. We continued but rationalised that we didn´t need to do the whole trail, just enough to get to one of the falls where you get the spray misting over the viewing area. It would be lovely. Only problem was that we had to content with the crowds of ignorant sufferable people going slow, getting in the way, ignoring the signs and feeding the animals and generally being a nuisance. I couldn´t work in hospitality... I´d end up stabbing someone with a dinner plate. Whoops getting a bit sidetracked. I amused a group of Argentines after they asked me to take their photo by jumping over the barrier separating the walkway into two halves so that I could have enough room between us for the photo to work. When we arrived at the falls we were after, I gave up. There were way too many people here. Took some photos and resigned to walking back.
It was a bit of a relief to get back to the hotel. We stopped very quickly at the biggest souvenir store I have ever seen to go to the money exchange house which was a part of it. This place was about as big as a Woolworths store.
Posted byAndrew at 12:02 am
Labels: travel