For those of you mostly skimming and looking for pictures, check out the albums I’ve uploaded so far to Google Plus. It’s a slow process with wifi connections on my very old, slightly fussy laptop, but most of them are up, and slowly but surely I’ll get the rest up too!
I can’t believe I just spent the last two days at a place that has been named one of seven wonders of the world. I’ve been looking at pictures of and reading about Iguazu ever since Alison and I first started flirting with the idea of traveling together almost 3 months ago, and it’s almost unreal that I’m now here, and that my time traveling with Alison and her sister is officially over tomorrow afternoon.
Iguazu is incredible — the falls literally take your breath away, the cheesiest cliche ever, but totally true. Their enormity, the power of the water, and the sheer number of waterfalls in one area is truly astonishing. Words can’t really do them justice, nor can my pictures, but you just have to believe me, and add Puerto Iguazu to your list of places to visit one day.
With the whole bed bug discovery disaster during our last night in Buenos Aires, we were a bit hesitant to see how the last minute hostel that we booked 10 hours prior to our arrival would work out. Despite our taxi driver getting turned around several times and mostly lost before finding the place (exactly like every single TripAdvisor review told us would happen, yet totally unavoidable since she SWORE up and down she knew exactly where it was), we made it out to our hotel. The property is really beautiful, and worked out perfectly. Our original plan was to stay here one night and then find another place for the next two nights closer to the downtown area, but we decided we loved it and stayed the whole time, and it has worked out great!
The property is owned by Lorena and her partner Andrea, and is a few bungalows with different bed set ups, and then a main kitchen/living room area in a separate bungalow. Lorena is so, so sweet — she is genuinely concerned and interested in everything, and though she is a total chatty Cathy, she has really wonderful stories and great things to explain to us. Plus she serves a mean breakfast, with great huevos!
On our first day, we arrived here and put our stuff down, then took the bus into the downtown area for some late lunch of delicious empanadas and then wandered through the touristy gift shops. Then we met Lorena, went the grocery store so we could make ourselves lunch for our days in the park, then hitched a ride back to the hotel with her. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing, catching up on emails/Facebook, and ordered in pizza. A perfect night in after many nights of travel!
Yesterday was our first day in the park, and despite setting an early alarm, we managed to dismiss it and sleep til 9:30, so by the time we had breakfast, made sandwiches for lunch and got on the bus to the park, it was past noon. Oops!
We spent the day wandering the “lower circuit” trail, which gives a view of the falls from below, but from a distance. The park itself is much more developed than the three of us realized it would be. The paths are all metal walkways built over the ground/waterfalls/rivers, and most everything in the park is handicap accessible, which is very impressive. We anticipated more intense hiking, but we walked slowly and took the views in, although our feet were definitely achy by the end of the day. Since the lower circuit took less time than anticipated, we walked to the “devils throat,” or Garganta del Diablo, and then did the upper circuit, which gives you views of the falls from directly above/on top of them.
Having just been to Niagara falls a few months ago, I had that beauty to compare these falls to, and Iguazu definitely blows Niagara out of the water (pun intended?). It’s pretty difficult to put into words the enormity of the falls, but the Garganta section is farther back and removed, and then at least another dozen or so falls line up along a gigantic cliff, shooting hundreds of thousands of gallons of water out into the basin. Every time you see them, you just can’t stop staring — they’re so enormous, and so beautiful, it’s almost ridiculous.
Today we did a separate, less popular, hike to a much smaller waterfall more removed from the main falls. Though we expected something a bit more strenuous, the walk was really beautiful and we saw tons of wildlife, including birds, butterflies, and adorable monkeys. Speaking of wildlife, there are hundreds of coati that live in the park — an animal that looks like a cross between an anteater and a raccoon. They appear fuzzy and adorable but will literally walk right up to humans and chase them in an attempt to get food. We couldn’t eat lunch in certain areas of the park because there were so many of them begging for whatever food they could get. So sad to see how they’ve evolved to be completely unafraid of humans, despite the dozens of signs warning not to feed them.
After our walk, we went back to the main falls to book a boat tour that brings you right up to the base of the various falls. We knew we’d be getting soaked (as we were told to wear ponchos and place our backpacks in gigantic waterproof bags), but didn’t quite realize how close to the falls the boat would actually take us.
I was hesitant to fork over $150 pesos ($35 bucks is a lot for a 12 minute boat ride, and we already had to pay an $130 peso entrance fee to the park yesterday, plus another $65 pesos for entry today) for the boat ride, but decided it was a once in a lifetime experience and being a little wet, and very cold, for an hour or so wouldn’t be the end of the world.
The best part of the boat ride might have been when Alison turned around, absolutely terrified, and screamed “terminado” to the boat driver who, after grinning, drove the boat right back up to another waterfall, which sufficiently soaked us for the second time.
The most incredible thing about the boat ride was how powerful the falls felt from their base — the amount of water crashing 200 feet down the side of a cliff is hard to understand and capture when you’re taking photos from so far away all day, so being sprayed and soaked completely from the base of so many waterfalls was a pretty humbling experience.
After our boat ride adrenaline rush, we spent a few minutes relaxing in a view of the falls, and then left the park by bus to go to the downtown area of Puerto Iguazu for dinner. Now we’re back relaxing at the hostel, snuggled in our PJs. Originally when we booked this leg of the trip, we’d heard it was slightly impossible and very expensive to obtain a visa to get to the Brazilian side of the falls (Iguazu is like Niagara falls — you can view them from both Brazil and Argentina, like you can view Niagara from NY and Canada) but when we got up here, our taxi driver told us that Brazil had gotten more relaxed about letting people in without stamping their passports/asking for a visa. Of course this got our hopes up, but every person we asked had a different thought/opinion/confusion about whether we could get there, and we weren’t interested in paying the $160 reciprocity fee to Brazil, plus a second park entrance fee. So instead, we just decided to skip it and not bother wasting our time (and money on a cab or bus) getting to the border only to discover they wouldn’t let us in.
It’s almost impossible to believe that my flight back to Buenos Aires is tomorrow afternoon — I have 16 hours in BA before I fly back to Santiago for 24 hours of relaxing, then from there I fly to Peru and start the next leg of my trip! I’m sad to think that my time traveling with Carolyn and Alison is over — it has been so great having friends who speak the language and who can help me adjust to a brand new hemisphere, since both of them have traveled rather extensively in South America. At the same time, I’m also excited to be traveling on my own — I’ll be on my own timetable, not relying on other people, doing exactly what I want, when I want, and really enjoying some time with myself. I’m still a tad nervous (mostly about walking around by myself and having to take taxis on my own) to travel without friends, but I know that it will all work out totally fine, and that even if something disastrous does end up happening, it won’t be the end of the world. Plus, I really just cannot wait to see Machu Picchu!