Iguazu Falls, Argentina and Brazil - 2nd - 3rd Dec

After a very long bus ride ( 18 hours) and our last, thank goodness!! We arrived in Puerto Iguazu – home of one of the world’s wonders – The Iguazu Falls.

Barely checked into our hostel we worked out the bus system and in no time found ourselves at the entrance to the Iguazu National Park. We heard seeing the falls from the Argentine side were incredible if not better than from any other country… and we were not disappointed for a second.

The way the park has created various platforms and walkways at various levels of the falls is truly amazing. Firstly it must have been an incredibly hard task as at some point you are literally walking over parts of the waterfall and secondly, the engineer’s ability to have ensured that us tourists get the most incredible views and experiences of the falls is just mind blowing!

I think pictures speak far louder than words… some of the incredible sights we saw:

The sheer volume and power of water pumping over the falls is incredible! The spray and mist formed once the water hits the rocks / bottom is also amazing – at certain parts of the walkways you literally feel like you’ve just been rained on. The sound is also quite something, as are the hundreds of rainbows we saw.

I got soaked standing here!

The Iguazu Falls are so breath-taking because of the width that they stretch. Of course they are high, which also makes them impressive but I’m talking about the width of land that the water falls over. You look at this view and for miles just see waterfalls streaming over – something like 2 and a half kilometres wide.

After doing 2 of the paths and getting some amazing pictures, we then went on a boat tour of the Falls. You get into a 20 man rubber dinghy , get given a water tight bag to put your belongings into and when the main tour guy wishes you ‘ have a happy shower’ he is not lying! The rubber dinghy gives you an amazing view of the falls, obviously from the bottom, but at certain points of the tour takes the boat literally metres from where the water is falling – you get absolutely soaked through! It was so, so much fun! Kind of like in an amusement park, but when you are at the bottom of the falls and you look up and see how high the water is streaming from, it makes you realise this is definitely no joke! Thank goodness for it being such a beautiful, hot day – definitely helped the clothes dry faster!

Showing how close the boats get to the falls!

After a quick sandwich we headed to the last lookout point, reachable by an adorable little choo-choo train (honestly out of a kid’s movie). We walked along platforms above the river for about 1km and then got to The Devils Throat – an incredible part of the falls, where we got to stand over a section where a couple waterfalls converge and create this bubbling, steaming cauldron effect! Which meant getting a little wet. You’d get these showers of mist every couple of minutes. But wow, the sound and the power of Devils Throat is mesmerizing!

The cauldron of Devils Throat

After a good day’s walking and a long day in the heat, we were quite happy to get home to our hostel. We had a relatively early dinner for Argentine standards and to break the continuous steak fest we’d been having in BA, we decided for some Wok fried veg and chicken instead! Great meal, a good change.

Next morning we were up early, getting packed up and ready to leave Argentina and head to Brazil…well the Brazilian side of the Iguazu Falls, an hour’s drive from Puerto Iguazu. We arrived straight at the National Park with all our belongings and thankfully found lockers there to store all for us, whilst we enjoyed this other view of the Falls.

No doubt in our mind that the Argentine side was way better, we still appreciated the Brazil side – as it’s more a view of the falls in their entirety from afar, as opposed to being ‘in’ amongst the falls. The Brazilian side had a 2km path that you followed getting some great views, as well as a walkway over into part of the river ( a pier type construction) where you got to experience some serious spray! Generally along the 2km walk you could feel light mist spray all around you, but on this pier, you got pretty damn wet! Was quite fun and much appreciated considering what a boiling hot day it was!

We grabbed a sandwich and enjoyed it outside overlooking a view of waterfalls, mist spraying up and Devils Throat in the distance. Not a bad place to enjoy lunch I’d say! It hadn’t taken too long to see all we could enjoy. We decided we may as well get to the local airport a little early considering and contemplate the fact that our South American journey was coming to an end.

Arriving at the Foz de Iguaçu airport in Brazil made us realise that after speaking Spanish for 3 months, the local language of Portuguese was going to be difficult to adapt to! We would begin our trek home from here back to London via Sao Paulo and Barcelona – about a 24 hour journey in total!