Getting Around at Las Cataratas

HBomb and Anne heading out to see the falls from above.

Anne, Mark and the HBomb have been to a couple famous waterfalls, so comparisons are inevitable. The most famous falls they have seen are Niagara Falls on the border of Canada and New York.  Mark's comment upon rounding the corner and coming into view of the falls was "Where's the rest of it?"  You don't have that issue with Iguazu.  It's right there, and then later, there's more.  No less an authority than Eleanor Roosevelt saw Iguazu and immediately said, "Poor Niagara."

Anne, Mark and HBomb did not visit the island in the middle (it was closed for the season), but took all the other paths on this map.

But it's not just the volume of water or size of the "curtain" of water that is bigger at Iguazu.  It's also a lot easier to see it.  Whereas Niagara Falls is located in the middle of a medium sized town and has a 'boardwalk' from which one can view the falls, Iguazu is located with two national parks (one in Argentina and one in Brazil) and both have built infrastructure to make viewing the falls easy and safe.

Getcha some!

The Brazilian side is the less well developed side, but it has its selling points.  Primarily - it has a walk-out path that takes hearty visitors to the base of La Garganta de Diablo (~Devil's Throat).  This is the portion of the falls which forms a horseshoe shape, leading to a torrent of millions of gallons of water falling on three sides, as well as mist rising up from below.  If you make the walk out there, you have to worry about being washed away with water.

The last known photo of Mark's glasses.

The Brazilian side has one main trail that takes you from the welcome center to the Devil's Throat.  It's probably best to do this side first, because you can also see the Argentine side, and you can choose which of the paths you want to take when you go on the Argentine side the next day (at least that's what we did).

The Argentine side, on the other hand, is a bit more of a hike.  They have two main paths, the upper and the lower, one which takes you above the falls and one which takes you to the base of some of them.  They both wind through the Amazon and are filled with one postcard view after another.

Like CCR said, Gonna Run Through the Jungle

There are boats that take tourists directly under the falls, but HBomber was not up for it during out visit, so our trio did not embark.  The three did manage to get drenched, however, just by getting close to some falls that had some serious splash back.

Did the parka help?  

The upper level hiking trail also took visitors to a train, which then took them to the back side of the Devil's Throat.  From there, visitors can look down almost directly into the most violent portion of the massive falls.

HBomb and Mark point at the guy who dropped his souvenir stuffed llama into the falls while trying to take a picture of to sitting on the guard rail.  

HBomb decided that he was not going to walk during any portion of this trip, but it was probably for the best as the safety rails had some not-so-safety gaps that HBomb might have been able to squeeze through.

Looks kind of steep from that angle.

The park went even further than the safety rails to ensure the well-being of its patrons.  Recognizing that a low center of gravity is one of the best things in life, especially when walking around on wet platforms suspended over rushing water and 300 foot drops, the park instituted the "no children on shoulders" policy.

Self-explanatory.

One thing the park did not seem too concerned about, however, was any safety concern arising from the presence of quati.  What's a quati, you ask?  So did Mark.  The answer is this:

So ugly, it's cute.

Or the one below.  These little guys which Anne and Mark decided were raccoons with anteater faces and prehensile monkey tails, were everywhere.  They seemed tame, but will not hesitate - according to the signs all over the park - to dismember, maim, kill... or worse.  So head's up for that.

...nope, just ugly.

For the Birds

Iguana Falls are located in the Amazon, more or less.  There is a lot to see in the Amazon, however, much of it will kill you if given the chance (Anne's friend reports that his visit to Iguazu Falls was cut short about a month earlier because of an infestation of pumas in the national parks.  Pumas!)

So rather than venture off into the hellscape that is the Amazon jungle, Anne, Mark and HBomb took a little trip into a sanctuary.  It happened to be a bird sanctuary, operated on the Brazil side.

Statler and Waldorf check out the visitors.

Quick side note on "the Brazil side."  Normally, Americans need a visa to visit Brazil (Brazilians need a visa to visit the U.S., so they make the reciprocal requirement of Americans).  However, due to the Olympics and Paralympic Games being held in Rio, the visa requirement was temporarily waived by the Brazilian government, so Americans are free to enter Brazil for tourist purposes for a few weeks.  Mark already took advantage of this on his trip to Rio, and was a little nervous about doing it again.  The policy technically stated "one entry" and he was pushing it for a second one.

After checking in the hotel in Argentina, Anne, Mark and HBomb grabbed a cab and headed to the border, not knowing exactly how the border crossing would go.  It started out rough, as the Argentine authorities were thorough in their examination of our trio's passports, prior travels, when they entered Argentina and how long they had spent there.  Would the Brazil side be equally thorough?

In a word, nopeskidoodles.  Our cab driver actually drove right past all of the passport control booths on the Brazil side of the bridge.  Mark asked him if we needed to stop and he said no.  However, he offered to go back and try to get one of the workers (assuming there were any) to stamp our passports for a souvenir.  Thanks, but no.  We will have to live without our Brazil entry stamps in our passports for now.

Hey, look, a bird!

Back to the birds.  So, the sanctuary houses birds that have been injured or rescued or captured from exotic pet traders.  The entire thing is like a big bird house and the visitors are allowed to walk through and check out the residents.  The more aggressive types are kept separated from the humans.

Almost all of the birds were natives to the Amazon.  We saw toucan Sam, macaws that looked like parrots....

Buuurds!

And Anne met up with the ghost of Phyllis Diller who had apparently come back in bird form (RIP, Phyllis).

Anne's got a way with goofy looking animals.

But all that bird watching can really build up a thirst.  HBomb took care of that with some local flavor.

You put the lime in the coconut and drink it all up....

Cataratas de Iguazu

View from the Argentine side (yeah, there were rainbows)

If you live in Argentina, there are a few things you have to do.  You have to eat steak like 9 times a week.  You have to change lanes in the middle of an intersection for no reason whatsoever.  And you have to visit Las Cataratas de Iguazu.  Las Cataratas are actually a set of hundreds of separate smaller waterfalls (the number depends on how high the river is) that crash from the Upper Iguazu into the Lower Iguazu.

Brazil side looking at the Argentine side.

Las Cataracts are situated on the trip-border region between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina.  Paraguay kind of got left out of the "vista" sweepstakes, so Anne, Mark and HBomb did not visit it, just the other two ("We don't visit countries just to say that we've been there.")

This was pretty loud.

Our trio first encountered the falls on the Brazil side.  Both Argentina and Brazil have national parks that encompass the falls.  The Argentine side is better developed.  Anne marveled at the infrastructure on the Argentine side, which includes a super slow train that runs on sunshine and children's smiles (or some of equally non-polluting fuel) and takes passengers to the various popular views of the falls as well as the pathways around the falls that offer outstanding views from many different angles, some of them pretty close to the water.  The Brazil side has pretty good paths (still better than what you would find at say, Niagara Falls, NY), but its main claim to fame is the view you get of the "Devil's Throat," which is the high water volume show-stopping bend in the "U-shaped" falls. Mark and HBomb are marveling at the Devil's Throat in the photo above.  The photo below shows the same area, but from the view on the walkway above, provided by the Argentine national park system.

Devil's Throat as viewed from above on the catwalk on the Argentine side.

And since we were there, why not walk out into the spray.  The photo below is of Anne venturing off into the crash zone of the falls at Devil's Throat. (Anne is in the black jacket).

Anne ain't scared.

View from the Brazilian side.

HBomb enjoyed his time at the falls and has actually been having a little trouble letting it go.  The day we got back, he put on his swim floaties and went to the door asking to go to the "waters" and the "rains."  While I appreciate his ambition as well as his recognition of potential danger and instinct to ensure safety first that led him to strap on the floaties, I am at the same time terrified by how inadequate his solution is.

More Argentine views.

According to placards placed around the park, the term Iguazu is from the language of the Indigenous  Guarani people and roughly means "Big Water."  It might not be the most eloquent description, but it definitely tells you what it is.  Big Water indeed.

HBomb liked the "waters".