After saying goodbye to Beau who was off to Peru, Sarah and I jumped on a 17 hour bus to the north where the borders of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet.
We were going to see the famous Iguazu Falls.
Being a very popular South American destination, only second to Matchu Pitchu, we booked accomodation in advance for only the third time in our entire trip.
Arriving at the town of Puerto Iguazu we took a taxi to the Mega Hostel we had booked. Hostel Inn was enormous with 200 or so beds and a massive swimming pool. This was great as we had been hot in BA and now we were almost back to the tropics! Only downside was that it was full of young men enthusiastically playing volley ball to impress the bikini-clad young ladies sun baking around the sides. Also we had booked this place because it had a guest kitchen which in theory was true but in reality consisted of two overfull bar fridges and a sink and a few battered pots. Not a single kitchen knife or even a wooden spoon. They did have a reasonable dinner buffet and poolside bar so obviously not in their interests for people to make their own food or buy alcohol from town.
When we checked in we were told that we would have a room for the first two nights then would have to switch rooms for the third night. I had noticed that this place had the earliest check out time I had ever seen being 9am and check in wasn't until 2pm so I asked her if the room we would be switching to would be ready for us to just move our luggage into. She ummed and ahhed and then said they had a storage room we could put our stuff in. I said that's not good enough and stood my ground and she finally changed her mind and said we wouldn't have to switch. Score! After all that, the room (matrimonial con baños privado of course) was actually quite nice.
Spent the first day just lounging poolside and discovered that happy hour cocktails were pretty good value. There was a big outdool buffet feast that night which was a weekly event and everyone had a pretty big night poolside. Coincidentally we bumped into Sylvia who had been on the boat with us in the Galapagos islands and was staying at the hostel too! The next day we also again met Tim the aussie from Torres del Paine. This hostel is obviously the one to stay at on the backpacker trail.
Next morning we got up early to get the first bus to the falls at 7.30am. It was here that we discovered something interesting. We had noticed during our week in Buenos Aires that it didn't get dark until quite late. The sun went down about 7.30pm so it was dark by 8pm. This is normal in Summer back home so we didn't think anything of it. Getting up early to catch the bus though we were quite confused to find it was pitch black at 7am! With all those late nights (It was great to see you Beau!) and sleeping in we hadn't discovered that dawn didn't arrive until a little after 7.
The bus trip to the Falls was only short and we were second in line at the ticket office behind a young Argentinian couple who were watching graphic porn on his mobile phone while they waited.
There are a few kilometres of walking tracks aroud the park so we decided on a plan of attack to
try and see as much as possible before the hoards of bus tours arrived. This worked out quite successful as we were alone for our first walk along the top of the falls and there were very few people on the walk to the bottom. We took a short boat trip and walked around the "island" surrounded by the falls. After a refreshment stop to have a drink and watch people being harrassed by a hungry badger critter we took a train ride to the start of the falls and followed a walkway out over the water to where it poured over the largest falls into the main river.
Click photo for panorama.
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