Waking up with a cracking post-birthday hangover and only about 4 hours sleep was not the best start to the day; but it could only get better as we made our way across the whole of Brazil to Foz do Iguazu to see the Iguazu Falls. This however was no easy ride; 10am bus for 6 hours to Sao Paulo... followed by a 16 hour overnight bus journey to Iguazu...
The first point of call once the bags were dumped into the hostel was to re-fuel in the only place that was open; which just so happened to be MacDonald's... Result!! After this we headed up to the Brazilian side of the falls; approx. 15km from the main town.
Right; just to get this out of the way, the boring Geography part:
The Iguazu Falls are one of the largest in the world and cover 2.5km in width. They have an average flow of 1,746 m3/s; just behind Niagara. The Falls are made up of up to 300 individual falls with the largest part taking around 50% of the total water flow and is called 'Garganta do Diabo' (Devil's Throat). This section of the Falls is Epic!! It's 82 metres deep and only 150 metres wide and the roar of the water can be heard up to 2km away with the vapour cloud rising up to 100 metres. The falls are split between 3 countries (Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay) with Argentina holding the majority.
Upon reaching the Brazil side of the Falls the first impression was a bit bewildering... having not really researched the area, I didn't really know what to expect. The first thought was; yeah, this is pretty cool... shortly followed by; well, I thought it might have been bigger and a bit louder. Oh, how naive...
As we started walking the 2km path along the river it was clear that the best was still to come and the ferocious roar of cascading water was just beginning to shake the walkway. Another 20 minutes later, as we turned a corner the full view of the Falls were exposed and the only thing I can really remember is standing with my mouth gaped open and just being mesmerised by the shear sight of what was ahead. There is a long walkway that stretches out into the bottom of the Devil's Throat and when standing at the end all you can feel is the vapour refreshing you from the heat!!
The next day we'd booked a trip to go to the Argentinean side for the day. Even though it is just a day trip we still had to go through the whole immigration process which took ages and was cutting into some good Waterfall time!! The Argentinean side of the falls sits with the Iguazu National Park and is consists of a lot more trials and walkways around the different falls that make up the 2.5km stretch. The most incredible is the walkaway that looks over the top of Devil's Throat... At the end you are faced with the most mesmerising sight imaginable; you can feel to full force of the water cascading over the edge and so close that the noise is overbearing and the vapour coming off of the 82 metre drop gets you completely soaked through. Having stood in awe for about 10 minutes I walked around for a bit, took photos etc.. and came back about 25 minutes later to find Kate standing in exactly the same place, completely zoned out from anything around.
The highlight of the day though was the boat ride into the falls. Due to the rapids and volume within Devil's Throat the boats can not get remotely close to this; however it does get close enough to get some amazing photos from below. Firstly, upon boarding everyone was given a life jacket, a dry bag and clear instructions that when told to put the camera in the dry bag, the camera goes in the dry bag... This was followed by a loud shouted question of; 'who wants to drive into the falls?', lots of screaming and shouting from the boat and then being propelled into the back of the seat as the boat screamed underneath one of the slightly smaller falls turned around a few times, then drove back out. Again, with my naive nature I wasn't fully prepared for the soaking that we were to receive... The first thing felt was the force of the water smashing into my face; trying to open my eyes and feeling them forced closed. The second feeling was as if I'd been thrown into a swimming pool. Within a second I was soaked through to the skin. The guy on the boat then asked if we wanted to go back into the falls; of course we did!! These went on another two times and after getting off of the boat I was grateful that we'd chose to do the boat ride just before leaving and didn't have to walk around for too long soaked through.
The trip to the Falls is definitely one of the best things that I've ever done in my life!! The only downside was the that being in the middle of the rainforest, the weather was almost unbearable. Everyday was averaging 32°C with a humidity of around 92%. Even at night the temperature didn't drop below 26°C which definitely made the trekking throughout the National Park hard work. But also definitely worth it!!
The last day in Iguazu was a pretty chilled out one. With the high temperatures still hitting down we decided to have a blow out for a few hours and went to a small waterpark to act like kids again running to the flumes and then kicking back in the blistering heat; as we hadn't sunbathed for about 3 days!!
The evening was spent completing the last part of the South America journey with a nice 18 hour bus journey to Buenos Aires in Argentina!! Kate was pretty tired and fell asleep quite early into the trip; however I decided to make the most of the evening and after a nice dinner, 4 cans of Quilmes and 4 glasses of Cava, I was out for the count...
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