Impressive Iguazu

Iguazu Falls is one of those places in the world that you can never accurately describe to people.  Even photos don't fully do it justice.  Basically, you have to see it for yourself.

We started off on the Brazilian side, where the falls are about 20kms out of the town of Foz do Iguacu.   After a very touristy double decker bus ride and a short walk down a tree-lined path, we got our first glimpse of the falls.  Niether of us wanted to say so, but we were rather underwhelmed and felt guilty for not being more impressed.  But to be fair, there are over 200 separate falls of varying sizes that make up Iguazu Falls, and it just so happened we saw a bunch of the smaller ones first.  They were still very pretty, but the best part came about 10mins later.

Our first glimpse of the falls

The Devil's Throat is the main attraction of the entire falls (for good reason) and you get very different views of it from the Brazilian and Argentinian sides.  Some prefer one over the other, but if you go that far you'd be stupid not to go to both sides.  From the Brazilian side you walk along a walkway that's only about 10m from another impressive fall and inevitably, you get wet from the spray.  Not surprising considering the sheer volume and power of water crashing down only metres away.  Despite not being the 'star' of the show, this fall was pretty spectacular and the rainbows in the spray all around were beautiful.  

At the end of the walkway you can see the Devil's Throat about 50m away, and you get an idea of the amount of water surging over by the clouds of spray filling the valley below.  Now that's what we were expecting.  After 2 or 3 hours we'd seen all the falls on the Brazilian side so we left, looking forward to what the Argentinian side had to offer.

The Devil's Throat as seen from the Brazilian side

Puerto Iguazu is the town on the Argentinian side from which the falls are about 15km.  However, the National Park is so much bigger and has a lot more to see than the Brazilian side, that most people spend 2 days checking everything out.  The fact that you get half price entry on the second day makes this more attractive.  It would be possible to see everything in one day, but it would be a very long, full-on day with no time to chill out or leisurely stroll around.

Our first stop on day one was to head straight to the Devil's Throat and see how different the view was.  It was about 1km on walkways over the water and we saw some huge catfish and even a turtle sunning itself on a rock.  

As we approached the falls we could hear the roar and see the top of it where it all rushes over the edge.  The viewing platform gives an amazing close-up view from the top, so you can see the change of calmly flowing water in the river to the raging cascading falls that is the Devil's Throat.  The water falls from a height of 82m, so the bottom was obscured by a wall of spray. 

The Devil's Throat from the Argentinian side

Everyone was obviously getting photos of themselves with the falls in the background, and Kurt offered to play photographer for one couple just so he could travel back in time and use an old-school wind-on film camera again.  Who knew people still used them?  For the rest of day one and all of day two we walked along the myriad of trails giving different views of all the different falls, and took a boat across to a small island where we spotted armadillos and some big ugly birds.  We also walked to a tiny little isolated waterfall where we braved the cold water and stood under the waterfall.  While it was only small it still hammered down on us and was freezing.  

It was a tiring but rewarding few days, and we saw some of the world's most spectacular waterfalls.  Hopefully some of these photos give you an idea of the beauty of Iguazu.