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So glad to arrive in the sub-tropics after another long and boring bus trip it was great to get off the bus and feel the sticky humidity of Puerto Iguazu, after the chilly tempretaures of Uruguay and Beunos Aires.
The town was suprisingly dull considering there is a major tourist destination a short bus ride down the road. But we did not come to see the town. Infact as our hostel (which was an old casino) was about 5kms out of town and had a huge buffet every night the only time we went into town was to sort out visas for Brazil (hurray!!!) and get the bus outta there.
We had an amazing day exploring the falls on the Argentinian side of the border. Iguãzu is actually a series of cataracts spread out over a few kms and we ended up spending an entire day exploring. It was amazing. We arrived early in the morning before most of the bus loads of tourists (though they weren´t far behind) and set off immediately for the middle trail which takes you to lots of the minor falls.
As we were crossing a track a troupe of capuchin monkeys came swinging through the tree and we stopped for a few minutes to watch them. All of them were nimbly jumping from tree to tree and negotiating the gap over the path, except one little sleepy one who somehow misjudged his jump and plummeted about 7 metres to the ground. It was pretty funny and even funnier when it heard Damien and Pete laughing their heads off and pulled a little sad face at them before limping off into the trees to have a little cry to himself, oh I am laughing now.
The track was a well maintained boardwalk across the top of the falls and at every turn we were presented with another spectatular view. It definately must be true that negative ions generagted by the water tumblling over the cataracts makes people happier because the three of us were walkig around with the biggest grins on our faces (at least until I dropped a camera lens! opps, no damage though so we were still happy)
The park is home to millions of amazingly coloured butterflies, tonnes of birds such as toucans, herons himmingbirds and vultures, lots of small animals such as coatis, monkeys and some wierd roden things plus the occasional jaguar.
After completing the first trail we headed off for our tour which included a short 4WD trip through the jungle (uneventful) and a speedboat ride 6 kms up the rapids of Rio Iguazu and into/under some of the smaller falls. It was heaps of fun. The boat took us nice and close to the falls for some good photo opportunities before the guide told us to put out cameras away in waterproof bags. then they donned full wet weather fishing gear (we were all in shorts and t-shirts) and drove us right up an under several of the falls!!!!! So cold.
They dropped us off and we quickly caught a small boat across the river to the island of San Martin and lay on a beach in the sun for an hour or so to dry off, warm up and have our lunch of avacado and balsamic sandwichs and mangos. Delicious! We shared our lunch with a few cheeky lizards who had the same idea as us, one of them even jumped onto damiens shoulder to catch a fly! When we were satisfied we set off to explore the island which was quite small and covered in vultures!
The end of the day was drawing near so we set off for the last and most spectatular part of the falls; Garganta del Diablo or Devils Throat. We jumped on the small train that chuggs slowly through the jungle round the top of the falls past the Rio Iguazu before it plunges off the basalt cliffs. Once you get off you walk about a kilometre along a boardwalk suspended about 5ms above the river. At this point, just before it drops over the edge, the river widens and becomes quite calm and shallow and we could see all sorts of small fish swimming around. It was also apparent how high the river could get during the rainy season, with derbris collected high in the branches of some of the trees and the remains of the old boardwalk that was destroyed in 1992.
Finally you reach the end and are greeted with a hugh roar as milions of litres of water plummet about 80m into the Devils Throat. The volume of water was so great that you could not see all the way into the falls through all the mist that was billowing up from the bottom. Up here we also ran into Mark, one of the guys we had been hanging out with in BA. Evenually as the sun was setting and it started to get chilly we reluctantly turned for home. While we were waiting for the bus back into town a large toucan flew past and Mark thought it was a crow with a banana in it´s beak ha ha!
To explore the Brazillian side would have taken an extra day and we decided to skip it because it ad only one walkway out to see the Devils Throat.
Just across the boarder in Paraguay is a town called Ciudade del Este which is a notrious smugglers port, it is also good for cheap electronics and Pete was able to nick over there for a day and but damien a new camera. It´s not as good as the old one, but at least it´s waterproof and was about half the price.
Next stop RIO!!!!!!!!!!
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Aliah Boston Has been great! We Met up with The Big Green Bus, a road trip about alternative fuel from Dartmouth College. Tonight we're hvnaig our event at The Red House, then back to Maine! As for fishing in Kennebunk- We almost caught something.. Ended up being 3 buoys..