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We set off from Salta at 11.30am for a 26 hour bus ride to get to Puerto Iguazu. We went on a full-luxury ultra-modern bus to try and purge our spirits of Bolivia once and for all. We settled into our seats and the journey passed pretty uneventfully, although the bus did keep stopping all throughout the night and a sexing couple at the front of the bus kept fidgeting around and came and sat in front of us at one point at about 3am and woke us up. We were most displeased at this behaviour as we had paid extra to sit in the 'whites only' section of the bus and expected better behaved passsengers.
The only memorable part of this trip was autobar, a small drinks dispensing machine that was positioned next to our seats. It served sickly sweet coffee and had a small drain for you to trip old drinks down. Or so we thought. Charlie thought he would try out the drain and tip a cup of water down it, only for it to vomit everything up out of the hole it had just gone down. Autobar then projected a spray of old drinks all over the seats surrounding it. This caused much hilarity, especailly when an old lady came and did the same thing, causing Charlie to get sprayed again.
Eventually we pulled into Puerto Iguazu, where we were going to see the famous waterfalls. We checked into our hotel (with cable TV in the kitchen which we monopolised).
The next day we headed out to see the Argentinian side of the falls. We bought the bus tickets, which were promptly dropped down a small crack in the counter, never to be retrieved again. The man begrudgingly gave us more tickets while we laughed.
We arrived at the falls only to be seemingly constantly dogged by a group of English lager louts and slags. We wandered around the site, which was really well set up, and allowed us to get really great views of the falls thanks to lots of catwalks and bridges. We also took a boat ride that got us completely drenched by driving under some of the water falls. Luckily it was a really hot day so we dried out quickly.
We then took a more tranquil boat ride to a small island by the waterfalls, where we stretched out in the sun to dry with out flasks of soup. There were lots of lizards watching us have our lunch and they kept woggling their heads at us in a most disconcerting fashion. We watched the lizards catch and eat some butterflies. Unfortunately, our pumpkin soup was the exact same colour as nectar, and so a butterfly flew over to Lisa's cup and tried to fly in. Luckily she scared it away. Then one came and peered in Charlie's cup. He did not shoo it away and so it plunged into the hot soup and died, leaving funny black things on the surface. Seconds later, having guarded our cups with our hands, a butterfly came out of nowhere and flew extra fast right into the centre of Lisa's cup and also died. We tried to feed the corpses to the lizards, but they didn't like the pumpkin soup flavour we think.
We then took an ecological train ride to see the 'devils throat' waterfall which made us really wet because it was so big. Then we returned home.
The next day we got an international bus and crossed to Brazil to see the waterfalls from this side. They definately have the raw deal, but you get a nice overview from this side. We were also lucky enough to witness an old person accident. They had slipped on the path and spilled claret everywhere due to their papery skin sloughing off. We stared more at this than at the waterfall.
On the way out of the park, a highly unfortunate incident occurred. Someone spoke to us. The offender was a large (in height) cherokee indian lookalike from South Africa. He kept blabbering all the way to us on the bus back to the entrance to the park. We thought we were safe to escape when he suddenly sprung on us the fact that he had stored all his luggage in reception and would be travelling back with us to the Argentina side. We were nearly sick. His big goggling eyes and rubbery lips kept getting too close to our faces and his stories were awful. He kept inviting us to South Africa in a very embarrassing fashion.
We got on the bus that would take us back to the Argentina side and laughed as all of his luggage (which was on wheels / not very practical) kept crashing around the bus as he ineffectually tried to control it. We pulled into passport control and realised that this was the ideal location to lose him. We rushed through and had our passports stamped, but he was delayed because of his big bags. We raced through the other side of the building, leaping past a security kulak who wanted to look in our bags and jumped on a bus, which pulled out seconds later. We felt very relieved to have escaped as he really gave us the creeps and threatened to stay at the same hotel as us and get the same bus as us to Buenos Aires. We don't think so!
We got back to the hotel and spent the rest of the night in hiding in case he showed up. Luckily he didn't, and he wasn't on our bus the next day so everything was OK.
Final thoughts - really nicely set up waterfalls and pleasant town. Naught cherokee indians nearly spoiled our fun though.
Mark out of 10 - 8
Next time... Buenos Aires
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