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The monster 22-hour bus from Cordoba to Iguazu falls again wasn´t that bad because we got seats right at the front as to be disturbed by less people, and they gave us food and played movies so the time flew by. The hostel we stayed in up there was pretty nice, with the breakfast area out in a courtyard next to a pool. As for the town itself, it was a bit of a non-entity, existing for the sole purpose of people visiting the falls and getting into Brazil. But it had some decent restaurants and plenty of souvenir shops for the last ditch souvenir buying, meaning we pretty much spent our time there (when not at the falls) cruising around trying to find gourds (mate cups) that we liked. Anyway I eventually found a decent one made of crocodile skin, but now I have to try and keep it in tact in my bag for the entirety of the trip. So on our first full day we hit the Argentinian side of the falls. Not particularly cheap to get into the National Park if you´re a filthy gringo I might add but what can you do. The falls stretch 2.7 kilometres along the Iguazu River on the border between Argentina and Brazil, and inside the national park are all these different routes you can take to get to various balconies that overlook different parts of the falls, of which there are apparently around 275 separate waterfalls. The majority drop around 65 metres, but the biggest and most spectacular is the Devil´s Throat which drops around 80 odd metres I think and is the widest. You get pretty close to it and it´s an awesome spectacle of what´s a seemingly calm river turning into this mahusive gushing and noisy waterfall that flows into a picturesque valley where other smaller waterfalls from the mountain sides flow into it. As expected we took a fair few photos and videos, but this time with my camera as by then we had cottoned onto the fact that Ben´s was f***ed. After that we cruised around all the main paths to various other parts of the falls, of which some were really impressive with mini rainbows at their base or cascading through rockpools, and others were barley a trickle as it was dry season. There was definitely enough there to more than satisfy the waterfall enthusiast and so it was a relatively fulfilling day seeing everything. Also, being a nature reserve and all, the place was littered with all kinds of wildlife, including Coatis, which are these badger/raccoon/skunk like little things that cruise around the national park. They plod around the paths and restaurants harmlessly looking for food, not really taking any notice of you and just mooching about amongst the tourists, they´re pretty jokes. So the next day we packed up our stuff and headed to the Brazilian side of the falls. After a nervous hour or so at the border waiting with our backpacks in the middle of nowhere for a bus to arrive, we managed to finally reach the falls 3 buses later. The Brazilian side basically just offers a more panoramic view of the falls which is nice, but you are essentially just seeing the same stuff all over again from a different angle. So we fired off a few more shots and cruised to the main bus station fairly soon for our overnight bus to Florianopolis. All in all the falls were definitely worthwhile and the first time in my life I´ve seen anything like that on such a grand scale which was cool. And so the muchly eclectic entertaining frenzy of Argentina was over and now onto the eagerly anticipated land of the Salsa to stir the senses.
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