Iguaçu Falls - Argentina

Last weekend we drove to Iguaçu Falls, about five hours from here. The Falls are near the border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Breathtaking. Incredible. Beautiful. What I captured on my camera does not do justice to the beauty we saw (but I tried!).

We live about 30 minutes from the Argentine border. We were told the roads in Argentina are incredible compared to the roads in Brazil and that we could cut hours off our trip if we chose to take that route. So we did. We drove to Porto Mauá and exchanged our reals (brasilian money) to pesos (argentine money). We had all the proper documents to drive in another country, we had our passports, and we were the last car to get on the barge. . .or so we thought. About 10 yards before our wheels were on the barge, a man asked us for our ticket. What?? Our ticket?? Ooops, we forgot to actually buy the ticket we needed to get on the barge. As Kevin returned to the ticket office to purchase our pass, I sadly watched the barge push off from the shore. We were supposed to be on that barge. We waited about another half hour and took the next barge across. Emma took that opportunity to love on her daddy. Fortunately there were some other Brasilians from Horizontina on the barge so we took a few tips from them and entered Argentina uneventfully. Half an hour into our trip, we were cruising along at 140km/hr (Kevin was driving like a brasilian)!! Suddenly, there in front of us, a chicken decided to cross the road. Bad idea, chicken. There was a car coming toward us and one of Kevin's colleagues was behind us. Kevin had about two seconds to make a decision and with his wife screaming in his ear, "YOU CAN'T STOP NOW!!!!!", he slowed to a mere 130km/hr (about 86.7 mph), and clocked that chicken with his right front fender. I looked in the passenger-side rear view mirrow and all I could see were feathers flying everywhere!! Then, through the feathers, kind of like a race car through a cloud of smoke, Kevin's colleauge emerged, finishing off whatever might have been left of the chicken. The feathers billowed up again and we were on our way. Emma asked what happened and I told her, "The poor chicken was just trying to get to the other side." Then I turned to Kevin and told him that he'd probably killed someone's dinner. He briefly considered turning around to give the owner some pesos, but then decided to keep going. Great way to start the trip. I figured if the whole trip was going to be that exciting, I should take notes!!

So we arrived at Parque Nacional Iguazu (Spanish in Argentina), around 12:45 and ate lunch at the park. We boarded the little train and head to the Falls. The Falls are protected on both sides by national parks and no cars are allowed beyond a certain point. We opted to take the train out to the Falls, instead of hiking an hour and a half. Emma loved the train ride and seeing all the butterflies along the way! As I was adjusting my camera strap and gathering my bearings, I looked up to see Emma walking after a complete stranger. The woman turned around and Emma told me she wanted to touch her pretty balls!! Seriously, did I forget to tell her not to talk to strangers?? You want to kidnap my child? Just dangle some balls in front of her face and she'll follow you wherever you lead her!! This nice gal let Emma play with the balls on her necklace and then we were on our way. Crazy little girl!

From the train, we had to walk about 15 minutes to get to the Falls. The area is covered in little islands and the park had built a walkway from island to island until they reached the mouth of the largest waterfall, called Devil's Throat, pictured above. You can see the walkway in the top right corner of the picture. I'm assuming the name for this waterfall was chosen because there's no way anything that goes over the edge could ever survive.

As we reached the end of the walkway, the roar of the falls was almost deafening. We had to yell to hear each other and the sound gave me chills. Here we were, standing on what we trusted to be a safely constructed metal walkway, looking over the edge of one of the world's largest and most powerful waterfalls! I'm so glad I forgot that the mentality here is "mais ou menos", meaning, "more or less". Perfection when building is not required, but I'll save that for another post! Suffice it to say, we were crazy to have walked out there, but crazy with a million others who travel there during the year! Research says the Iguacu Gorge was created by volcanic activity over a hundred million years ago, but I'm certain the hand of God (whether through a volcano or other mean) was behind it all!

The rainbows around the Falls were incredible! During the dry season, there are about 275 individual falls within the park. After 20 pictures of rainbows, I figured I'd captured enough, but I just wanted to keep clicking away! It was incredible!

It was exciting for Emma to chase butterflies and had the lighting been better (because it couldn't have been my lack of knowledge of photography:), I would have taken a hundred pictures of her with them. Oh, and we were in a hurry to catch the last train!

We did catch the last train and didn't have to walk another hour, which was nice. Emma played with more strangers on the train and several people took her picture, mostly because she was speaking English and they thought she was adorable. I did too!

We walked around more of the park for hours and were just amazed at every turn. It was a Friday, so the park was surprisingly empty. Later we learned that most people visit the Brasilian side of the Falls anyway. We were happy to have the park to ourselves (kind of).

I think the lizard on the left was pregnant. Or fat. Not sure which. I've never seen a pregnant lizard. Or a fat one for that matter. At any rate, he was larger than the little guy on the right. He waddled around and was slow enough that I could get close to him.

Everywhere we walked, we heard people lauging and saying, "Que linda!!", which is like, "How cute!" After a while, we realized that they were looking at Emma in the backpack carrier. Several people took pictures of her and it seemed that most people had never seen something like that. The animal on the right is called a Quati (kwah-chee), and I think they are hidious. It's like a raccoon/rat/monkey/badger-type thing that wonders around the park. Apparently it's the symbol of the park and people are warned not to feed them. Most people don't listen to the warnings, so these animals will walk right up to your table and take your food out of your hands (as we witnessed at lunch on Sunday). Gross creatures.

By the time we left the park, drove back through customs and immigration to the Brazil side, and parked at our hotel, it was after 7pm and we were exhausted. We ate dinner at the hotel, showered and went to sleep. Emma had had a fifteen minute nap in the car, but that was it. She traveled so well and was a little trooper!! We were all excited to lay our heads down that night. And we were incredibly thankful for an air-conditioned room!