The Iguazu falls – a natural wonder

It’s a long adventure that awaits us when we leave Cordoba, Sunday around midnight. We take a first bus that will take about 9 and a half hours to get to Buenos Aires. But we slept like babies. We have to say we also booked upgraded seats, that are more comfortable than what have been used to lately.

We slept almost the whole way and arrive rested at the huge bus terminal of Buenos Aires, around 9:30 am. The next bus is at 1:30 pm. And boy these felt long, spent in the not so glamorous bus terminal and on very very uncomfortable seats. We try to kill the time as we can…

It is finally 1:30 pm, time to jump in our bus to Puerto Iguazu.

Initially, the bus ride should last 18 hours, but the bus ran late on the way so we will add another couple of hours to that. The day part of the trip went over pretty fast thanks to the movies shown in the bus (without sound and with Spanish subtitles, but when it’s the only thing around you adapt and actually enjoy the movie), and a few episodes downloaded on Netflix, but the night was another story. We didn’t sleep nearly as well as the previous night, indeed the seats were a lot less comfortable (the most comfortable ones were all booked when we bought our tickets). We wake up pretty stiff and our legs and back hurt from sitting all night. And to make things worse, there is a lot of fog when we wake up near Puerto Iguazu. Maider, who has been waiting a long time to see these falls, is in a complete panic. But once at the bus terminal, and at our hostel, everybody tells us that the fog will dissipate and the afternoon will be sunny… Let’s hope they are right.

For this first day, we will be visiting the Brazilian side, indeed this side can be visited in only half a day. The Iguazu national park is located at the border between three countries: Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, the Iguazu river forming a natural border between these countries. But the Iguazu falls can only be seen from the Brazilian and Argentinian sides. And since we did all these miles by bus, we might as well visit both sides!

Great surprise, when we get to our hostel, our room is already ready, and we can take a nicer shower after these 30 hours of bus. It is all clean that we go see the falls !

A little before noon, the fog dissipates and a nice blue sky appears. We are so happy !

Iguazu falls on the Brazilian side + bird park

We take (yet another) bus to go to the Iguazu falls on the Brazilian side. And as you might have understood already, that means crossing another border. So we get our passports stamped for only spending a few hours in Brazil.

After an hour, we get to the entrance of the park. But the driver first stops at a bird park. We start by the visit of this park where we can see a lot of different species of birds. The place is huge and we can see a lot of birds.

We saw plenty of different types of parrots,

flamencos (we feel very lucky to have seen some in their natural habitat in Bolivia and Chile),

turtles,

plenty of other birds that we forgot the name of,

with one in particular that thought Matt’s shoe was really comfortable,

toucans (for Maider’s delight, she loves toucans),

butterflies,

and even a few crocodiles.

We spent an hour there, and loved our visit. Maider even ended the visit with her picture taken in the middle of parrots.

The serious stuff starts now with the visit of the Iguazu falls. We read that some people waited 3 hours just to buy their tickets to get inside the park… Luckily, we are in the low season and in the middle of the week so there is nobody when we get to the cash register to purchase our tickets. We are really glad we took all these different buses to be here during the week. These were not for nothing!

Once we have our tickets, to go in line to… take ANOTHER bus! That brings us to the beginning of the trail, 7 miles further. For having visited the Niagara Falls on the Canadian side, we are really glad to see that the falls are far from the entrance, that way nature around is still a little bit preserved. Maider is all excited and can’t stand still. The bus drops us off at the beginning of a mile long trail that follows the river. And as we step off the bus, there are a LOT of tourists, buses full of Chinese and Brazilian tourists are there. Since San Pedro de Atacama, we have barely seen any tourists, and much less huge groups traveling together, so it takes a while for us to adjust. We do question ourselves on this mass tourism, on one hand it creates employment in the region, brings wealth, and thanks to these infrastructure the site is accessible to literally anyone (everything is wheelchair accessible for example). On the other hand, a lot of these tourists aren’t very respectful of nature and of others around, and it kind of takes away some of the magic of the site… We can’t think of any perfect solution, but we have to admit, the first view on the falls is absolutely breathtaking.

You forget all the people around and enjoy the view. Maider is already filling up the camera with hundreds of pictures!

Before being chased away by a coati !

Quick little paragraph to talk more about these falls. The Iguazu falls, like the Machu Picchu for example, are a UNESCO world heritage site and part of the 7 natural wonders of the world. In total, the site is home to 275 waterfalls over 2 miles. The water flow can go up to 1.6 million gallons per second! We are really in front of a huge natural scenery, human life feels small compared to this.

The Brazilian side offers a nice panoramic view on all the falls, and really helps us enjoy the immensity of the area.

The walk along the trail is pretty nice, despite the number of tourists. Boy we cannot imagine how it is like in high season… A few view points are built-in for us to better admire the falls and take plenty of pictures.

We see a few animals along the way like coatis or lizards.

The sky is blue, the sun is shining, we feel so lucky to be able to enjoy the scenery with such nice weather. The spectacle is unbelievable !

The highlight of the trail comes at the end, when we get close to the Garganta del Diablo. This fall is 260 ft high and is by far the largest of all the 275 falls.

This part is easily the most impressive and most beautiful, but as you can guess, it is also the most touristic. A lot of tourists don’t even bother walking along the trail, and actually take the bus all the way to the last stop and then take the elevator to get to this last waterfall. This is definitely a side of mass tourism we do not like.

There is a bridge that takes you all the way to the Garganta del Diablo, you can expect to get wet!

We were able to stay a while here, enjoying the view,

getting wet as we pose for pictures,

and admiring the rainbows being formed by the refraction of the sun on the little drops of water in the air. Absolutely stunning !

We get back to our hostel exhausted, but so happy with our first encounter with the falls. We go to bed early (we have a lot of sleep to catch up) and tomorrow we will take the entire day to visit the falls on the Argentinian side.

Iguazu falls from the Argentinian side

The day doesn’t start too well. Rain is pouring heavily as we are eating breakfast at our hostel. We are really anxious about the day to come. According to the weather forecast, the day will be cloudy with thunderstorms. We take the bus to go to the Argentinian side of the Iguazu national park. After half an hour, we get to the entrance and are absolutely delighted to see that the clouds are gone and the sun is shining !

The park on the Argentinian side is huge and we will need a full day to see everything. There are different trails that let you see the falls from a great number of different angles.

We started with the inferior trail. Probably our favorite one. It offers a lot of different view points.

And we can get close to the bottom of different waterfalls.

The trail is beautiful, and there are not a lot of groups (indeed this trail is the furthest from the entrance, and the longest, so groups usually start with the Garganta del Diablo, and probably come here only if they have time left). So we have plenty of time to enjoy the nature in peace. The landscapes are absolutely breathtaking.

The rainbows are back, for our biggest delight.

We continue with the superior trail, which a little shorter, but offers amazing view as well.

On our way , Maider almost screamed when she realized she wasn’t about to step on a branch, but on a snake ! Once the snake made its way a little deeper into the jungle, Matt was able to take a nice picture. Maider was still shaking from stress and couldn’t do much!

Just after that, we spotted a nice big lizard! Awesome.

The superior trail offers a view from the top of the waterfalls. Again, there are many view points and with the blue sky it is fantastic !

We can’t believe the sun is still shining.

We wanted to take a boat to go on the San Martin island, but unfortunately the access to the island is closed because there is too much water. But we will get a nice view of the island, between all the waterfalls.

It is still early and we already finished the inferior and superior trails. As we get to the train station, to take the little electric train to the Garganta del Diablo (this is supposed to be the highlight of the park), we see that the line is huge! There are so many groups waiting, we absolutely don’t want to be in the middle of that, so we decide to go do the Macuco trail, and come back later hoping there will be less people. The Macuco trail is the less touristic trail of the park since it is pretty far from the waterfalls. So we go and check it out. And we were very pleasantly surprised, there was indeed, almost nobody on this trail. Finally alone!

And we are able to observe some wildlife. There was plenty of different butterflies,

birds,

beautiful flowers,

and we even saw a few monkeys! Unfortunately they were too far and too fast to be able to take pictures.

The trail is 4 miles long and brings us to a nice little waterfall, where we picnic far from the other tourists! Awesome.

Unfortunately, on our way back a thunderstorm broke and the rain is pouring down.

We arrive at the train station soaking wet. But at least that made the tourists leave and there are a lot less people waiting for the train now! Perfect, we just hope now that the rain is going to calm down a little bit… And boy we were super lucky. As we arrive at the Garganta del Diablo, the rain starts falling really hard, so most of the tourists simply left to go back to the train. We decided to wait a little (we were already soaking wet so we had nothing to loose) and after a few minutes the rain stopped and we were able to enjoy the view point with very little people! The dream!

What we have in front of us is breathtaking and we feel small, besides all the water falling down. The sky is grey, or even black at times, but the scenery is still magnificent.

We stay there a while and feel so lucky to be able to enjoy this natural wonder without being all over people like it was the case on the Brazilian side.

I guess we have to thank the rain ! Because really it just stopped for 15 minutes, the time we were there. Indeed, as soon as we left, the rain started falling again, and it didn’t stop all night long. We couldn’t have asked for a better scenario !

The Iguazu falls was on Maider’s bucket list, and it definitely is one of the most beautiful sites we have had the chance to see. Really something to see once in your life. It is simply breathtaking.

We leave the next day, so happy about our last couple of days, and a smile on our faces that doesn’t seem to leave. We don’t even care that an 18 hour bus ride awaits us to go to Buenos Aires.