Cataratas del Iguazu - Brazil/Argentina
Breathtaking, wet and surreal.
We arrived to Foz do Iguazu (Brazil) very tired and very confused as to how to actually get ourselves to the famous waterfalls. A helpful lady at tourist information sent us on our way with a map and some bus numbers, and with ease we actually managed to get to the National Park. We cued alongside many Argentinians - we were informed that Tuesday was the day for coach trips from Buenos Aires so one of the busier days annoyingly, and got on another bus that took us to the beginning of the trial. Stepping off the bus we were greeted by an incredible view. A panoramic shot of numerous flowing waterfalls, and at our feet these raccoon type animals (actually coatis) scavenging for food. We were instantly excited to get on the trial and see what else the National Park had to offer. We spent around 4/5 hours on the trail taking in the views and at some points getting extremely wet!
The fun very quickly ended this day, whilst waiting for a company bus to pick us up from Iguazu, another traveller waiting for the same bus informed us that’s the buses were on strike today so may not show up... So we decided to get a local bus back to the bus station we’d come from in the morning and get the public bus across the border we’d heard about. Feeling quite proud we got to the correct bus stop, only for a local to join us and warn us that it’s in fact all buses in Argentina that are on strike... not just that company’s bus as we had previously thought. A lot of time passed, hopes were raised and dropped many times when a bus came down the street for its destination to have been Paraguay. These buses typically run every 20-30 minutes, 2 hours after arriving I don’t think either of us have ever been happier to see a bus... finally Destination:Argentina. It wasn’t over yet, even though we were on the bus, we needed the driver to stop at the Brazilian border, let us off the bus and wait to get our passports stamped at immigration - luckily for us two other couples were also on the bus who needed to go through immigration so he did stop and he did wait. We think the strike played in our favour in this case, usually you have to wait and catch the next bus, but who knew if that would’ve ever come on this day, so we think he was more patient. We arrived at our hostel in Puerto Iguazu to find out we had been upgraded to an apartment, which was welcomed with joy after the past few hours of stress.
We wanted to beat the rush of the tours at the falls on the Wednesday, so we got up relatively early, got organised and catched the bus to the National Park. We weren’t sure what to expect from this day as we’d both read Argentina was the much better side to experience the falls. These reviews were not wrong! On this side, there were two trials you could walk, we took the upper trial first, this allowed us to be pretty much on top of all the waterfalls, we could see the rush of the water over the edge for it to plummet down below us. When taking the lower trial we were closer up to the waterfalls and saw much more wildlife. Both gave incredible views and pictures just don’t do it justice.
