Window in the rock, looking from Argentina into Brazil
In mid April we made our way out of the mountians into wine country and the capitols of Chile and Argentina. After a good stretch in Santiago, Mendoza and Buenos Aires, we needed a bit of fresh air. We said our goodbyes to Dave and Lindsay in Buenos Aires, then took a 16 hour bus ride to see Iguazu Falls. An hour out of Buenos Aires the bus stopped. We went to bed assuming it was a routine stop along the way. We woke up in the early morning in the same spot, with a heavy smoke in the air. Brush fires around BA had caused a road closure and they stopped all transit until daylight the next day. So in the mid morning, with our journals fully updated and our butts fully sore, we resumed the journey. We made it to the falls around midnight that night, trading the stale bus air for hot Amazon humidity.
We were a bit tenative about visiting the falls: very far away and very touristed. But we are both glad we made the journey. Aside from the miles of waterfalls in the middle of nowhere, the temperate rainforest surrounding the falls supports a ton of wildlife--very cool spot. Little did we know that it only got better on the Brazilian side, more on that in a later post. The mammoth of these falls was an unforgettable sight. A boardwalk leads you over the river for about a half mile...near the end of the boardwalk you start hearing a thundering roar and then you finally see it. As if the water is falling into the a huge 270 degree hole in the ground, the river disappears through its middle into nowhere. Hopefully the video below does it some justice.
The falls stretch from Argentina into Brazil, with the Paraguayan border just down river
Bamboo in the surrounding forest
The water falling into nowhere
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