New Continents - Part 7

 

The penultimate stop of our South American tour, Iguazu, famous for having the largest waterfall in the world (by width). Located on the Southern edge of Brazil and the Northern edge of Argentina plus (for good measure) the Eastern edge of Paraguay, Iguazu has long been famed for it's falls (discovered in 1541), at 2700m wide it's more than twice as wide as Niagara with 50% more flow rate than Victoria, a true wonder of natural world.

We arrived in the afternoon after a 90 minute flight from Salta and checked into our hotel on the Argentinian side of the falls, the view from the hotel was stunning, a panorama of part of the falls with a real tropical feel to the place which was quite unspoiled (unlike Niagara) as the whole area was a designated national park. We settled into our accommodation and had an early dinner in readiness for a trip to Brazil the next day.

At 7am our guide picked us up from the hotel and we bused it across the border and into Brazil, unknown to us at the time we discovered that it was a public holiday in Brazil and (thanks to Trump's tariffs) the prices in Paraguay for things like iPhones were 30% cheaper than in Argentina or Brazil, suffice to say the queues to cross between the various countries were huge! Luckily we could skip them being in a tourist vehicle but we were glad that we made an early start! On the Brazilian side of the falls we walked along the 2km tourist trail that lead down to the main cascade, it gave a wonderful overview of the falls, apparently it's the best side to see the falls from a distance but if you want to get in among the water proper, the Argentinian side is better. Anyway, it was spectacular and the raised platforms at the end of the walkway gave a great view of several cascades and as well as getting soaking wet allowed you to get quite close to the action (see below)

At the end of the Brazilian trail the path passed to the side of one of the falls, at this point you could stretch your arm out and touch the water, we lingered there for a while and noticed that there were small back birds flying around in front of the face. Every now and again one of these birds would dart into the flow of water itself and disappear! Apparently these swallows nest behind the water and are quite happy to fly through the cascade to reach their young, it was amazing how they weren't swept away as the force of water falling was tremendous, I shot a little video in an attempt to capture this but it was tricky to predict when they would fly into the water, however I think I caught a few (see below)

We completed our Brazilian expedition around lunchtime and headed back to Argentina where we regrouped over lunch and planned our exploration of the "Argentinian side", see the next part..