IGUAZU FALLS
After getting up to speed in Rio we made the two hour hop to the Brazilian side of the famous Iguazu Falls and booked in to a nice central town location in FOZ DE IGUAZU and went for a wander. Much calmer and quieter than Rio, dead quiet in fact. As in almost deserted, which was odd after Rio. Hunted for a decent restaurant and settled on an average Mexican themed bar for Nachos. Cheap and cheerful.
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Up early for the bus to the falls to spend a day looking at millions of gallons of water pouring over a stone ledge from the Brazilian viewpoints, apparently you get a panoramic view from this side. First though we went for the boat ride.
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You can just see a boat in the picture above. The whole point of the ride (£40) is to get you soaked, no other real reason for going. You go straight there, flat out in a rib, pause for a couple of minutes for pictures and then BOOSH, under the falls, drenched, can't really even see anything, just a wall of water on your head. In my case a head that contained the thick end of £3,000 worth of hearing aids! Not the waterproof model either. I spent a very nervous 60 seconds expecting my brain to be fried in a blue flash of exploding electronics.
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This was what we call in the deaf persons world 'bloody daft', obviously we shout it. This was made worse because when we were almost ready to board a very, very wet gentlemen made the point to us that he had looked like us only 20 minutes earlier, as in, fully clothed with shoes on etc. and nice and dry. "Look at me now, strip off, save yourselves", so we did. So why did I not divest myself of my hearing aids, the bloody falls make a noise like thunder so I could not hear anything anyway. Go figure?
Back on dry land and after half an hour standing in the hot humid breeze just about dried us off before we set off on the walkways to view what have to be the most impressive falls in the world. They are amazing! 2,700 metres of falls (Niagara has 950m, Victoria 1,700m), massive drops, so many different viewpoints. Including one right over the falls where you get soaked to the skin a second time by the spray.
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It is difficult to pay sufficient tribute to Mother Nature for the falls themselves and to the Brazilians for their excellent presentation of this natural wonder. Really well organised, really efficient, no long queues, everyone super friendly. Just could have done with some towels.
So back to town for another wander round and find our dinner, weirdly, in a bus station. Sara spotted. or smelt. and outdoor grill with hunks of animal roasting away and the wafting aromas got to her. We were ushered into a very basic room, part of the aforementioned bus station, and presented with a wine list. Wines in Rio were few and far between and always £30-40, in our bus station they were £5 a bottle for top quality Argentinian Malbec. Two bottles and a Parrilla (a table top barbie covered in bits of stray animal burning nicely) later we parted with £24 and staggered home having abandoned about a kilo of smoking flesh.
The following day we set off for Argentina. The border towns here are either side of the river, nice easy passage through customs aided by a great cab driver. Book into a great hotel SAINT JAMES (£70 incl bf) and wander off to try and score some Argentinian currency.Getting currency was hard in Brazil and almost impossible in Argentina. The only people who use notes are cab drivers! Everything else is by card, literally everything. But occasionally we need to take a cab (as opposed to the much simpler Ubers which don't need notes). If you want £100 in notes the ATM charges 10% fee than a fixed fee of £18 on top, so a £28 charge to get £100!!!! Oh, and most refuse point blank to give you any anyway. On the bright side we already know that beers are £2, a bottle of top quality wine is £5 and food around £10 a person, so there were some pluses to be had.
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Off to the Argentine side of the falls. Not good! We marked Argentine side 1/10 as opposed to Brazil 11/10. No really even worth a photo by comparison. Just a long walkway above the torrents to glimpse occasional pretty poor views. Still, it was a lovely walk with a number of very elderly Americans who had flown in from their cruise ship to walk about 5k in 30 degrees, dressed in the wrong clothes (they had come from the Antarctic), to not see much. Talk about tough. We just waltzed through and went for another lovely cheap meal with loads of wine!
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The Argentinian side was so bland I am adding a video of our wet, wet, wet boat trip to make up for it......
Having watched the 13,000 cubic metres of water pissing over the falls every second ( 200 times more than flows down the Thames) and having put up with being drenched twice and suffering a hangover from exceptionally cheap Argentinian Malbec, we headed to the airport to catch our plane to Buenos Aires. We had scored a really cheap flight with a budget airline called FlyBondi (£117pp). With such an f'ing daft name you'd think we would have been more careful. Maybe even read the dire reviews beforehand. Of the five FlyBondi flights that day four were already cancelled, all 'technicals' but ours was OK. Right up until we sat on the flipping plane, which then joined its brothers and sisters in going technical too. Off we trooped. Now it is surprising how few European/USA travelers there actually are, most visitors are South Americans. Which meant they could not afford to throw £600 flipping quid at getting on the next Argentinian Airlines flight out of Dodge as opposed to an overnight in a dodgy hotel and maybe another technical or even a big ball of flame at the end of the runway.
So £5 for a decent bottle of wine in town - £500 to escape the town But the falls were amazing. Truly amazing. So onward to Buenos Aries, a quick but expensive two hours south.