We were up at the crack of dawn (well actually we overslept and had to gobble our breakfast in 5 minutes flat) to meet our pick up for the tour bus. The bus went and collected another 26 tourist and then we went to the national waterfall park.
The tour guide was very keen for us to hurry up and jump onto the early train to get out to the first site. We discovered later that hurrying was a good idea because within an hour that same train was carrying 5 times more people.
Our first stop was at the Devils Throat (yesterday we stood in front of the Devils Throat from the Brazilian side). We had to walk along about 1200m of walkways across to the river. The river is very very very wide. Like it took us a good 15 minute walk to cross it along the walkways. For us south africans, we were very amazed to see so much water in one place.
For reference, 1.7 cubic kilometres of water wash down the Iguazu Falls every second. I think, (i may need a reference here) that the water in South Africa is 52 cubic kilometres. Do the math as to how much water passes here in a minute... Again - we may be wrong on the capacity of water in SA.
The devils throat is a 270 degree circular pit part of the waterfall where the water rushes, nay, cascades, nay avalanches down into massive misty clouds. The sound in front of it is somewhat of a roar. There are flocks of birds that nest in the greenery on the waterfall wall and they zoom about in the mist - like little black arrows. Even as we approached the throat, we could see a mushroom cloud of misty rising up into the air.
After the Devils Throat, we boarded the train again and stopped off at the Upper gorge walk. Allong the 2.7km width of the waterfall is about 270 separate subwaterfalls separated by boulders and stuff. The upper gorge took us on a walk along the top of some of these waterfalls. We also got a great panoramic view of the islands and entire waterfall river gorge.
Finally we turned onto the Lower Gorge trail which took us to the very face of one of the waterfalls. By this time we had to elbow past plenty of tourists and other aspiring photographers. The gorge has lots of rainbows and mist and the jungle thrives on the damp atmosphere. All in all it made me think of Peter Pans tropical hide away. We took a moment to stand and look at the waterfall up close and get our faces washed in the mist.
When we finished the waterfall trail walks, we had about an hour and a half before meeting up with the group again to return to town. As we had no desire to jostle with the tourists or eat criminally expensive food, we decided to nap on the grass outside the Sheraton Hotel, which is for free.
However hunger did overtake our desire to save money and we stood in line to get empanadas. Actually we are disappointed we did not discover empanadas sooner on this trip. We had some in Ushuaia but i am sure they have been served all over. Empanadas are small deep fried pastries filled with meat or cheese or other savoury filling. Sort of like the south american equivalent of a samoosa. The nice bit is that so far they have always been priced less than 10 pesos each and so a couple of them make a pretty awesome reasonably priced lunch. We are going to try eat them for lunch again before we leave.
Tomorrow our airport transfer is midday so we haven't got much planned. Maybe a walk along the river and the Argentina tri-country border or else a visit downtown for tourism sake.
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