click on picture to see the rest of my photos!
I finally traveled! August 18 was a holiday – San Martín Day, liberator of Argentina (and Chile and Paraguay?…) So Amber, Mary Andrews, Kristin and I headed for Puerto Iguazú to see las cataratas (waterfalls). These huge falls are along the Brazil/Argentine border. They are not as tall as Niagara, but far more expansive. See all my photos here! Actually you will only see a selection of my photos as I took almost 300 while there!
Iguazú is in northern Argentine in Misiones province. We opted for the cheaper bus ride, about $100 round trip (as opposed to $400 in plane) and 22 hour each way! Definitely my longest bus trip. Fortunately, since Miriam has taught me how to knit, I brought along plenty of wool and finished two projects.
Our bus leaving La Plata was four hours late, so we arrived in Iguazú Saturday afternoon instead of Saturday morning. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time to do anything. However, we were fortunate enough to arrive during the full moon when they take night tours to the waterfall, so our first glimpse of the falls was at night. It was huge and beautiful. The mist was overwhelming and wind blew it towards us ensuring we were all soaked by the time we left. We also saw a rainbow at night! (Well that is what they told us it was.) You could see a white arc, but there was not enough light to see the colors, it was pretty cool!
On Sunday we woke early and saw the waterfalls. We pretty much saw everything there was to see in one day. They were definitely beautiful and awing. They were also very easily accessible. We had to do a bit of walking, but no huge steps or walking down infinite number of stairs or steep slopes (as my experience was at numerous waterfalls in Costa Rica.) There is also an island near the base of the falls, but there had been a lot of rain recently and the water was high, so the free ferry to the island was not running. There were also boats that drove you near the base of the falls – so you could get the sensation of being wet. But it was expensive and really didn’t look that impressive, so we saved our money.
Monday we turned around and hopped back on the bus for 22 more hours. I enjoyed the falls, but was disappointed we couldn’t stay more time. There are also old Jusuit Mission ruins relatively near that would have been nice to see. Also, Missiones is the area where they grow yerba mate, the very popular tea like drink here. It would have been fun to visit a plantation, but also not possible in a one and half day trip. Maybe I will find myself back up that way some day…
