At last, to Iguaza Falls

The third largest falls in the world according to some counts. It all depends upon the measurement—the widest, the deepest, the fastest, the amount of water that tumbles over the cliffs, who knows what else. Waterfalls, that’s catarata in Spanish, are beautiful no matter how they are measured. On hot sunny days in Argentina you also get lots of butterflies—yellow, orange, black and white, ones with eyes on their wings as a form of disguise, and various shades of blue. Some even were still enough for me to lock them in place with my camera. We were blessed by the appearance of a Grand Toucan. Then there were the iguanas, an alligator, the biggest ants you’ll probably ever see (probably 1.5” long) and of course the coatis (the Argentine version of raccoons), the animals that no one is supposed to feed, and many think it’s fun to watch them climb on the table to take your food away. They climbed in and out of the trash cans for food. Needless to say, they were well fed.

The Argentines have done a nice job of providing tourists with views of the falls from many angles. Walkways are throughout the park to save nature and get up close and personal with the spray. A train talks you from one end of the park to the other. There are views from the top and the bottom, and a chance to take a boat ride that goes right up to the falls and gets everyone mightily soaked. Luckily dry bags are included in that excursion. There’s a jeep ride to take you through the” wilderness” for a chance to see the wildlife, and there’s a nice but short rafting excursion for a peaceful way to end the day. When you want to get away from the crowds, there’s a 3 hour hike to play in a small waterfall.

As I was gazing at the falls from the top, trying to take in the expanse of the falls and the force of the water, I was amazed and dismayed to see a turtle cascading down the falls—tail first, head up, indicating to me that he had been trying to swim away, and though turtles are strong swimmers and faster than you might imagine, the force of the water was too much for him. I tried to convince myself he was a creature of water and would survive the fall, but the park rangers weren’t so optimistic. The little museum within the park talked about the differences in the fish above and below the falls, given what natural predators exist, but didn’t say anything about turtles.

The town of Iguazu Falls is not much to speak of. The predominant feature is the red clay. This is noticed from the plane. It rims all the shore line. The streets and sidewalks in town are a rich terra cotta color as are the dirt paths, and brick buildings. The town caters to tourists, with most restaurants accepting pesos, US dollars and Euros. As in other Argentine towns, travel agents are numerous and stay open until at least 11 p.m. to accommodate late arriving tourists, except Saturday night.

Getting to Iguazu Falls meant traveling from Bariloche to Buenos Aires. Aerolineas Argentina (AR) made so many changes to my flights, I stopped paying attention until my travel agent alerted me to the fact that AR changed the destination airport in Buenos Aires, meaning I was going to have to get myself from the international airport to the domestic airport with insufficient time—that is, until they delayed the flight from BA to Iguazu. When I got to the airport in Bariloche, there was a three hour mechanical delay which for some reason caused AR to reroute the plane to the domestic airport. I just made the connection, but my luggage did not. I was okay with that since it had all my Antarctic stuff and I wisely carried on my other case until I changed my accommodations. Luckily, even though my Spanish is horrible, the person at the first hotel was able to figure out my luggage would be arriving at his hotel the next day and without me fretting about it, he somehow conveyed to AR to get it to the hostel I’d moved to. Yes, in this case I preferred the hostel over a single room in the dark, Iguazu-red hotel.