Argentine Iguazu

The first real day of our tour had us up early for breakfast and a 5am departure for the Buenos Aires domestic airport. The drive through the darkened street was pretty with lights picking out features.

Getting through the formalities was straightforward however there was a very long trek to our gate.

View from our gate lounge toward the city

Once up in the air it was apparent that there had been a lot of recent rain. Rivers were running full, a brown, and lots of areas were covered in water.

Approaching Iguazu was announced by a plume of spray rising above the falls.

Down on the ground the large party took some time to be organised onto buses and transported to our hotels. The 140 odd people were spread over two hotels. We ended up at the Amerian Portal which was pretty comfortable and fairly well located.

Our guide from the airport gave us a wonderful briefing about getting a taxi to take us into town and also to visit the point where the three countries, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, meet.  We were later to discover that we were only a km from the centre of town and less than 100m to the three frontiers. Just as well we forewent the taxi! No points for Elizabeth the ignorant guide.

Trevor and I walked into town and eventually found an ATM that was willing to give us cash. It was good to have some local currency.

Later I went for a walk and discovered that our hotel was right next door to the 3 frontiers.

The reddish river was the one coming in through Argentina. The colour caused by high iron levels. The blue river was from Brazil, I think

Trevor and I took advantage of the hotel spa and we joined a large group of our fellow travellers, all Aussies, for dinner at the hotel.

With such an early start to the day and still adjusting to the time shift we dropped into bed early.

Our start to our Argentine Iguazu day was early with our bus scheduled to leave at 7:15am. After another early breakfast it was out the door.

At least our guide today was knowledgeable and Veronica took good care of our large group of 50 or so.

A number of trails loop through the national park to take visitors to view points for the array of falls that make up the Iguazu complex. Fortunately for us there was a train to take us out to the furtherest trail head and to return us to the middle of the park.

The sheer number of falls, volume of water and breadth of the falls is hard to describe. Capturing them in photos does not do them justice so bear in min that the following photos just give a feel for Iguazu.

 Note: the water was a reddish brown

Spray was an ever present hazzard. We all managed to get quite wet as the misty spray drifted over us

That is enough for this posting.

All up we walked over 9kms during our waterfall meanderings.

The next post will look at the Brazilian side of the falls as well as some of the birds and animals that were encountered in the parks.