Iguazu Falls

A professional photo

One of the world's great natural wonders is located on the borders of Argentina and Brazil, near Paraguay. In 2010 it was named as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.  When Eleanor Roosevelt saw the falls, she exclaimed, “Poor Niagara”.  They are indeed spectacular.

 

The tropical rain forest provides the ideal setting for the torrents of water that fall and crash with a thunderous noise onto the rocks below, sending spray shooting back into the air to make beautiful rainbows. The Rio Iguassu, a tributary of the Parana, widens to a distance of two miles just above the precipice over which the river drops almost 200 feet, to create Iguassu Falls.

 The falls were discovered by conquistador Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca in 1541. Its name comes from the Guarani Indian expression for "big water".

We left the ship on Monday, February 11 and flew to the Brazilian side of Iguazu.  There we were met by Alberto, our driver and kind of guide.  His English was limited, but our group leader, Penny, is fluent in Spanish and between them we were able to communicate quite well.  After checking into our hotel, Alberto took us to the Three Frontiers.  Two rivers meet here and form the borders of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay.

The next morning, we met our guide for the day, Diego.  He guided us through the Argentina side of the falls.  After entering the National Park, we took a train to different locations where we could walk on platforms out to the falls.  The weather was perfect for photos and the spray from the falls cooled us off as the temperature and humidity were quite high.

 

Argentina side

 

There were 8 of us in our little tour group:  Penny & Marilyn from California, Jenny and Graeme from Brisbane Australia, Jean and Lourdes from Montreal, Canada, and us.  There was a little bit of a language barrier with the couple from Montreal as their primary language is French, but Penny can speak French also, so she was able to help out at times.  We enjoyed a lot of laughs with everyone.

 

The Aussies and us decided to take a boat trip on the river.  We stripped down to our swimsuits, donned a lifejacket and headed up the river to the falls for an entirely different perspective of the falls.  Several times the boat was steered to go right under the falls and we got drenched!  There was a videographer aboard who filmed the entire trip….we bought the DVD but haven’t watched it yet.  The ride on the river was a blast.

After the boat ride under the falls with our Aussie friends

The next day we had a new guide, Sebastian, for the Brazilian side of the falls.  So back over the border we went, each time having to go through customs.  We stopped at a bird sanctuary where we could see many of the 450 species of colorful birds that live in the rain forests of Brazil. 

 

Toucan

 

While there, the skies opened up and it started to pour rain.  This area gets over 11 feet of rain each year.  This helps keep the falls flowing, I’m sure.  We donned our rain ponchos (a requisite for this trip) and continued on.  After entering the National Park, we boarded a bus and headed to the viewpoint for the falls.  The Brazil side offers more of a panorama of the falls.  We enjoyed every minute in spite of the rain pouring down. 

 

Brazilian side up close

 

For a late lunch we stopped at a local Brazilian restaurant where we enjoyed a buffet lunch with lots of local dishes.  The meats were served by waiters coming to the table with roasted meat on a skewer.  They carved several varieties of meat, and it was all delicious.  Terry got to pretend he was doing some carving for a photo op.

 

We are so glad that we took this side trip to Iguazu Falls.  We had a great time and made a few new friends along the way.  Our guides were excellent and all the travel went smoothly.

On February 14, we packed up and flew to Buenos Aires, where we reboarded the ship.