Wow. Wow. Wow. That about sums up the falls, quite eloquently too I think. They were just spectacular. I don't even know what to say about them! For just $A5, we were transported to and from the Falls and given a small lunch. This is more like the Argentinian cheapness we keep hearing about but failing to see - a lot of prices have been almost Australian prices. Hell, we just paid $A6 tot get our washing done. That's worse!!
So, we started our journey through the large area that encompasses the falls. The main falls, the Devil's Throat, we visited last (better in the afternoon apparently), but we got to see the most beautiful one first, I think it was called Salta Boselli. It stretched for a couple of hundred metres (? I'm not sure - I'm not so good with distance) and consisted of dozens and dozens of small cascading waterfalls. Between these ill-defined boundaries were lucid green mosses and waterplants, glistening in the sun beautifully. To top it off, there was a beautiful big and very clear rainbow along the mid of the falls, sparkling in the mist produced by the ultra-clear water.
I was gobsmacked - it was just stunning. Appropriately, I had Birds of Tokyo's 'Violet' stuck in my head (for the non-listeners, a major chorus line is 'You take my breath away..') I could have lingered here for hours. Took WAY too many photos, so I apologise if the photos all turn out the same!! It was just unbelievable. We walked around the lower trail and looked at these falls from all different angles, and just marvelled at their splendour. Just gorgeous.
Saw another couple of small falls, Dos hermanas (two sisters) and salta chica (baby/small waterfall). Took the upper trail next, and was inundated by tourists, but unlike Chichen Itza, this didn't take away from the beauty of the falls. Mind you, the upper trail wasn't as spectacular.
On our way through the trails though, we encountered coatis, which I was very excited about initially, however my excitement wore off when I realised (when amongst the plethora of tourists) that they were quite accustomed to people and begging for food. I wanted to hit the people trying to feed/pat them and hoped the coatis would bite them. Well, they were cute.
So then we took the train off to the Devil's Throat, where there was an unbelievable amount of water throwing itself off a cliff. The sheer volume just makes you wonder how on earth evaporation replaces it all. We didn't stay to long, the roar of the falls and the rain of the spray made it difficult to converse (if for the giggling). We sighed and headed back to grab an icecream.
We had a short nap on the lawn near the visitor centre, then headed up the last trail which we discovered was NOT marked to scale on the map. Thinking we could stretch it out to an hour, we discovered that the trail (one way) was 3km long (plus another 500 to descend to the bottom of the falls). We only just made it there and back. The colour of the water was amazing though, bright red. Just fantastic.
Alongside the amazing falls we got to see some really cool animals though; the aforementioned coatis, beautifully coloured birds, amazingly coloured butterflies, including one that had a bright green proboscis and another that had '88' on its wings.
All in all it was an amazing day, and absolutely my highlight of South America so far. Don't mind that I haven't even been here a week. It was just stunning.
So now I am frantically finishing this post so that we can check out of the hostel and make it to the consulate on time to get ourselves a visa for brazil. Hope you are all well. Mwah!!
Iguazu Falls photos
