travel

The incredible Iguassu falls is made up of 275 cataratas (waterfalls in Portuguese) towering at 80m tall. The falls borders both Brazil and Argentina, and according to our Lonely Planet, the only way to see the falls properly is to visit both sides.

After an early morning flight from Salvador to São Paulo, a layover in São Paulo, and then a further flight from São Paulo to Foz de Iguacu, we had made it to our final destination. Being that taxis from the airport to the city centre were quite expensive, we opted to take the bus, assuming that the town would be small enough to navigate from the bus window. As it turns out, Foz de Iguacu has a population of 300,000 people and is not so easy to navigate from a bus window. Ryan and I are both terrible on public buses, constantly panicking that we are going to miss our stop, and in a moment of panic, we jumped off the bus too early, having to take a cab from where we were to our hostel. As it turns out, this was still cheaper than taking a cab all the way from airport, so we’ll chalk that up as a win; although, I have to admit that I was fairly disappointed with our inability to successfully take a public bus.

Hostel & Pousada El Shaddai turned out to be a wonderful choice, as they helped us sort out our trip to the falls from both Brazil and Argentina, and helped us arrange our overnight bus onwards to Florianopolis. After getting a good night’s sleep, we (successfully!) took the public bus to the Brazil side of the falls. After paying the entrance fee and hopping on the tourist bus that winded through Parque Nacional de Iguacu, we made our way by foot towards the falls. As we got closer, the roar of the water was unbelievalbe, and getting my first glimpse of the spectacular falls was a pretty big “wow” moment for me. Photos and words can not do justice for how magnificent the falls were. There was water everywhere, crashing down over the rocks and into the Rio Iguacu. The beauty of the falls is complemented by the lush greenery that surrounds the falls. As we wandered along the 1km walkway, I snapped about a hundred photos of each waterfall from every angle. Just when I thought I had seen the best part, we would round another bend and get another amazing view. As we got higher, we were able to walk out on a grated walkway to the Devil’s Throat, where we felt the full effects of the waterfall’s power, getting wetter and wetter the further we walked out. By the end of our walk, my hair was drenched, and my clothes were damp, but it was well worth it to get a view of one of the most powerful waterfalls, as well as to look out over a few of the others.

When we had finished exploring the waterfalls, we headed across the road from the park entrance to Parque de Arves, which is a tropical bird park. Although I’m not the biggest fan of what Ryan likes to call “animal prisons”, it was pretty cool to see tropical birds up close. Although many of the birds were caged off, there were larger cages that we could walk in to get up close and personal with the birds. Seeing a toucan up close was definitely a highlight for me. I also enjoyed the owls and macaws, and being able to hold a macaw at the end was pretty awesome. We finished up at the bird park, and caught the bus back to our hostel, stopping at the supermarket for bus snacks for the following night. Upon arriving back at our hostel, we found out the wifi wasn’t working, which would normally not be a problem, except that we needed to print our reciprocity receipts to get into Argentina the following day (thanks for charging us a reciprocity fee, Argentina!). We frantically wandered the streets in search of an open Internet cafe, and luckily found a woman who was willing to help us. We packed and got everything organized for the following day and headed to bed to get a good nights sleep.

The following day our driver picked us up at 8:30am, and we headed over to Argentina. The driver took our passports into the border crossing, making the entire process quite simple. Upon arriving at Iguazu falls in Argentina, we immediately set out to do a jet boat tour up the Rio Iguacu and into the falls. On our way there, the sky opened up and we got caught in a complete downpour, so we were soaked before we even got on the boat. The boat went over some pretty crazy rapids that even scared me a little bit (hard to do), although the views of the falls were well worth it. After snapping a few photos of the falls, the boat drove into 2 different waterfalls, where we were soaked by the powerful spray of the water. Despite swallowing too much water, it was a pretty cool experience. Fortunately, within an hour of finishing our boat tour, the sun came out and we were able to dry off enough to continue exploring the falls. We took a train to the very top and had another opportunity to wander out to the Devil’s Throat. It was neat to do this from the Argentina side, as the view was completely different than the Brazilian side. Looking out over the falls, all I could see was opaque white, which was both scary and thrilling. It is so crazy to think that if you jumped off that, you would fall for multiple meters before hitting the water and being held down by the powerful force of the falls. We spent a few hours exploring the falls from all angles, and visiting as many view points as possible. The whole experience was unforgetttable, and definitely a highlight of the trip thus far.

The van picked us back up just as it began to pour rain again, and although it poured the whole way back, it stopped long enough for us to grab some dinner, get our stuff organized and get to the bus station. Unfortunately, our bus was was 45 minutes late, which is not the way you want to start off a 14 and a half hour journey, but what can you do. The overnight trip was actually quite pleasant thanks to a movie, bus snacks, and of course my handy sleeping pill. Waking up the following morning, I was looking forward to arriving in Florianopolis and getting a start on the day. Even with our late start, we should have been there by 11:30am at the latest; however, we continued to make stop after stop and before I knew it, it was past 2pm. We finally arrived in Florianopolis around 2:30pm, bought our bus ticket for our next journey, and then made our way from the bus station to Barra de Lagoa, 2 public buses and 1 hour away. This time, we successfully made it to our destination, and it the cute little beach side town was well worth the adventure.