Our first overland journey of the trip and it was 18 hours on a bus – all to see a bit of water and cross a couple of borders. Okay it wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds, long distance buses in Argentina are modern luxury double decker coaches, so we hardly roughed it, but it was a long time to sit in one spot and the gits don’t even let you jump off for a minute when they stop. Managed to get a little sleep (Emma got quite a lot but she categorically denies that). The landscape is completely flat once you get out into the country which kept us interested for a while (about 10 minutes), but it also meant a perfect savannah sunset.
We arrived In Puerto Iguazu at 9am’ish and half an hour later found a place to stay (okay its a bit dark and the bathroom is a bit hot and stinky, but hey its cheap, near to the bus station and we will hardly be there anyway) and were heading out of town again on our first local bus of the trip to the Iguazu National Park to see some waterfalls.
Only one word describes the falls – awesome! In the middle of the jungle is this mass of big falls, Huka Falls aint even a baby compared to most of these beasts. Spent 7 hours doing all the walks (perfect blue skies, temp mid to late 20s). I was just starting to think that a jungle trip would be fun when we passed a sign telling people to stay on the walkway because otherwise the snakes would eat them and then shortly after we saw our first Caiman. So went off the idea pronto.
We also watched racoons ransack a cafe, saw a wild turtle and wild guinea pigs, a couple of exotic birds, big jungle ants and 2 toucans. But mainly the day was about waterfalls and more waterfalls.
We were going to do a jungle walk towards the end of day, and in fact we did start it but DEET was having no effect on the mossies (they aren’t nice mossies in this corner of Argentina and carry all the mossie-borne diseases going) the sign warning that we may encounter some hazards on the track (see pic) didn´t worry us… So we ditched it as a bad idea after 10 mins.
We’re going to hang out in the town here (Puerto Iguazu) for a few days as the weather is just so nice.
Observations:
- “Fast food” means a place sells manky overpriced sandwiches
- At night the appeal of our room diminishes as the cockroaches come out to play, the walls with the neighbours are very thin and some prat likes to drive round town playing music so loud our room shakes
- We can afford to do lots here and not blow our budget
- Eating is not pleasurable – we never want to eat another piece of white bread again and pizza is definitely off the menu
- If we do have to eat any more white bread we aint gonna poo for a looong time!
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Marie & Emma's Travel Journal 