THE Falls of a lifetime... Iguacu Falls, Brazil side

We survived the 21 hour bus ride from Tucuman to Iguazu, Argentina with a little sleep, lots of reading on the Kindle and listening to our favorite tunes on our iPods. Thank goodness for those nice technological advances.

Iguazu Falls

Iguacu Falls

Iguassu Falls

Cataracas

Cascadas

Waterfalls

All of the above ways to write the name of these famous Falls is correct, depending on what language you are speaking/spelling. Today, we visited Iguacu (try this for pronunciation… “ig-whaa-zoo”) National Park in Brazil. Leaving our hotel in Argentina, we took a taxi for about 30 minutes to the border. First, you hand over your passport to the Argentine Border control. Then, you drive a few more minutes and arrive at the Brazilian Border and hand over your passport again. If we didn’t already have a Brazilian visa (we had to get one to go on our cruise) we wouldn’t have bothered to go to the falls in Brazil because the visa is $250 U.S.!! Ever since the U.S. starting charging the Brazilians the same amount to come to the U.S., they, do the same to us.  Tit for tat.

When you travel, you have to be flexible, open-minded and “go-with-the-flow.” Plus, a sense of humor is important. Today, we did all of the above. Here’s why…  Yesterday, we met 2 Brits who told us that they hired Carlos and his taxi to take them to the Falls in Brazil. He zipped them through the border, waited while they visited the falls, etc. etc. and he spoke some English. So we had the desk guy at the hotel call “Carlos” and sure enough, he would pick us up at 10:00am. And yes, he spoke English. Well, this morning at breakfast, we saw the Brits and told them what luck we had in hiring their guy Carlos. Laugh. Laugh… he was taking them to the airport at 10:00am. Hmmm, we wondered what “Carlos” we’d hired? We’ve learned over our years of traveling that when this sort of thing happens you just accept it and see what happens. "Esta bien." (it's okay) 

So, in true Argentine fashion, Ramon showed up to take us, and no, he did not speak English. We chuckled and drove off with Ramon! Most certainly, Carlos hired him to take us since he couldn’t, but this is the way the world works in South America and you do all of the things I mentioned in my first sentence… mainly chill…it will all work out.  And it did. Ramon and Bob had a “conversation” in the front seat of the taxi (a few words here, a few words there equals communication!). What we did know was that for the next 5 hours he’d take us to Brazil, drop us off for 3 hours at the Falls, pick us up outside of the visitor’s center and drive us to the Bird Park and drop us off for 1 hour there and drive us back to Argentina and our hotel! …  he did, and we loved it all.

Oh, the Falls!

On the Brazilian side, you get the panoramic scenery of the Falls… all 300 cataracas (waterfalls). This is during the summer rainy season’ there may be less in the winter. 

When Carlos dropped us off, we bought our tickets to the Parque and took the Park bus to the first walkway entrance and along with the rain and spray-drenching we got from the Falls itself, we got soaked through and through.

We’ve never experienced anything like this… I had goosebumps the whole time we were walking along the 2.5 miles of the walkways along the Falls in the rain. It was so amazing that it was almost not real. We were flabbergasted to see the Falls plunge a height of a 24 story building! We walked along through a dense tropical jungle (Atlantic coast rainforest) while experiencing these awesome close-up vistas of over 300 waterfalls---- All HUGE!

On the Barzilian side, you get the panoramic scenery of the Falls… all 300 separate  cataracas (waterfalls).

The thunderous roaring noise (as loud as a train) from these pounding falls, the relentless spray, the rain, the jungle, the enormity of the falls and the entire experience---- made us feel like that little kid again! We laughed, got soaked and I took a ton of pictures. We also took pictures of other people and they for us. One couple had on see-through ponchos. The dad had his wee-small baby under the poncho while mom held the hand of her 3-4 year old son. We took a family picture for them and we all were laughing at the insanity of the rain, the mist, the gorgeous Falls, the joy of it all!

Watch out for the quatis! This animal will try to grab the food away from you. They are very fast and too used to humans. Sounds like a typical problem in a National Park doesn’t it?

If you’ve ever wanted to visit Iguacu, Iguazu, Iguassu Falls, do it! You will not be disappointed. We’d vote for the Falls to be one of the Seven Wonders of the World. National Wonder? Yes! Epic? Yes! Don’t miss the world’s most spectacular waterfalls .