It’s like driving from Sydney to Brisbane via Uluru, you’d never in your life do that detour. Yet here I am, finding myself doing exactly that except in another continent. Iguazu Falls is nice but probably not worth the detour.
Arriving to the bus station in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, I headed straight to the Brazilian side of the waterfalls to get a better perspective of the entire waterfalls as the Argentinian side offered a close up view. Leaving Floripa, I left my bag cover behind because I didn’t think I’d need it to protect backpack from the rain anymore. So of course as soon as I reach the waterfalls the heavens open. With my rain jacket covering me and my bag, I walked as quickly as I could looking like Quasimodo with a sleepless grim look spread across my soaking wet face.
As the sun was setting and a bus that went over the border to Argentina ignored my little thumbs up (he gave me one back so maybe he thought I was just being friendly), I grabbed a taxi with three Brazilian women who were stuck in the same boat / taxi as me. Going through immigration leaving Brazil and entering Argentina was a joke. The only way I can describe it is if you took your passport to the corner shop, they stamped it and off you walked down the street to the corner shop on the other side of the block and got your passport stamped there. That was it. Couldn’t believe how informal it was.
Walked around the national park of Iguazu Falls for the day. It was alright, much smaller than I thought it would be. Loads of animals with rabies there as well so that put me on edge a little bit. Everyone told me I should go on this boat ride so without looking too much into it I just did it.
The boat that drove us under the waterfall seemed like a really good idea but ended up being a bit of a dampner, no pun intended. Getting an absolute drenching that was much needed from the mid thirty degree heat, you couldn’t see a thing. Water smashing down from high above, opening your eyes was like trying to stare at the sky during torrential rain or a hail storm. Reckon I could have sat with the shower on full blast with my eyes closed and I would have had the same experience.
Had organised the taxi driver who drove a bunch of us there to meet us in the same spot at a certain time. He didn’t rock up to that spot and we didn’t remember what he looked like. He started shouting at us saying we were ‘loco’ because we wouldn’t jump in with him at first. I could have sworn it wasn’t him because he was wearing something else when he drove us to the falls. One of the guys with me recognised his missing front tooth and commented how unlikely it was that someone had the exact same tooth missing and that it probably was him. He was a bit of a menace but we ended up getting a lift with him anyway.
The falls haven’t been the most outstanding part of my trip but what you can see in the photos above did make it for pretty spectacular viewing. Not much happening in this town; Puerto Iguazu. There’s about four streets. Buenos Aires is the next stop. I wonder what obstacles that adventure will throw at me