Falling for the falls ❤️ Iguazú and Iguaçu ❤️

When writing my blog posts I often start by choosing the photos that I want to include. I aim to get them down to around 25-30 as any more just makes the post way too long. This time, it's just gonna have to be a long post, I have tried to remove those I'm not that bothered about showing you but I really feel like I've pared them down as far as possible! So, I start by apologising for the length of the post but hope that I have your forgiveness when I tell you this post is about Iguazú or Iguaçu falls depending on if you want the name in Spanish or Portuguese. I've purposefully combined two places in this post, Puerto Iguazú and Foz do Iguaçu as I saw the falls from both the Argentinian and Brazilian sides so you'll get all the pictures associated with the falls. The non-fall stuff I'll put in a separate post.

I flew into Puerto Iguazu from Salta as the bus would have taken around 24 hours. After a minor delay to my flight of around an hour, I got to my hostel around 8pm-ish and then as the hostel had a restaurant attached in which hostel residents got a 15% discount, I decided to avail myself of that offer. After dinner, I was just finishing my drink when 3 people came in and we started chatting; it turned out Noam (aka the wicked stepmother - don't ask!), David and Wun had met earlier in their trip. Anyway, we spent a very pleasant couple of hours together before we called it a night and David and Wun headed back to their hostel; Noam was saying in the same hostel as me.

The next day, I'd been thinking of having a lie in but following Noam's advice I got up reasonably early to head to the Argentinian side of the falls. Turned out to be a great tip! 

On entry into the park, there is a visitor centre that tells you all about its flora and fauna and gives some history on the region and then you can either walk or take a train to the start of the trails around the falls. I opted to take a train there and walk back at the end of the day. The park is really well designed with 4 main trails: the jungle one that I saved for the end of the day, a lower trail, upper trail and then following a further train ride, a trail to the Devil's Throat - the mother of all waterfalls! 

On alighting from the train, I decided to take the lower trail first. I hadn't realised that Iguazú was made up of so many separate falls and as you walk through you pass a number of smaller falls. 

When I got my first glimpse of the main falls though I genuinely did not know what to do with myself. 

I must have been grinning like a loon! They completely take your breath away. When I got to the first viewing platform I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven. 

The falls are so damn beautiful it's ludicrous. After standing looking at this view for ages, I made my way round to the rest of the lower walkway where I was greeted with this view. I completely lost track of the times I said 'holy cow' or variations thereof. After completing the lower trail where there hadn't been too many people, I then made my way to the upper trail where I encountered the irritating tour groups. And I'm sure you can imagine my response to the woman who pushed me out of the way so that she could take her pictures! 

Once the lower and upper trails were completed I then took the train round to the walkway to the Devil's Throat. The walkways are fab, this one took you a long way over the water that feeds the falls 

before you eventually get to the mother (and father actually) of all waterfalls. The sound of the water is incredible and the sight of them is spectacular. 

Had it not been unfair for me to do so and block other people's views, I genuinely think I could have stood there for a good couple of hours just gazing at the falls. After taking a slow meander back to the train station, I then took the train back to the first station where I alighted and went to check if Isla San Martin had opened. This is an island in the falls that you have to get a boat to. It was closed when I'd bought my ticket in the morning as the river was too low but the sign had said to check later. Sadly it was still closed so I didn't get chance to go there. As such, I just took the green trail which went through the forest and headed back to entrance to the park to get my bus. In total I spent around 7 hours at the park. It was wonderful to just meander and take it all in.

As I mentioned, the park is so much more than just the falls and there is a significant amount of wildlife there. They have signs everywhere to tell you not to feed the animals and it's sad that so many people ignore them. As such, many of the animals congregate around the cafeteria areas and so on passing a cafe, one of the first animals I saw were monkeys. By not sticking to the no feeding rule, they're pretty bold and would run and steal food off the tables and take it back to the trees with them. This one was doing just that!

The next animals I saw were coatis. The first one I saw was wandering through the trees and I didn't manage to get a great photo which I thought was a shame until I realised just how many of them there were in the park - again attracted to people sitting eating their sandwiches and feeding them as they wandered past.

I saw some incredible birds. There were many condors circling overhead but you've seen pictures of them before! These birds looked like they were models, I wasn't certain they were real until they moved their heads!

This bird came to see us as we were on the train waiting for it to leave the Devil's Throat stop and head back to the entrance and after a short while another 5 or 6 of the also turned up.

And this was in the water that fed the falls.

We had a couple of lizards

But the biggest diversity was in the number of different butterflies I saw. 

This 88 butterfly was my favourite but incredibly hard to photograph because as soon as it landed it closed its wings and generally only opened them to fly off again.

This was the most intriguing - if you look carefully you'll see that it has transparent sections on its wings!

My next fall visit took place in Brazil. Unfortunately I'd eaten something dodgy on my last night in Puerto Iguazú which had left me feeling pretty rough on the day I arrived in Foz do Iguaçu but fortunately the next day I was well enough to go to the Brazilian side of the falls with David, Wun and Luca, a guy from my hostel. A number of people had said that after the Argentinian side of the falls I might be a little disappointed with the Brazilian side but they were definitely wrong. It was wonderful to get the panoramic view of the falls. On this side, you have a 10km bus journey to the first viewing platform which makes a number of stops on the way for additional paid walking tours that you can do along the way but we chose not to do that and head straight for the falls instead. This is the first view we were greeted with...

and the rest didn't disappoint at all!

This is David, Wun and me at the next platform 

and as you continued round there were so many amazing views and rainbows! One thing that intrigued us was the change in the colour of the water - it had a brown tinge on the Argentinian side but was more white on the Brazilian!

The four of us spent a good few hours wandering round the park and at the end of our visit, the one thing I really wanted to do was a helicopter ride over the falls. It was to be my big treat to myself at the end of my visit so I left David, Wun and Luca in the cafe and headed over the helipad. One thing I was dreading was if I got one of the back row middle seats, as these helicopters seat seven people (4 in the back and three in the front) plus the pilot. This is where being a single really helps though as they kept the three couples together and so I got the spare front seat - the equivalent to the pilot but on the RHS of the chopper. Couldn't have been better as I got both a front and side view. Anyway, here is a little of what I saw...

I hadn't wanted to take too many photos as I didn't want to only see the falls through my camera, I do have a couple of videos but best of all some amazing memories (not much use to you all I do realise!).

Anyway, that marks the end of my falls visit. I am so pleased I did this, they really were incredible and getting to share some of the experience with such lovely people really added to it!