We arrived in foz do Iguacu around 6pm and met up with our Airbnb host and climbed the 4 stories to the top floor of an apartment complex. It wasn’t one of the best places we have stayed but it was sufficient for a few days in Iguazu. We headed out to the falls the next day (Wednesday) on the Brazilian side; the Iguacu river is the border of between Argentina and Brazil. We parked our car and hopped on a bus (the only way in) and headed to the falls which is located inside a large national park preserving Atlantic forest a semi-deciduous forest. We got off the bus at a stop near the lower part of the falls we were greeted by a pack of Coatis that surrounded the tourist we were dropped off with. The girls loved them although we were warned not to feed or pet them, but we took lots of pictures.
Once we turned our attention to the falls we stood in awe of the beautiful cascades or in portugese they are called cataratas and these were just the lower falls. The falls are a series of over 275 individual waterfalls that formed by eroding through 135 million year old basaltic lava flows with interbedded sand stone. Faults formed vertically through the lava flows which allowed the river to flow through and erosion did the rest. Like Niagara falls the Iguacu falls is eroding up stream and will continue to migrate. Although the falls are not the tallest, widest or greatest flowing of water falls it ranks very high in all three categories, it is much taller than Niagara and at time has a flow greater than it famous north american counterpart.
We walked along a 1 mile path with several views of the falls until getting to a view point with views of the devils throat, the largest and most impressive part of the falls. We took lots of pictures but the kids as usual were annoyed with posing and hungry.
We had a buffet lunch near the top of the falls and then headed to a nature walk and boat ride that promised to get us soaked from head to toe. The rain forest was fun except that Caroline was misbehaving and we didn’t see any animals, probably scared off by the crying children. At the end of the nature hike we took a boat ride and had to navigate some of the rapids on our way up river to the falls where we moved very close to the cascades which soaked us from head to foot.
It was a blast everyone had a ton of fun except for Caroline who cried the whole time. Julie on the other hand loved it and refused to wear a rain jacket which might have been smart because we all got totally drenched anyway. After a full day, we went home and had some leftover dinner and hit the sack.
Travel-Trotter 