Saturday 11th February - Iguazu Falls, Brazil (and rain)

Saturday 11th Feb - Iguazu Falls, Brazil…Hot and Wet...Very Wet

Today was a bugger.  We had to get up at 5.45am to get to the airport for an early 2 hour flight up to the Amazon rain forest and the Iguazu (pronounced "ee waz u”) falls.  An early start this morning after our late night at the tango club – not such a good idea ......and due to bumpy and long flight on the flight up, we only managed to get a glass of water and no food.

Our flight breakfast to Iguazu went up the wazu !!.

We flew in over miles and miles of pristine rain forest, through the Amazonian storms and into a wet and very hot (27 degrees) forest to be greeted by our smiling guide telling us we were off to Brazil  and not going to the hotel first. Steve wanted to kill her.

Brazilian security was tight and they took
another page of our passports !!

On the recommendation of our guide, we dumped our cases, grabbed our waterproofs and headed off into the Iguazu National Park. We crossed the border into Brazil, got our passports stamped again with more half page stamps and headed down to the stunning views of the Brazilian side of the Iguazu falls.

In truth, Steve had not much reading up on this regions or falls and after 30 minutes walking with full waterproofs and a heavy camera bag was starting to combust internally and had to remove all waterproof clothing as he said he felt like boil in the bag meal.  So, we arrived to heavy rain, a staggering 100% humidity and the temperature was rising by the hour to over 30 degrees.  Steve had worked out that he was wetter inside his waterproofs than without them and Janette had completely given up on her hair.

How do we describe the sheer scale and force of nature we experienced?...well whatever
expectation we had soon went out of the window with the sights we saw.    We went right down to the walkway at Devil’s Throat, the largest and most powerful of the 480 water falls. The noise was deafening and the spray soaked us, us but it was completely exhilarating although at that humidity, we doubted if we would ever dry again.
The river breaks into over 400 waterfalls all between 100m and almost 250m of fall which creates a most thunderous roar and a mist that covers many hundreds of meters.

It was however, so wet that in some ways it was really difficult to photograph without getting all your gear wet.

Video - "Up The Wazu"

Being the Amazon rain forest, our first encounter was with a very large lizard type ugly thing and then cute but aggressive furry animals called Coati (Meaning cold nose - not something we were experiencing today as we dripped with sweat for over 4 hours).

Exhausted by our day’s escapades and late night, early start, a quiet evening in is the order of the day before we tackle the Argentinian side of the same falls tomorrow.  In truth, we were by now both virtually invalided but the exercise, humidity and later, the Mendoza fizz and local beer (which was required for medicinal purposes), seemed to do us good.

All images for individual days are here South America Image Files