25 41.12 S, 054 26.41 W
On Tuesday, Jan 5, we flew from Buenos Aires (AEP) to Puerto
Iguazu (IGR) and into the humid subtropical rainforest in northern Argentina,
where it borders of Paraguay and Brazil to see the famous falls or cataratas in
Spanish. The first European credited with recording the existence of the falls
was the Spaniard, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca in 1541. The name, Iguazu, is from
the Guarani words meaning ‘big water’.
According to Wikipedia, “Legend has it that a deity planned
to marry a beautiful woman named Naipi, who fled with her mortal lover, Taroba,
in a canoe. In a rage, the deity sliced the river, creating the waterfalls and
condemning the lovers to an eternal fall.”
By the numbers, the maximum height of the falls is 269 feet,
with 275 drops or separate falls over a width of 1.7 miles. On average the flow
rate is 62,010 cubic feet of water per second. As this year is an El Nino year
and there has been much flooding in this area, I would not be surprised if the
average is being raised.
The Iguazu National Park was created in 1934, just four
years after Yellowstone was made a national park. In 1984, it was established
as a Natural World Heritage Site by UNESCO and covers an area of 212 square
miles. Inside the park is a narrow gage train that takes you part of the way to
Garganta del Diablo or the Devil’s Throat. From the end of the tracks you walk
on an elevated steel walkway that takes you over the forest floor and the river
to the lookouts over the falls. It is extremely impressive. There are other
walkways around the park to different falls both from above and then below. We
tried to get on a boat tour which not only goes close to the falls but through
but all of the trips were booked while we were there, so we skipped the
showers! As it was, we were misted on the walkways, which felt great in the 95
plus temperatures and 90 plus humidity. We were both very impressed with this
park. The facilities are first rate and the walkways provide up close viewing
of the falls.
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| Rich on the train |
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| Devil's Throat |
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| Looking across the falls, see the people in the upper right hand corner for scale |
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| Elaine posing in front of the falls |
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| Looking down over the falls, see the people on the left and the lower paths in the center of the photo |
The park is home to spotted jaguars, butterflies, coatis, prego
monkeys, coral snakes, toucans, parrots and yellow breasted caimans. We only
saw butterflies and coatis. The coatis are in the raccoon family with ringed
tails but a long snout almost like an anteater. They beg and steal food from the
tourists who are crazy enough to ignore the warning signs which show nasty
looking bites and scratches from these animals.
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| A coati |
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| A butterfly landed on Rich's hand |
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| Rich caught a picture of this butterfly visiting a flower. |
We spent three nights in Puerto Iguazu and returned on
Friday. The weather report forecasted rain for the whole time but we only
experienced two short showers when we were back at the hotel. Having air
conditioning at the hotel was a must. If you get a chance, we would recommend
going. You can also get a Brazilian visa and see the falls from the other side
as well. My ‘foo’ with the visa website was not good before we left so this did
not work out for us but there was plenty to see on the Argentinian side.
