5:45 my watch alarm goes off in tandem with the preset phone call wake up call we all registered at the front desk last night, okay I’m awake or awake again, not a great night sleep - probably a combination of new bed, being alone and excitement for the day to come. Our forecast did read sunny with a high of 36 celsius, so we were all dialled in for a wonderful visit to the falls. Hotel breakfast not bad, not great but not bad, so, good enough to get you going - nothing to write home about or in this case blog about, lol. Onwards we go with our Driver, Anna and Guide, Onrico, arrive right on time at 7 am, in the van and off we go to Argentina, yes Argentina. The Iguazu Falls are the dividing line between Brazil and Argentina, 80% of the Falls are in Argentina while 20% are in Brazil.
With passports in hand we clear customs and we are very fortunate that we are early on Sunday morning as there are no waits at the border, very lucky for us. We enter the National Park and the narrow gauge train to take us to Devil's Throat, one of the very impressive falls of the 287 present at this site. In total the Iguazu falls make up the largest waterfall system in the world and one of Nature’s seven wonders of the World. The Devils Throat canyon is 80-90 meter wide and some 70 to 80 meters deep, with an incredible elevated walkway that leads you there - did I mention how incredible it was and how fantastic our day was. We walked amongst the paths leading to almost infinite amount of vistas for this entire waterfall system, I have yet to upload my pics as I write this but using my three cameras it maybe tough narrowing down the ones that I will be uploading to the blog. After about 4 hours on the Argentine side we headed back to the Brazil side (actually on route as we go over the bridge dividing the two countries there is actually a third country that intersects here, Paraguay), no wait again at the border. We stopped for a Brazilian all you can eat buffet for about $12 USD, where you go and get all you sides at the buffet and then the waiters come around with freshly barbecued, well, just about everything. All delicious as we wash it down with a local beer.
The Brazilian side of the falls is also very beautiful as you are more or less looking at the falls on the Argentine side. The highlight on this side is walking out on the elevated walkway and hearing and feeling the energy of all this water. We did get a little wet and I did pull out the gopro for some of the pics that the regular camera would of had a problem with - just a little misty out there.
We wrapped up and believe me it was hard to walk away from this incredible site, by about 5pm. Back to the hotel by about 6, so a good solid 11 hour day - many did not make it our for dinner. Marianne and I did grab something down the street as we turn our attention to our flights back and as usual with this tour we may have another problem. The flight booking number that we were all given for tomorrow only shows four people on it, great, my name does not show up, so three of us may have a problem. Again, I am reserving my final judgement on the guy that assembled this tour but so far he is on my, do not use list, there 24 / 7 help line and email is currently unmanned as it were - not very impressed at all as he has no clue of the amount of stress is on us at this point. One issue is to get back to the ship on time, the other is that if this flight is overbooked (as they all are), we may miss the ship and if we miss the ship we do not know where the ship will allow us to rebound due to the agency restriction at any of these small ports - so, yeah, we are not thrilled. Anyway, that looks like tomorrow’s fun, until then I will review my pics for upload, hope you enjoy…
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