My mind has been blown! The Iguazu Falls were incredible and make a mockery of all other waterfalls we have marvelled at so far on our travels.
Our flight from Rio to Foz do Iguassu went off without any problems and we arrived on the Brazilian side of the falls just after lunch with plenty of time to get a few buses across the border to our hostel on the Argentinian side of the falls, gaining our 3rd entrance stamp to this country. Our hostel was very impressive, boasting a huge swimming pool out the front with a large garden area around it and a huge patio with plenty of tables and chairs just outside the entrance. We later discovered that this building used to be a casino. As we had had a long day we decided to take the hostel up on their offer of an all you can eat BBQ with plenty of vegetarian options and a samba show afterwards. The BBQ itself was very tasty with more than enough food, and we were joined at our table by some of our Aussie friends from Florianopolis so dinner conversation was catching up on how everyone had recovered from their time on the island. The after dinner entertainment was strange to say the least. No sooner had we swallowed our last mouthful than a very excitable man in a jazzy suit came out to some ear drum bursting samba tunes. The show lasted about an hour and became overly audience participative, bearing in mind few of us were able to move too much due to the ridiculous amount of food we had just shoved down! At one point he had all the girls up trying to to the samba bum wiggle and shortly after he had the boys up in equally awkward situations. I was chosen to be one of the two guinea pigs to have to kneel down, bang randomly on a tambourine while an extremely scantily clad older lady shook her bum in my face! The whole thing just kept getting weirder and weirder and we were all in agreement that the best part was when it finished.
Continuing with our theme of being extremely laid back travellers we spent the next day lounging by the pool rather than rushing off to see the falls. We had calculated that we needed to stay in Iguazu for about 5 days to spread the cost of our transport to and from it, so we were in no rush to do very much. We did, however, book a cheaper hostel closer to the bus station for later in the week so that we could save a few more pennies and so that our walk to catch our next long bus to Salta was much easier on the legs.
Our 3rd day in Iguazu was spent admiring the falls. We got into the National Park at 9am and left at around 4pm and the whole time just flew by. There are 2 main walks to do, the lower circuit to look up at the falls and the upper circuit to look down from them, that took about an hour or so each. As we had got there so early we pretty much had the lower circuit to ourselves and were able to take our time at all the view points to marvel at the near permanent rainbows that were created all over the place and the spectacle of all the different parts of the falls. We were even able to get a 30 second boat ride across to an island in the middle of it all and wandered round there pretty much alone. That first walk was breathtaking, with views of all parts of the falls and with thousands of beautifully coloured butterflies for company. By the time we got to the upper circuit the large tour buses had arrived and the park was getting busier. Fortunately, as we didn't have to catch a bus at a certain time we were able to stroll through and miss the peaks of the crowds as we went. The last thing on the to do list was take a train and a short walk to the centre fold of the falls; Garganta del Diablo, the devils throat. This is the largest waterfall I have ever seen and we were genuinely in awe of it as we stood at the lookout just next to where it cascaded down into the river below. The spray from the falls rose up high above the the upper river and was a welcome relief from the hot weather as it covered all who stood too close. It reminded me of how I felt when we first clapped eyes on the magnificent Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia. Just as then, we both felt we could stand and stare all day without getting bored.
When we did finally return to our hostel we were told that tonight would be an all you can buffet followed by a tango show. We cooked for ourselves and, along with all the other guests who had endured the samba show, we watched from a safe, escapable distance. As it turned out, the tango show was exactly what it said on the tin and was just a show by some very impressive dancers and was thoroughly enjoyable.
As I said before we had a few more days to kill here so we spent our next day changing hostels, twice. We arrived at our new hostel, Che Legarto (a very well known chain of hostels) and were given the keys to an empty 8 man dorm. We were initially quite happy about this until we opened the door and were greeted with the dirtiest room we have experienced so far. With several of the mattresses stood up on their ends we decided pretty quickly to change rooms. When I went back down to reception to see if this was possible I had hardly said a word before the receptionist asked if the room was dirty and would I like another. This should have struck warning bells with me straight away but it was hot and I was tired so I just accepted the key and moved rooms. Our second room was only slightly cleaner and it didn't have any aircon, which we were paying for so we moved rooms a final time to a dirty 4 man dorm. While I was running up and down the stairs Gen was having a good look round each of these rooms and found a dead bug on one of the mattresses in the first room! Not knowing what a bed bug looks like Gen did some research on the net as to what we should be looking for and what the warning signs are for such delightful creatures! We applied what she had learned in our third room and after having seen all the warning signs all over the mattress I uncovered some live ones hanging around on the bed frame. Safe to say we high tailed it out of there as quick as our legs could carry us and our oversized rucksacks. Again, the receptionist took the news of bedbugs in her stride as if it was a very common occurrence. I tried to impress on her the need to clean the beds but she wasn't interested! What an awful place. We managed to get a room in Peter Pan hostel and, due to our now heightened paranoia, we did a full room inspection before deciding to stay there. We actually had a very pleasant 2 nights there and had a nice big BBQ with an Aussie couple, one of which was also a vegetarian.
Our bus ride to Salta was meant to take us a mere 24 hours but 6 hours in to the journey we went to change buses in a small town called Posadas only to be told of a 24 hour bus drivers strike on that day! We had to find ourselves a room for the night and amuse ourselves from check out at 10am the next day until 4pm in the bus station, with all our bags. A lot of sitting on benches was done that day. We finally arrived in Salta, a day later than planned, and walked into our very nice hostel at around 9am to be greeted by Lisbeth and George, a couple we had met a few months earlier in Buenos Aires! We spent the next day or 2 enjoying the somewhat limited sights and sounds of the town, taking a cable car up to a fairly impressive view of the region was about it. We also decided that we would join them in San Pedro de Atacama for a few days before going on the famous Salt Flats tour to Bolivia with them. This was partly because it is always nice to travel with friends but also because we had heard many a horror story about the tours through the salt flats and figured that we would have safety in numbers! We shall see..
Quintastic.