220m
Up early AGAIN! Once again we didn’t have time for breakfast as we were off to see the Argentinian side of the falls, and had a shuttle bus scheduled for 6:20am. We had also confirmed this with the front desk when we checked in. However, no bus. At 6:22 someone arrived at the desk and I asked where our bus was. “Oh no, the bus service starts at 7:30.” Not for us and not today. Check again. “Oh, I can see you have an early bus booked.” Shame I can’t see the bus. Scrambling with mobile phones and radios and the bus appears. As the hotel is in the national park the speed limit is only 50km per hour so we meander off to the front gates. The only positive point being that we saw several agouti (think small capybara) at the side of the road.
Getting to the entrance we saw our next ride waiting and we boarded this one, heading for the border. Customs was no problem. Drive slowly through Brazilian border without having to stop and the driver taking our passports to the Argentinian customs and passed through without any stamps involved. Awesome. However we then waited at a hotel car park to join another group and then headed for the entrance to the Argentinian national park to meet the rest of the group and our guide, Freddy. All good? No. Some of the new members to the group had not pre-purchased their tickets and as the park did not accept US dollars, were scrounging around to find enough Argentinian currency to pay. 15 minutes later and much borrowing from other members, everyone had a ticket.
A boat tour to the falls had been booked for us so we headed there first, which meant lining up (ha! like there was anything resembling that) and waiting until 9:10 to board a bus to take us to the pier. A number of people had sneaked forward in the queue as their friends were at the front and it looked as if we wouldn’t make the first bus. However, they needed 3 more people to fill the bus and Fran and I took the opportunity to jump the queue. Maybe not completely Kosher but hey!
Kitted up with life jacket and water-proof bag and we boarded our zodiac for an Iguazuan shower. The trip up river took about 8 minutes and we arrived at the junction to the falls, Brazil on the left and Argentina on the right. We moved right and then, announcing this would be the time to put away anything which you might want to keep dry, revved the engines. Shoes, shirts, cameras, phones, hats all were shoved into the bags and sealed. Then we moved forward into the spray, and more forward until the spray reached all over the boat, and then forward more. We got drenched. Everything was soaked. Not good enough. Pull out and this time reverse into the spray. A zodiac of sopping humies emerged and we headed over to the Brazilian side of the falls. Rinse and repeat was the order under the ‘Three Musketeers’ falls. Head downstream to dry off and disembark.
The day was scheduled to be 38 Celsius but luckily felt cooler than that.
We now had an opportunity to grab something to eat and drink at the local (tourist) shop. On exiting the store we encountered Iguazu’s version of the bin chicken - the couati. Think of a raccoon, with a lemur tail, stretch the head lengthwise add a touch of Pinocchio and The Artful Dodger and you have a couati. Offer them a potato crisp and they’ll be gentle and take it, and then the whole bag. Eat something and put it in your bag, they’ll open it. They also have some serious claws and teeth on them, and then you add the fact that we are, of course, in rabies country. Running around in competition (to most people, present company excluded) for cuteness and thievery are the capuchin monkeys. The area around the shop was crowded with both; easy food source and also no predators close to humans. We ate our empanadas quickly and then proceeded to our lower falls walk where we got to view a number of the Argentinian falls from ground level. Due to the fact that last week, some of Brazil’s flatlands received 20% of their annual rain in one day, the dam had to release a massive amount of water, providing an 8 hour warning to the Iguazu area. The increased volume of water, when it hit, took out 3 sections of the different paths on the Argentinian side. The water is flowing at over 4 times the usual volume, with somewhere between 6.5 and 12 million litres of water going over the falls PER SECOND! We did manage to get a log of good photos from the remaining paths, and then proceeded to the upper paths. Freddy, who had to manage such a large group who seemed to want to be semi-independent, seemed somewhat exacerbated by certain individuals. More walking with stunning views, this time from the top of the falls.
It was now time to head back to the various hotels, and after dropping off everyone on the Argentinian side, and Freddy off near the office looking for a cold beer, we crossed the border back into Brazil and back to the hotel.