Iguazu Falls - Day 1

We left BA yesterday afternoon, on a smooth 2 hour flight north to Iguazu Falls.  We used up my balance of Amex points to stay in the Sheraton here as it is located right in the National Park on the Argentina side, as opposed to in the town, some 20 minutes away.  So I'm writing this from the bar of the hotel, where Ruby and I are enjoying the view (and the sound) of the falls, about 1/2 mile from here, obscured only by the mist clouds wafting off the cascades.

I was a big skeptical about coming here at first - it's out of the way and a bit expensive to get to.  And really - a waterfall?  I haven't even been to Niagara, and that's a lot easier to get to.

As is often the case, my initial reluctance was not only unwarranted, it was really misguided.  Not only are the falls really impressive, they are one of those things that really defies photography and other attempts to describe or record what is really a primal experience.

So I'm not going to try to describe too much here.  I took a lot of photos, and videos, because my experience of the falls was as much about sound as about vision. 

We spent about 4 hours hiking around the Argentina (the larger) side this morning.  Staying in the park allowed us to beat most of the crowds, which were similar to what you might see in a US National Park in summer.  It takes a while to see the falls because they are not one unified waterfall, rather a group of dozens of falls that spread over a mile or so.  The largest, La Garganta del Diablo, was the most amazing, and the walkway is constructed in such a way that you can walk out to a vertigo-inducing spot right above the highest, maximum volume spot.  The rest of our walk consisted of trips to various viewpoints over, and at the base of different falls.

La Garganta del Diablo from above

In the afternoon, I walked out to another, much smaller falls, along a less-traveled path, mostly to see what wildlife there was - I saw a bunch of monkeys and some rodent things that we had seen in the BA Zoo.  In the morning, we had seen a few colorful varieties of birds, and too many coatis, raccoon-like creatures that terrorize the snack bars.

Coatis terrorizing the snack bar