Wow !! Iguazu ....

Hi - Today was a real Wow !! Day. We left Buenos Aires early at about 7.30 and flew to Iguazu. It was a very clear and mostly cloudless flight and you could see everything on the ground. The pilot made a wonderful fly over the falls before we landed and it was absolutely spectacular in the sunshine. We landed at Iguazu International Airport. I'd seen the runway from the flight and it looked just like a small road in the middle of a forest. We met up with our new guide Maria and transferred to our hotel quickly and then started on our afternoon tour. We drove to the Argentina side of the Falls to the National Park, which is actually a tropical jungle. We took the small train (The Green Train of the Jungle) to the start point of the walk and then walked across the top of the Falls, over very high fast flowing rapids, apparently the highest the river has been for a long time given the recent rain. This led us to the viewing platform, at the Devil's Throat, where we were almost deafened by the thunderous roar of the water. It's a magnificent sight, complete with rainbow ! We then walked back across the top of the rapids to the meeting point, to start our next treat.. the Grand Adventure. This was terrific and definitely another highlight of the trip. We started off on a truck, with our guide Enrique. We drove through the jungle for about 10k. Enrique told us about some of the species in the jungle. There are somewhere between 200 and 400 species of Butterfly ( I reckon we saw quite a few of the hundreds of species in the few hours we were in the jungle), and about 450 species of birds. Here's one of the colourful butterflies, that took a particular shine to Steve! We saw a Pelican high in a tree by the roadside. Enrique also pointed out some huge spider's webs which stretched from one side of the jungle road to the other, with really big spiders in them. He told us that there are Jaguar in the jungle (or American tigers, as they sometimes call them), that can grow to 140 or 150 Kilos. He's never seen one and I'm very glad we didn't either !

The truck brought us to another meeting point where we walked down a lot of steps and onto the boat for our ride to and through ! the Falls. We got onto what looked like a very large rubber dingy, with seats and life jackets. We'd been well warned by Maria that we'd get very wet .. she wasn't wrong ! We were given big water proof bags to put our belongings into ; told to take off our shoes and put away anything that we wanted to keep dry, like cameras, watches etc. Then we roared off through the incredible River Iguazu towards the Falls. We were almost under the falling water. It was majestic .. and as warned, we got absolutely drowned .. but it was wonderful, a very memorable and exciting afternoon. We even saw another magnificent full rainbow as we sped towards the falls. We didn't find the crock of gold .. maybe tomorrow !

There was quite a trek up various wet and slippery steps and pathways when we got off the boat and we had a few more oportunities to photograph and marvel at the various different views of the Falls .. What a wonderful day.

Tonight was low key and quite. We had dinner in our hotel, which looks terrrific. It has lovely outdoor pools, which we plan to test out tomorrow after our tour of the Brazillian side of the Falls. We look forward to that,

Bye for now,

Kate