Escape to Iguazú (II)

After the day in the Brazilian side, we reached the border to Argentina.  The border was weird, with two big areas, one for each country, where they could check passports and a shop in the middle. There was a bridge that had the point where the two countries met, and I saw pictures before if that bridge as if there were no barriers between them, when the fact is that the barriers are before that point.

We didn't get stopped in the Brazilian side, which was a bit strange, but well, we thought that was normal for people going away. In Argentina we had no problem and they just stamped out passports, and then we got to the hotel using a bus to wars the city.

The Argentinian city was similar to Brazil,  but with some differences. It looked as poor in a way, but a little more touristic as well, with plenty of advertisements about hotels, and with streets slightly more pedestrian - friendly than in Brazil. It also looked. .well, red. The terrain had red soil, and there was plenty of red bricks as well.

This hotel was much much worse than the Brazilian one. It was more like a hostel, a small room with lots of dust, almost no electric plugs, no air conditioning, very poor wifi coverage...

I did not do the reservation, so I don't know how many stars the hotel advertised. As long as they indicated 2 or less I guess it's fine, because it definitely was not 3 by far. Still,there were little details that even if you have 1 or 2 stars are shameful, like having to ask them to give toilett paper and towels...

Anyway, we managed to check-in and then go eat to some restaurant nearby. For some reason it was hard to find one open, and we ended up into a kilo place,like in Brazil, where you weight your food and pay for kg, but with some different dishes, more pasta and, of course, bread. In Brazil they don't usually include bread, and it was nice to have some^^.

The place was nothing special though, and we went back to the hotel and finally got a shower, slept and rested.

The next morning turned out to be half-sunny, so it was less likely it would rain, which was good. The breakfast here was not full of options, but it came with dulce de Leche (boiled condensed milk), tipically Argentinian and really tasty^^. It took a while to get ready and then we went to the park area.

We had been told the Argentinian side was bigger, and that's true. It was also much better done and indicated. The area looked more like a theme park, but it was very clear where you were, the paths you needed to take and even the stairs you would find on the way. With sunny weather with some clouds,  everything looked very nice but soon it was really hot too.

Since we had two days to spend here, we decided to take the lower route today and then do the higher one during the next. There was also the devil's gorge, which we would visit if we could at some point. First we had to walk a bit around the forest, and we started seeing plenty of bugs and butterflies, some Quatis (there were also on this side, and they also stole food but seemed more taken care of) and some scarily big ants and insects.

The lower road went between the forest and the river,  but at a very nice level, between the high side of the river and the low side. And while the Brazilian side gave you a view from afar, this side was right next to the waterfalls. The path was an elevated metal platform, which means that in some sections you crossed small streams that formed between two consecutive small waterfalls. It was quite impressive to see them that close, and the whole area was really green and beautiful. There were also some panoramic viewpoints, and in general it was a great path.

After walking for a bit, the path allowed you to go almost under a medium -sized waterfall. It created a big cloud of constant small drops,  and the closer you walked the more soaked you got. It was nice and refreshing, and also quite curious to see everything so close. There is something in watching do much water moving and falling that is hypnotic,  together with the white noise it makes...

We got a bit wet, not as much as other people, and we continued. In the way we also managed to see a lizard that was quite big, at least compared with most lizards we have seen...it was black, and had quite a big head and mouth,  at least as long as my forearm. It seemed to be wild but apparently used to have people around, although it maintained a distance with all the tourists...

In the end we finished this path quite earlier than we thought, after just a couple of hours. Since we still had plenty of time, we decided to also visit the devil's gorge.

To reach the devil's gorge, you had to take a small touristic train that was marginally faster than walking, but they didn't allow you to walk there so we had to use it. When we reached the gorge's station there were a huge number of butterflies flying around, drinking water from the wet floor next to a fountain for the visitors. Elay was very happy about this and "danced" with the butterflies (probably killing some, even if we tried to tell him to be careful ). It was really beautiful, but also very hot. We drank and watered our heads, and we started to walk towards the gorge.

This path was also a metallic platform on top of the higher part of the river. You could not see the waterfalls from there, and we knew it would take a while to reach the gorge. There were some islands from time to time, that offered cover from the sun, which was very bright and hot at that moment. I believe it took us around 20 minutes to reach the end of the path,  and it was very full of people and very hot with no shadows, but was the most impressive place probably.

The gorge was the area of the biggest section of waterfalls, moving the biggest ammount of water. A massive volume of water kept falling down quite a big distance, making a lot of noise and movement, and making big raindrop clouds. There was also plenty of rainbows, and in general it was really beautiful and brutal too.

With that we finished our first day, we went back to the city and had dinner in a nice place next to the hotel. We were tired after the heat (the walking was ok, we didn't do that much distance actually), so we went to sleep early.

The next day was our last, so we had to check out of the hotel. While crappy, it is true that the people managing it were nice enough. After having the same breakfast as the previous day we left one suitcase in the bus station lockers and went back to the park.

If it was your second day visiting, there was a discount, but they asked that you marked the ticket when leaving,  which was stupid since there was no one at the exit to mark it or explain this to you. At least they also accepted photos from the previous day as proof, so we got the discount.

Today we wanted to do the high path of the waterfalls, that went at the level of the river before falling, and that was short enough to let us plenty of time to go back to the Brazilian side and get to the airport. This path was, in our opinion, not as spectacular.  Sure, you could see most waterfalls from above, but it felt nicer to be next to them in the lower path. However, the nature around us was impressive, of course. We even saw a small cocrodile, and probably the biggest wild spider I have ever seen waiting in its web in the middle of the river, between two trees...

Anyway, we finished the day and went back to the bus station to start our trip to the Brazilian airport. After checking times and prices, we decided to get a taxi directly there, since buses just left you at the border and brought you to the Brazilian city center, which means it took twice as much time with any luck, and we didn't have that many hours until out flight.

With the taxi we arrived to the border, and the taxi driver gave us some papers to fill for the Brazilian border. However, we had not been stop at the Brazilian border when going to Argentina. The driver told us we should have been stopped, and that it was best then to just say we didn't have papers and we lived in Brazil.

We passed the Argentinian control without problems, and we were getting ready to lose a lot of time in the Brazilian control so we could explain out situation. However, once again the Brazilian border didn't even stop us. Apparently they do have controls, but because they have agreements with Argentina they just check people from time to time, and private cars and taxis pass without stops plenty or times. So, we visited Argentina with it leaving Brazil, according to our passports.

After this we had no other trouble, we boarded the plane and came back home. It was quite a nice and impressive visit, definitely recommended for anyone that gets the chance to go^^.

Escape to Iguazú(I)

I haven't explained anything about trips for a while..because we haven't visited anything new, that's true..but well, let's explain the latest one...

After working weekends,  we get days off to select afterwards. I usually take them as soon as possible,  but sometimes 2 or 3 accumulate.

Recently I've done this on purpose, so last week I took Tuesday to Thursday as days off, so we could travel to Iguazú on monday night.

Everybody who works here in Rio has traveled or plans to travel to Iguazú. It is a popular destination, and agencies offer packages to get there and sleep, but I didn't really do any research about what is in there, apart from knowing it had big waterfalls. It was also a natural border (the river) between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

We spent one night in the Brazilian side, and two nights in the Argentinian side. Each side has a natural park that you need to pay to enter, and some other stuff to do around.

So, on Monday night we took a 2-hour flight to Foz de Iguazu. The Brazilian hotel was pretty good, with nice enough rooms and nice breakfast, apart from an awesome pool that we didn't have time to use but looked nice. We slept there and on tuesday we grabbed the bus that goes there(if you are not careful you will get scammed with price of transportation ).

This day was all gray and cloudy, and forecast warned about rain and storms. Far away we could see some big black stormy clouds coming our way, but well, nothing we could do about it.

The Brazilian park had another bus to bring you close to the waterfall areas. We stopped in the middle of the way and walked around the forest. First thing we saw was a warning about Quatis. We didn't know what animal was that, but got the point of not trying to feed them. We reached the first observation post, and yes, I can see why it is a popular destination.

The waterfalls are massive, and really really big. There's lots of green around it (not equatorial jungle, but more like tropical,  still pretty dense and green and humid), and there is lots and lots and lots of waterfalls. From that side, you can see them from far away and it is impressive the ammount of water that they're moving,  and the spray they create. You could literally see the water making "clouds" right there, many tiny little drops floating up towards you or towards the sky. This together with the green of the forest gives an amazing view.

On the next open area, we found Quatis.

Quatis are a type of mammal that is probably related to Raccoons. They move similarly, and act similarly. The ones in this area have adapted quite well to humans,  and are totally shameless, trying to check your bags and making puppy eyes for food. We were shooing them away from our son (who of course was very happy to see them and wanted to touch them, but was so excited it would have resulted in him hitting them), that was in the stroller, but they kept checking it and trying to grab our bags. In the end, while opening one pocket of the stroller they saw a bag of dried apples, and one of them jumped on it and stole the whole bag.

It was actually very funny, because it was not something that would be bad for them (just dried apples) nor anything we needed, but we could see that, while cute, they were shameless and problematic...

We continued our walk and found some stairs. This was very annoying, because we had the stroller with us,and previously there was no indication about them. We even passed areas that had ramps next to some steps, as if this was the norm in all the park. So we had to move through stairs several times during the day...

We passed several nice observation points, and in one of them we saw that the storm clouds we noticed during the morning were moving quite fast. They looked really awesome, as if they were unfolding, and they seemed to have a very liquid texture. There was especially dark sections moving at different speed than the rest...and for a bit we enjoyed the show without realizing their movement.

Then we saw that they were moving towards us at high speed and we had an "oh crap" moment.

We covered ourselves and the stroller with raincoats, and just managed to get ready before it started to pour water in top of us, right after the beautiful clouds passed us overhead...

This put an end to the visit, and we just run through paths and stairs to the restaurant area, which had pretty good views from far away of the top of the waterfalls and one of the main sections called the devil's gorge...

We could also see the Argentinian side from there, and there were platforms on top of the river and next to the waterfalls. It looked curious, we needed to check that next day...

We managed to eat, the rain calmed down, and we went out of the natural park to visit a bird park next to it.

This park was like a zoo, but bird-based and taking advantage of the nature around it. It claimed to be a place to rescue birds, and it is true more cages were rather big, but it is still a zoo, and a touristic one...

Anyway, I don't know if they trained the birds in there, but most of then were very sociable,  with some of them jumping towards us when they saw us. Our son was extremely happy about it and keep making happy noises.

And then we went to one of the cages, since the path entered some of them and let you be around the birds. These were big caged areas, and it was nice to see them close. However, our son was eating a chicken stick at that moment...I thought they would tell us we could not do that,  but nobody said anything...

Anyway, we were in this really big cage, and we saw some pretty big birds walking around, and some tucans. I really like tucans, and we had seen some free ones in Rio, but it was still nice to see different types around.

Then, several things happened. First, we were being followed by a number of walking birds, and we noticed that they were looking at our son's food. We shooed them away, but then a small tucan, for whatever reason, started to harass my wife trying to touch her toes, until it actually bit her a bit.

While trying to send the little tucan away, I turned around to see a big black walking bird stealing the chicken finger from our son (he maybe got scared for a sec but he was also happy that the birds were that close), and ran away followed by other big birds, who started stealing the food from one another....

It was very chaotic for a moment...and apart from the little tucan's attack, what the other birds did was funny but worrying...

After that we passed other cages, but we made sure to not have food around us...

In one of them we also found another tucan(a big one this time), this one apparently sociable and very cute, just sitting in a railing of a bridge that crossed the stream. We took pictures of it, and some people even caressed it...it seemed not to mind, although if some person was too annoying it just took some steps away, indicating that it was enough..I could not resist a gentle tap with one finger, and it just looked at me^^.

After the last tucan, and considering this one had a beak twice as big, my wife just looked at it from a distance, while taking pictures...

During the visit it started to rain again, which was annoying. Most birds at least had a place to cover themselves, but the rest of the visit happened much quicker after this. I will only mention that there was a big cage you could enter that had butterflies and hummingbirds, and it was quite impressive, especially the butterflies, big as my hand....but then they showed you the caterpillars, and they were also that big^^'.

We finished the visit quite wet, and returned to the city to grab a taxi to the Argentinian border, really hoping the hotel in there would also be nice and wanting to eat and take a warm shower after the wet rainy day...

I'll explain the other two days in another post.