Chasing Waterfalls

This morning, we woke up and worked with our hotel travel agent to book transfers to the Argentine side of the Iguaçu Falls.

Our transfer picked us up at 9 am. We went through the border with no issues and the weather overall held up. It did rain at times and we decided to term it as rain forest weather. We headed our way to the top via a train and various walkways to Devil's Throat. The falls were beautiful and the mist that the falls generate got us refreshingly wet.

We headed down the train midway and walked / hiked the superior trail and the lower circuit. Here, we had closer views to various single falls. The Bossetti fall was my favorite with the impressive rush of water. There are about 275 different falls spread over 3 miles and up to 266 feet high!

At the bottom of the lower circuit, you could take a boat to the falls. We plan on doing this tomorrow on the Brazil side. Today, we took a ferry to Isla San Martin. This island is in the middle of the falls and had several lookout points. We were told the climb up to the lookouts was 12 stories. After what I had thought was only 3, Lizzie advised me we were all done - thank goodness as these steps were steep!

All the lookouts and views were wonderful and the falls are definitely a sight to see. Being back on the Argentina side was also comforting as I got to use a little of my Spanish. Carlos, my former Spanish teacher, would be so proud as I did well with my object pronouns.

For lunch, we ate at one of the cafés on site and had sandwiches and empanadas. A bird, called an Urraca, took my mustard packet and then dropped it. There were animals all around the park including monkeys and coatis which are like raccoons.

After hiking and walking all day, we headed toward the bottom and grabbed coffees and alfajores. Alfajores are an Argentine treat that I brought back last year as well from Buenos Aires.

Our transfer picked us up at 5 pm and we headed back to our hotel. We were exhausted yet hungry from our day. We had walked over 18,000 steps according to my iPod Nano pedometer! Nowhere near the amount of steps in Montreal with Caitlin, but definitely a tiring amount!

We ended up venturing out for dinner to a restaurant called Chef Lopes, recommended by my guidebook and 1 block from our hotel. It ended up being renamed Gaucho (my guidebook is a few years old). This restaurant was also a churrascaria with a salad buffet. It was half the price of our dinner yesterday and definitely more of a local hangout. We enjoyed beer, the various meats, fried zucchini, and of course, the roasted pineapple.

Again, we hope the weather will hold up tomorrow as we explore the Brazilian side of the falls!