ARGENTINA AND BRAZIL: OUR LONGEST/SHORTEST VACATION EVER, PART 2 (A GREAT DAY AT IGUAZU FALLS)

March 12, 2020

Iguazu Falls is considered by many to be the world's most spectacular waterfall. For its curving cliffs and multitude of individual falls (there are 275) and beautiful surroundings, I would have to agree, although I think Victoria Falls, which we visited in 2018, is definitely more powerful. There is a story that when Eleanor Roosevelt visited Iguazu Falls, she exclaimed "Poor Niagara!" By any standard, Iguazu Falls is magnificent.

The Falls are located on the border between Brazil to the north and Argentina to the south, about halfway between Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Buenos Aires in Argentina. Approximately 80% of the falls are located in Argentina and 20% in Brazil.

Map from here

Here is a close-up:

Map from here

Since we had slept in Brazil, we started the day on the Brazil side of the falls. After breakfast, our driver deposited us at Helisul Helicopter Tours. For $100 per person, they take tourists on an 18-minute air tour of the falls. Here is a scan of the postcard they gave us:

Because this is fun only if you have a window seat, we self-sacrificing wives decided to let our husbands go alone so that they could all have a window. Besides, $200/couple for 18 minutes seemed like a lot of money at the time. However, Bob did spring for the video the photographer made of their take-off:

There they go!

After I saw these three photos (and others) that Bob took, I kind of wish I'd gone up. Can you see the snaking sidewalk we walked on in the moonlight the night before? It comes from the Argentina side.

This third one, in particular, captures a view that you just don't get from ground level. That central area with the heaviest flow is Garganta del Diablo, or "The Devil's Throat."

Here are the guys after the flight, none the worse for wear.

Next, we took a boat trip on the portion of the Iguazu River just below the falls. It was hard to believe that all that water catapulting over the cliffs forms this lazy, seemingly average-sized river.

This boat returning to the dock is just like the one we were in.

That's Bob, Bonnie, and Dave on the front row, the wettest place on the boat.  I was sitting behind the woman with the beautiful pink braids, wishing I could touch her hair and ask how long it took for her to get it done.

We drew closer and closer to some of the smaller falls:

. . . but this is about as close as we got to The Devil's Throat. At about this point, I put away my camera and cell phone, and just in time, because shortly after . . .

. . . we went right through this waterfall--about four times. Luckily, we had brought disposable rain jackets with us that covered us pretty well. Unluckily, Bob didn't anticipate the drenching soon enough and was not able to get his large camera lens inside his jacket in time. It sustained some water damage, and it remains to be seen if the damage is permanent.

Later in the day we watched another boat going through the same falls. These photos are taken from the viewing area by The Devil's Throat. Can you see the boat?

And in they go!

Next, we caught a double decker bus that took us to a path leading down to Brazil's viewing deck, comparable to the Argentinian deck we had walked to on our moonlit journey the previous night.

We stopped to say hi to Frederico Engle, the son of German immigrants who was the first to promote the falls for tourism purposes during the early 1900s. Judging by their polished appearance, it looks like many have shaken and even caressed his hands and forearms!

The area right before the falls looks surprisingly calm and shallow, but you can see the mist from the falls in the distance.

As we drew closer to the falls, there was a little more power in the water.

We found a great spot for a family photo, the ONLY family photo we got on the whole trip.


A little further along we had an iconic rainbow moment.

The red arrow below marks where this segment is in relation to the rest of the falls. Even the drawing has a rainbow!

Far below we could see a long walkway leading to the viewing platform for The Devil's Throat from the BRAZIL side (the side we were on). It does not intersect with the walkway from Argentina we had traveled in the moonlight the previous night.

Those lower walkways and viewing platforms are accessed by an elevator with a very long shaft, off to the right in this photo. 

The elevator deposited us at the lower side of the falls--not right at The Devil's Throat.

We made our way to the front of that platform to get a view of the falls without a bunch of strangers in it. Spectacular! The Devil's Throat--the most powerful part of the falls--is back behind that curve in the center of this photo.

Here's a video panorama of what we could see from this deck:

The walkway we had seen from above led to an almost head-on view of The Devil's Throat, so we began to mosey on over there . . . 

. . . getting nice views along the way.

By the way, it doesn't look all that hot, does it?  It was a SCORCHER--99° F and extremely humid, as you might guess by the tropical vegetation and colors.

Looking downstream:

We were really there. It's already hard to believe. 

From this perspective, the falls don't look that big.

It is impossible to get a "comprehensive" photo of the falls from either the upper or lower level. There are so many twists and turns that you can't see it all at once--unless you are in a helicopter. The photo below is the best I could do from the lower level. The side falls are in the foreground and The Devil's Throat is deep in the back.

I took about fifty shots of the rainbow. I'm so glad we were there on a sunny day!


A zoom-in on The Devil's Throat:

The end of March is late summer in Argentina. It was clear that we were there during a time of lower flow. I'm sure a lot of sections of these cliffs are covered in water during the spring.

There are no more sacrifices of virgins to the River God, but he appears happy to take coins instead.

It was hot, we were hungry, and we were ready for something cold to drink. Unfortunately, the line to ride the elevator back up to street level looked about an hour long.

We decided to take the stairs instead. I turned around one last time for one more photo from the Brazilian side. Our plan was to visit the falls again in the morning on the Argentina side before we caught a flight to Buenos Aires. But it was not to be--this is my last photo of Iguazu Falls.

I know you're thinking Wow, she has really overdone it with all the Iguazu Falls photos. Time to more on to something else.  However, as it turns out, I don't have very many other photos from what was supposed to be a 12-day trip. I have to take advantage of what I have, right?

As we started up, we saw a little fountain of natural water next to the trail. The sign warning people not to drink the water could use some translation work.

Up, up, up.

THERE. WERE. A. LOT. OF. STAIRS.

A couple of outdoor cafes just past the bus stop at the top of the stairs provide lunch options for tourists--and for coatimundis, which aren't too bothered by the tourists.

There were several of them chasing each other in the support beams of the roof.

We had some shawarma sandwiches for lunch, but the key food item was the açai ice cream afterwards.

It deserves it's own close-up:

Our driver picked us up, all of our luggage already strapped to the top of his vehicle (I wish I had taken a picture), and we made our way into Argentina. Unlike our late-night crossing for the moonlight walk the previous night, this time we obviously planned to stay, and so they made the driver take every piece of luggage off the roof to be x-rayed. With the temperatures in the 100° range and the six of us squished together in the car, it was a miserable process.

We were staying in the Merit Iguazu Hotel in Puerto Iguazu, a very nice hotel for about $48/room.

The first thing Bob did after we checked into our room was pull out a fabric pouch in which he had a sizable pile of cash. Along with his big camera lens, it had been drenched in our back-and-forth boat ride under the falls. (Note: We brought a bunch of US money after hearing from Dave that sometimes the best exchange rate came from using actual US currency.)  Bob spread it out on hard surfaces to dry. We've only been involved in "money laundering" on the pocket-change level before--never to this extent!

After we settled in, two cabs for the six of us transported us to a restaurant recommended by the front desk: La Rueda ("The Wheel"). It was an excellent choice.

We ordered a plate of three beef and three fish empanadas, enough for each of us to have half of each type. I think most of us thought the beef ones were the best.

I ordered stuffed fish that was almost too beautiful to eat. It tasted as good as it looks!

Bob had a HUGE T-bone, two T-bones, really, stacked one on top of the other and covered in red chimichurri sauce. He thought it was one of the best steaks he's ever had, and coming from him, that's saying a lot. He gave me a couple of pieces, and I have to agree that it was cooked to perfection.

Dessert was just as good as everything else--crepes drizzled with dulce de leche and set on fire, causing the sauce to carmelize. Wow.

As good as the food was, what will make this dinner so memorable was our conversation.  There we were, almost 6,000 miles from home, stunned by the unbelievable news coming through on our phones. We learned that the NBA had suspended their season until further notice after a player tested positive for the coronavirus. The NCAA had announced their tournament would be played in empty stadiums (and they later cancelled the tournament). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, my church, had expanded their large meeting ban that was already in place by cancelling all Sunday worship services, youth activities, leadership meetings, and other face-to-face meetings. The stock market was plunging downward in a pretty good imitation of the falls we had spent the day admiring. The World Health Organization (WHO) had declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. They reported 118,000 cases in 114 countries with 4,291 people dead. COVID-19 cases in the US had grown from 259 cases on March 10 to 987 cases on March 11.

I'm sure it would have been strange to experience all of these things at home, but it was surreal to read about them from so far away and in a country that felt completely detached from these concerns. When we had flown out of Los Angeles less than 48 hours before, none of these things seemed possible.

What to do now? We determined to take our scheduled flight to Buenos Aires in the morning and then re-evaluate the situation there where we would have many more flight options to work with if we determined to leave. My brother also said he would reach out to the church's legal counsel in Argentina to ask for his advice about our situation.

And that's where it all was when we went to bed at the end of our first full day in Brazil and Argentina.