Iguazú, where i spent last weekend, is in the tippiest-toppest finger-like point of northern Argentina. Iguazú means "big" in the native language and references not the town (which is very small called Puente del Iguazú) but rather the world´s largest system of waterfalls. Victoria Falls in Africa is very large too but not wide which is where South America wins. To get to Iguazú my program got us on a bus at 3 pm thursday afternoon and 20 hours later we arrived in the city mentioned above.
Iguazú is in the "sub-tropics" on the same lines with Sao Paulo Brazil (10 hours away) and Asuncion Paraguay (the capital 200 miles west). So while i was told that there were monkeys and tucans, i never saw any. Instead the place is full of palms, oranges (non-native), bamboo (native in a way--it found its own way across from Asia) and these wierd raccoon creatures. "Coaties" is the slang that is used for them. They look exactly like raccoons but without masks and with a much longer snout. They are so incredibly unafraid of humans that they are known to climb up tourists and steal their food straight from their hands. Can you imagine a full size raccoon doing that to you in your yard? I do believe it as i had one walking the handlebar of the walking bridge one foot from me. At one of the rest stop areas in the national park I saw a whole group of them ignore a park attendent who tried to scare them away from the trash that they were jumping into like kids on a trampoline.
Do remember that it is most definitly winter here in Argentina. So, for being in this place it was as close to summer as i could get. It was warm enough for sandles and t-shirts. Further, it was overcast most of the weekend but the humidity was 100 percent so i could see my breath in the air mix with the constant misty drizzle. The ground shows the constant play with water-- its rust red from the high iron content rusting everyday of the year.
The Cataracas (waterfalls) of Iguazú are made up of two huge rivers meeting in the conjunction between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. The waterfalls are mainly split between Brazil and Argentina though with Argentina claiming 75 percent of them. This means that even though i couldn´t cross into Brazil, i still got the best view. Its hard to beat being able to lean over the two feet between you and the literal top edge of a plunging waterfall that could toss you down 300 feet into complete whiteness like a tree leaf. The utter force of the scene is beyond comparision. With each view point, below, next to, or over the waterfalls that i went to i was blown away not only by the scene but with the amazement that these view points were even able to be built. I can only imagine the number of people sacrificed to be the ones who laid down the foundations before being swept away to their deaths. Our guide told us that no one who is known to have jumped off has ever lived through the experience and if they jumped off the first waterfall i went to (the highest and called the throat of the devil), their bodies were never found. Quick note about our guide is that he was a multilinguist Brazilian who loves these falls so much that he leads groups up to them 6 days of the week and every week for the last 22 years. That in itself is incredible.
Besides the walking around the waterfalls i did do other things. Like i took a powerboat under the waterfalls. I was terrified, couldn´t see anything but assaulting whiteness and experienced the profound inablity to breath due to the sheer force of the water fall against us. I do believe that this is an experience that would never been legal in the US. What i also did was visit the "Hito Tres Fronteras" which is the point where Argentina meets Paraguay and Brazil seperated only by a "Y" of two rivers. I also ate horrible empanadas and mass produced ham sandwiches in two different gas stations during each of the 20 hour bus rides.
