Semana cuatro (y media de semana cinco!) - BA to Iguazú

Getting close to Devils Throat on the boat!
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So over the last week I have spent 25% of my time in a bus!  That´s 18 hours from Buenos Aires (very sad to leave!) to Iguazú and a further 24 hours from Iguazú to Rio which is where I am right now!

Last time I blogged I had just moved into that lovely hostel in Palermo Soho in BA.  Well my last few days were actually quite a lot better in there, although it still smelt pretty wrong and was very dirty... I managed to get to the Zoo and saw a lot of cool animals, and very cleverly forgot to take my camera - so there is no proof that I swam with the sharks, played frisbee with a sea lion and got chatted up by a monkey.  You´ll just have to take my word for it!

The falls themselves are, in a nutshell, UNBELIEVABLE!

Friendly butterfly
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I also spent a day in the small suburb of Tigre, about 30 minutes by train from the center.  Quick piece of advice for anyone whi plans to visit BA - don´t book anything with your hostel!  My hostel wanted 60 pesos for a trip to Tigre, but the train actually only costs 2.5 pesos, so yeah be independent is my advice!  Anyway, Tigre is a lovely little town on the Delta (where hundreds of rivers and streams meet the ocean), very relaxed, very green and well worth a visit if you have a spare day.  There is also a theme park there (more like a funfair by the looks of it!) which was closed when I was there, but is apparently meant to be pretty good; and also a ´Fruit Port´ which used to actually be a fruit port, but is now just a port...  There is still a big market there and you can get some good fruit if you look around for long enough!  I had lunch on the pier overlooking loads of boats cruising past, many of them carrying wood for craftsmen to work on.  Basically everyone who lives in Tigre owns a boat and is a craftsman, or is a city slicker from BA and owns a bigger boat and a nicer house.  It´s that kind of place!

The start of my trail in the national park
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After lunch I went on a boat ride that goes round some of the rivers in the delta, and got to see a lot of the loacal´s at work in their gardens by the water.  There were also a few houses and shops on stilts in the water, which was pretty cool.  Anyway the boat ride was about an hour long and cost around a fiver, and is very chilled and a really worthwhile thing to do if its a nice day.

On my last evening in BA I met up with some of the gang from the language school, we went out to, what turned out to be, a posh restaurant which serves very small portions - not the ideal way to start an evening of drinking!  I think the restaurant was also the only restaurant ever to have ´Chocolate Worm Soup´ on the menu, although i would hope that they meant ´warm´ rather than ´worm´!  We then headed to the Museum nightclub, which I have become a regular to, and had a good evening chatting and dancing and drinking.  It was a suitable way to say adios to my amigos from the school, who I will miss a lot!  I ended up getting the bus back at around 4am and getting off about a mile too early, so I had a nice little walk back to the nice little hostel.

Hostel Inn, Puerto Iguaz.
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On my day of departure, I went to a designer ice cream place with one of the people who couldnt make it out the night before, and worked off the hangover with perhaps the biggest ice cream in the world.  My bus to Puerto Iguazú left t around 6pm, so I had some time to get a Burger King before I left in case the food wasn´t up to scratch on the bus!

It turns out that the bus was amazing!  Fully reclining seats, movies on board, free wine and beer all night/day, and actually fairly decent food too!  After a nice long sleep I woke up to find myself about 10 minutes from my destination - Puerto Iguazú.  The town is very small, and there isn´t really too much too much to say about it, so I won´t bother!  The hostel I was staing in was slightly outside the town, and was well worth the extra taxi ride to get there (it´s called Hostel Inn - check out the review!).

Angry Alligator
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Of course the reason I was in Puerto Iguazú was to visit one of the seven wonders of the world - Iguazú Falls.  The national park on the Argentinian side is about a 30 minute bus ride from the town, and is very well laid out with loads of people to help out, signposted treks etc.  The falls themselves are, in a nutshell, UNBELIEVABLE!  It´s the kind of thing that words nor pictures can describe, you really MUST see them to understand!  There are over 200 waterfalls that are in teh national park, with about 20 of those big enough to get their own names, and about 10 of those which all meet at Devil´s Throat, and produce the grandest display of falling water you are ever going to see! There are a couple of photos up on here, and there will be hundreds more to go up on FB at some point in the future! There is so much power and beauty to the falls, and the backdrop is almost as stunning as the falls themselves.  The park is right in the heart of the jungle, so you get to see so many different types of trees, plants, birds, animals, and literally thousands of butterflies!  Some of the butterflies are very friendly too - I was walking along one of the trails when a French girl taps me on the shoulder and says ¨Give me your camera!¨.  My first thought was that I was about to be robbed by a french girl half the size of me, but then she explained that there were 3 butterflies sat on my cap!  Of course as soon as she tries to take a photo, two of them fly off, but there is still a picture of the one!

The falls
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I also took 2 boat trips whilst visiting the falls.  The first of which in a speed boat that goes right under the largest of the falls!  It was great fun, got some great views and go absolutely soaked from head to toe!  The second trip was more calm, although we did get what I thought was a little too close to Devil´s Throat, but I´m sure the guide knew what he was doing!  It was meant to be a 30 minute boat safari, but for 29 minutes and 30 seconds all I saw was a toucan too far away to take a photo, and a hell of a lot of trees and lots of water.  Just as I was coming to realise that I wasn´t going to see anything cool like an alligator or anything, the guide stopped the boat and signalled me to turn around.  There was lying an angry, growling alligator!!!  It almost made me jump off the boat!

About to go into the falls!
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To sum up the falls - GO SEE THEM FOR YOURSELF!  Seriously, probably the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and it´s no wonder why Eleanor Roosevelt quoted ¨poor Niagra!¨ when visiting them!

I then spent a couple of days chilling out doing not a lot (I was ill one of the days!) before I headed back for another short bus ride to Rio.  This time only 24 hours after I stepped on the bus did we reach the Brazillian capital!  The bus wasn´t quite as good as the first, because the seats only 3/4 reclinedc, and because they weren´t allowed to take food over the border, so we had to eat our meal in the 10 minutes we were in Argentina for!  Anyway I struggled through and I am now in Rio!  So far it seems pretty cool, but I haven´t really done much yet apart from sit on Copacabana and Ipenema beaches 9hard life eh?!).  I plan to see the second seventh wonder of the world this week, and also a Brazillian footy match.  I am also planning on heading to Ilha Grande, which is an island about 4 hours away that has no roads and some of the best beaches in the world.

Final night shenanigans!
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For some reason I can´t upload photos onto facebook from this computer, although I have managed to get some up on here.  I will update it as soon as I can, because there are some cool photos.  Anyway that´ll be all for now,

James x