Peru/Brazil/Argentina Day 20: Iguazu Falls from Argentina

May 22, 2012
Argentina Day 20: Iguazu Falls from Argentina

Up again today to a free brekkie: chocolate cake, orange slices, cheese on toothpicks, fresh squeezed OJ, good coffee... awesome! And off we went to the Argentine side of the falls. Frank was not feeling great so we generally took it easy. As we arrived there seemed to be more stuff to do than the Brazilian side (more trails), but it was not quite as fancy of a facility.

We wandered for a bit and found the little train station which took you to the different trailheads. We also found a mate store with a giant gourd and straw outside, nice! We headed to Circuito Inferior which was not "inferior" at all :) It was a nice walk, mostly on platforms. We saw some of those funny Coatis and got down to the dock area to head across to Isla St. Martin. This was a very short boat ride (1 min) but cool to say we'd been on the island and also nice to talk a short hike on there and have a snack.

Isla San Martín

Iguazu Falls from Argentina and San Martin Island

Falls at the end of a nice hike

Mwah

Don't pick flowers or touch butterflies... if you have gigantic ET alien hands

A well-fitted lifejacket

Then back to the train station, and took the train to Garganta. We had another short platform walk out to Garganta and it was AMAZING!!!!!!!!!! Roaring, very calm at the top but HUGE falls with some brilliant mist and rainbows, it was so cool. This was the best view of the falls. Yesterday was beautiful and a great scenic photography spot, but this time we were much closer to the action. Watching the mist land onto the wet grass, watching all the tourists aiming for a good spot for photos, and then being those tourists ourselves... it was fantastic.

Walkway at the top of the big section of the falls

Don't get too close!

Whoosh!!!

And... Lord of the Rings

Another rainbow!

Ammaaziiinng

Me and Grits

Haha

Classic look

Not sure what's going on here

After taking lots of photos and really enjoying the waterfall's gloriousness, we were hot and tired and headed back to the hostel.

We hadn't eaten lunch and were getting pretty hungry, so we stopped at Pizza Color again originally planning just to have a few Empenadas, but ultimately upgrading to lunch. :) We got a Vegetarian Pizza, with Arugula... so good. They gave us this sort of pate sauce with tasty bread and we ate tons of it. Mmm.

Empenada

Mmmmmmmmmm

We went back to the hostel to chill out, and Frank was still feeling crappy so Jess and I went walking. We found a pastry shop, where pretty much everything had Dolce de Leche in it!! It was pretty darn amazing, and we bought a ton of stuff. So good. We are the desserts back at the hostel with the leftover Pizza for "actual dinner", not whatever the previous meal and snacks up till then had been.

Then we bought all the cookies

And Jess and I ate them all

We're leaving tomorrow for Buenos Aires so we spent some time packing up. Frank went to sleep to
try to rest up and feel better. I Skyped with Jutan Clan with everyone in Ottawa, and my sister showed off her new TV. I sent a few emails, posted a couple Facebook photos, that was all fun since we had some unexpected and somewhat reliable free wireless internet. After our mountain of desserts, Jess headed to sleep too, while I stayed in the kitchen hanging out with other hostel peeps.

As I was chatting I met a cool British couple. The man had a funky combo accent and I said, "Are you from... South Africa, New Zealand, or England?" He laughed and said, "Well, all three! You're the first person to guess all three correctly!"

I spent a bunch of time chatting with this awesome German girl in the kitchen too. She was awesome and had a really amazing travel plan, covering several months all throughout South America, into the USA, Canada and then to Europe! Epic. She invited us to a couch surfing-organized party on Saturday in Buenos Aires, hopefully we can make it if we don't have a bazillion plans by then. Also in the kitchen was a Canadian girl with the usual Canada-style crazy fake gangsta talk - "I'm straight-up RURAL, yo!" She grew up with Ryan Gosling!!

It was a super fun group, and we all chatted a lot about different world travel experiences, strange things that happen while traveling, etc. It was SUPER fun. I love those random cultural exchange moments from traveling, they are so precious and it was just awesome. A long day, off to sleep!