We walked around the city after arriving, which is green and beautiful and jungly, which is so much different than dry Mendoza. I didn't know how to handle the humidity all weekend when everything is wet and sticky. The streets are made of rock pieces and there are fields of kids playing soccer, and local artists selling street crafts like jewelry and woven pendents. The town is really small, so we explored the whole town and went into some tourist shops. They sell a lot of rocks and geodes because there are mines nearby, which unfortunately we didn't get to visit. We found this cafe/kiosko type of place that sold pre-made sandwiches and empenadas, so we got pretty much every meal there really cheap to bring with us for the day or eat at the hostel. I think I went there about 8 times during the three days we were there.
Our hostel was called Hostel Sweet Hostel, and we booked it without reading many reviews, which we later found out were really bad, talking about leaking roofs, and a dirty pool and rooms. These turned out to be wrong, and our hostel was great! Everything was clean and the workers there put in a lot if effort with their cooking and service. We even had a real breakfast with eggs, rather that coffee and bread which Argentinians normally eat. We were all exhausted Thursday night after traveling, so we relaxed at the hostel and went to bed at ten to wake up early to go explore the jungle and the falls Friday.
Friday was the most amazing and magical day. We all woke up early and got on the bus by 8 to get to the park when it opened and beat the tourist traffic. The first thing we did was power walk to the Garganta del Diablo (Devil's Throat) to beat the train full of tourist groups also going there. It was a 1000 meter bridge above the river that leads to right above the waterfall. The platform at the end of the bridge lets you see the water right as it falls over the cliff. We couldn't see the bottom because there was so much mist and vapor from the huge falls at this spot.
We walked through the entire park and reached every perspective point to see the falls and all the other falls in the park. The waterfalls are 80 meters high and there are over 150 waterfalls in Iguazu National Park. We started on the upper trails to see the falls from above, and then were able to go to the lower trails almost beneath the waterfalls and get splashed by the water, which was so refreshing after a hot day. We ate lunch here and passed out for an hour on the rocks we were sitting on. The island between the Argentinian and Brazilian sides of the falls was closed for high tides so we couldn't enter, but it was still a magical experience to see all of the falls surrounded by all the green plants with a rainbow being formed by the water. I felt like I was in some kind of fantasy land. Pictures just don't do it justice.
We saw so much wildlife during the day too. The coatis, which are like raccoons with long noses, are pests in the region that hang out at all the restaurants wanting food, and they came right up to us to try to look in our bags. We saw probably 30 of them, along with fish, tropical birds, a crocodile, butterflies, and monkeys!
During the last part of the day, we hiked the Macuco trail, a 4 km trail that lead to a smaller waterfall. When we got to the end, we saw the lagoon that the waterfall creates and all automatically decided to jump in the water. So we swam up to the waterfall and climbed up the rocks behind the waterfall. Our clothes reek now from the water, and still haven't dried because it was so humid out. We stayed there until it started raining, right as we pulled out the mate, and instead had mate on the go as we walked back in the rain to catch the bus back to our hostel. We successfully saw the whole park in one day.
When we got back, our hostel was having a pizza party with pizza cooked on the asado grill, so we ate with the other people in our hostel and then watched a lightening storm above us until falling asleep. It was supposed to rain all day Friday, so we lucked out with beautiful weather.
Saturday was my birthday! I'm 21! We slept in and had a relaxed morning drinking mate and chatting, and eventually heading out to find something to do that day since we didn't need to return to the falls. We went to an animal conservatory where they had exotic snakes, turtles, butterflies, and other reptiles. Then we went to this artisan village called Aripuca that was made of 500 or more year old trees that were going to be burnt down, but a group of nature conservatives saved the trees and instead used them to build this village as a symbol of conserving nature. The word aripuca is the word for the kind of animal trap that natives used, or sometimes kids try to make, where there is a propped up box, and a stick with a string to pull to collapse the box. The nature group built a giant aripuca shaped building with these old tees, in addition to many tables and chairs made of petrified wood. There were a couple craft venders there and an ice cream shop that had mate flavored ice cream paired with a creamy fruit flavored ice cream that was the most delicious combination. So we sat there for a while drinking mate and playing games.
Afterwords, we walked to the spot along the Iguazu river where it connects with the Parana river, and the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina all meet. It's only one of two intersections in the world where three countries meet at the crossing of two rivers. At this triple frontera, you can see flag monuments from each country and the barges transporting people and products across the river. We wanted to try to go to the Brazilian or Paraguay side, but they are so strict on visas for US citizens, it wasn't worth the risk or money. Apparently there is no border control at night over the bridge to Brazil, but we didn't end up trying to go.
At night my friends brought me a cake and champagne and other goodies to celebrate my birthday at the hostel. Seventeen IFSA kids were at Iguazu this weekend, all in different traveling groups, but we all converged at our hostel to celebrate. We thought about trying the check out the Iguazu boliches, but nobody was awake past midnight.
That night there was a torrential thunder storm right above us. All the clothes we'd hung up to dry got soaked, and we were woken up multiple times by thunder lasting at least 20 full second. Our bathroom and a few other rooms in the hostel flooded, and the next day it continued to rain until the afternoon. We had another relaxed morning due to rain, then walked back to the triple frontera, where we found a trail leading us to another waterfall and the shore of the river. We tried tiring ourselves out by walking through the town all afternoon to prepare ourselves for 25 hours on a bus to our next location: Salta!
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