Monday 3 January 2011 - Iguazu Falls

BUTTERFLIES AND TOUCANS

This morning I caught the 9.30 am flight to Puerto Iguazu – gateway to Iguazu Falls. The first thing that struck me while being driven from the airport to the Sheraton Iguazu, the only hotel in the Argentinean side of Iguazu National Park, was the multitude of butterflies darting around. Fortunately only a very small percentage came in contact with the windscreen!

I had booked a jungle view room at the Sheraton as it was about US$100 less expensive than the falls view but the very cute, I mean nice, gentleman at the reception upgraded me to a falls room for no additional cost.

 From my balcony

I then headed out and caught the train out to Garganta del Diablo – the Devils Throat. The ride took about 20 minutes and again there were loads of butterflies, so many that passengers were sticking their hands out of the open-sided train trying to touch them. At the end there was a 1.1 km walk along metal footways over the water. It was amazing the force of the water going over - with huge clouds of mist coming up, caused by the combination of spray and heat.

It was hard at times to tell if it was raining or just the spray from the falls but as I returned to the train it was definitely rain as the heavens opened up. As I was seated on the outer seat of the open-sided train I became drenched through to my skin as the train waited to depart. The amazing thing was that about 200 metres along the track it was dry.

Instead of going back to get changed into something dry, I persevered and decided to walk the Upper Circuit. Here you see a lot of waterfalls which are hidden from view from the Brazilian side by San Martin Island which I intend visiting tomorrow. The Devils Throat was impressive for the sheer power of the water but the falls viewed from the Upper Circuit were much more photographic. While I was viewing the falls, I was lucky enough to see a Toucan in the wild – amazing! I wouldn’t have even seen him except that a nearby guide pointed him out.

The rain came down again, this time heavier, so I dug out my disposable poncho and kept a little drier than all those around me – an umbrella just wasn’t very effective. I was still pretty wet though by the time I reached my room – and then tried drying off my clothes with the hair dryer (not too high on the scale of effectiveness).

I had a call from Robyn who had just arrived from viewing the falls from the Brazilian side and we arranged to meet for dinner. While I was waiting I got into conversation with another Aussie, Irene from Sydney’s northern beaches, who joined us for the meal.

I was going to have an early night as Robyn and I have arranged to meet for a sunrise shoot tomorrow but I finally worked out how to extract some jpeg images from my raw files as CS4 for some reason won’t read my files. It is difficult to do  much editing when you’re looking at a small netbook screen so only very basic adjustments have been made.