From the Windows To The Falls
This weekend I took my first trip outside of the city of Buenos Aires to Porto Iguazu, Argentina. Porto Iguazu is the town closest to the famous Igauzu Falls. The falls are located on/create the boarder between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Here’s a link to a map so you can get a visual representation:
View Larger Map
As you can see, Buenos Aires isn’t exactly close to Porto Iguazu, so the trip there was quite long, 16 hours by bus to be exact! Luckily, bus travel is pretty popular in South America, so they have incredibly nice buses! We rode (we = me and fourteen other Americans from my program + 1 Argentine leader who works for my program) in super cama seats which are basically beds on a bus. They’re way nicer than first-class seats on a plane, and for a quarter of the piece. Granted, you have to sit on a bus for 16 hours, so I guess that’s the trade off. But they treated us pretty damn nice; they gave us wine with dinner and a champagne night cap, not too shabby.
We took off from BsAs (that’s how Buenos Aires is abbreviated in Spanish since it’s plural) around eight o’clock at night and arrived in Porto Iguazu around noon the following day. We checked into this beautiful hostel which I’m pretty sure is the only hostel in the world with a pool:
I was feeling pretty loopy from the long bus ride, so me and most of the other girls decided to hang out at the hostel and read magazines by the pool. Little did we know the sun that was shining was the only sun we were going to get the entire trip! Saturday morning we woke up early to head over to the falls and the sky was ominously gray. Even though it wasn’t raining, the smarter half of the group (yours truly included) bundled up in our rain gear and headed to the national park where the falls are located. Sure enough, after we had walked about fifteen minutes into the park it started to drizzle a bit. But we hadn’t reached the falls yet, so I was pretty excited and didn’t think much about the impending storm. The park is set up in a really interesting way. The falls are located in a jungle/forest which was pretty much all cut down when the Spanish and Portuguese began colonizing the area. There even used to be an airport only a mile or two from the falls. Everything has pretty much grown back, but it’s all very short, small, young growth. When you first enter the park you first have to walk through a huge strip mall of gift shops and cafes until you reach a point of entry to the falls.
The Iguazu Falls are massive. They’re much more spread out than, say, Niagra, so the park is set up in a series of circuits where you can see all of the sections of the falls from different vantage points. To get to the first vantage point we visited we walked along this narrow metal bridge over the lake which comprises the top half of the falls. As the rain began to trickle down a little faster, my group and I walked about ten minutes along this bridge to catch our first glimpse of the falls. As we got closer and closer, you could see a wall of mist rising in the background. With each step a new sense was let into the secret that the falls were just ahead. First you could see the cloud of mist rising in the air, then you could hear the pounding of the water, and finally you could smell the fresh water dissipating into the air. When we got to the end of the platform we were literally standing on top of the falls. It was incredible. Staring into the water rushing down at god knows what speed it was easy to become lost in the sheer mass of water rushing over the edge. Swifts flew rapidly over and into the falls. Like many other waterfalls in tropical climates, there is a huge population of swifts which lives just behind the rushing water of the falls on the cliffs behind them. The swirling rush of white water was frequently punctuated with the small black swifts like a black and white Jackson Pollock painting or a page littered with periods and semicolons.
We spent a good fifteen minutes at this vista point admiring the sheer force of nature and taking lots and lots of photos. I mean lots. It felt like senior prom all over again, only this time I was in a rain jacket and denim cut-offs which were slowly becoming plastered to my body.:
The group lumbered on to the other circuits to gain different perspectives of the different sides of the waterfalls. We admired Brazil and Paraguay from across the water (they looked exactly the same as Argentina at this point). The view points were excellently executed. You could see the falls from afar, up close, to the left, to the right, over, under and beneath. By the time we got to the third circuit it was pouring rain. At this point, almost everyone who had not brought a rain jacket bought one for a ridiculous sum at one of the man souvenir shops located throughout the park. There were one or two who refused to cave in however, and I can pretty confidently assume that by the end of the day they were more than ready to head home.
However, the vista of the falls in the pouring rain was nothing compared to the “gran aventura” that we were about to take. I say gran aventura because that was literally the name of the next part of our trip: a boat ride under the falls. Now, in any normal circumstance, it seems kind of crazy to go in a relatively small boat under pounding waterfalls. But I guess if it had been a really hot day, I could see the appeal in that. However, in the freezing cold rain, it was a whole different brand of crazy altogether. As we walked down to the dock where the boat was everyone crossed themselves and said they’re last prayers. I honestly thought if the falls didn’t kill me, the hypothermia would. (Okay, I’m exaggerating here a little bit. But just a little). We waddle down to the boat, shoes full of water, rain jackets at this point making a joke out of us, but cameras in hand. “Here we go!” I thought as I sat down and splashed into a seat full of cold water. (Please note that the photo of my friends below was taken before we went under the falls, not after):
Because the falls are so powerful, they create a bit of a rapid river underneath them. We buckled up our life vests and dove head-on into the whirlpools. At this point everyone was screaming and I was hysterically crying. No, I jest. Actually, I’m pretty sure my friend Teddy who I was sitting next to, was hysterically crying. We were all holding on for dear life and the boat jumped into and out of the water. Finally we could see the falls around the bend. We can’t really be going into those falls, I foolishly thought to myself. Boy was I wrong. Not only were we going INTO the fall, but we were going into a section of the falls call la garganta del diablo. For those of you non-Spanish speakers, that roughly translates to the devil’s throat. THE DEVIL’S THROAT. Eh hem. So here we are, racing full speed right INTO the devil’s fucking throat. I almost blacked out. Right before we were totally submerged and swallowed up by the devil, the boat slowed down and we coasted slowly under the fall, being careful to not crash into the cliffs behind the falls (I hope this was intentional, at least). The water came pouring down on us and we were officially soaked. I felt like I was on some bad Nickelodeon show and was being slimed. Only, this was actually really fun! The water was super warm, way warmer than the outside air, and everyone was just screaming and yucking it up.
I was pretty ready to get off the boat after the first dunk, but we did two more for good measure before we got off back at the dock. All in all, I have to say, going to the falls and going under the falls was probably in the top three of the most epic things I’ve ever done in my life. (Number one involved eating an uncomfortable amount of In N Out grilled cheeses). But yeah, all in all it was pretty great. If you're a facebook user, I definitely encourage you to check out the videos that my roommate, Natalie posted of us going under the falls (that lucky duck has a water-proof camera! Pretty smart). The videos are not completely comprehensible, but should be at least fairly amusing.
I’m glad to be back in good ole BsAs now. It was great to get out of the city, but kind of sucky to share my room with 7 other girls in a hostel. Sunday was the first day of Spring here, and it’s starting to show (very, very, VERY slowly). The trip to the falls definitely whet my appetite for traveling outside of the city while I’m here and I’m definitely going to try to plan some more trips around Argentina and hopefully into Uruguay before I head back to the states in another six weeks. That’s not much time at all to travel, so I’ve got to get on it now while I still can!
As always, thinking of you all every minute. (Not all of you simultaneously, everyone gets one second per minute. You know if you’re in the top 60. If you’re not sure, don’t ask. That would be really awkward for both of us).
Hasta luego!
***************************************************************************************************
UPDATE!
I'm posting the videos that my roommate took below. I was sitting in front of her on the right, you can't really see me, but you can get an idea of the craziness that was going on!
Hope you enjoy!:
View Larger Map
As you can see, Buenos Aires isn’t exactly close to Porto Iguazu, so the trip there was quite long, 16 hours by bus to be exact! Luckily, bus travel is pretty popular in South America, so they have incredibly nice buses! We rode (we = me and fourteen other Americans from my program + 1 Argentine leader who works for my program) in super cama seats which are basically beds on a bus. They’re way nicer than first-class seats on a plane, and for a quarter of the piece. Granted, you have to sit on a bus for 16 hours, so I guess that’s the trade off. But they treated us pretty damn nice; they gave us wine with dinner and a champagne night cap, not too shabby.
We took off from BsAs (that’s how Buenos Aires is abbreviated in Spanish since it’s plural) around eight o’clock at night and arrived in Porto Iguazu around noon the following day. We checked into this beautiful hostel which I’m pretty sure is the only hostel in the world with a pool:
I was feeling pretty loopy from the long bus ride, so me and most of the other girls decided to hang out at the hostel and read magazines by the pool. Little did we know the sun that was shining was the only sun we were going to get the entire trip! Saturday morning we woke up early to head over to the falls and the sky was ominously gray. Even though it wasn’t raining, the smarter half of the group (yours truly included) bundled up in our rain gear and headed to the national park where the falls are located. Sure enough, after we had walked about fifteen minutes into the park it started to drizzle a bit. But we hadn’t reached the falls yet, so I was pretty excited and didn’t think much about the impending storm. The park is set up in a really interesting way. The falls are located in a jungle/forest which was pretty much all cut down when the Spanish and Portuguese began colonizing the area. There even used to be an airport only a mile or two from the falls. Everything has pretty much grown back, but it’s all very short, small, young growth. When you first enter the park you first have to walk through a huge strip mall of gift shops and cafes until you reach a point of entry to the falls.
The Iguazu Falls are massive. They’re much more spread out than, say, Niagra, so the park is set up in a series of circuits where you can see all of the sections of the falls from different vantage points. To get to the first vantage point we visited we walked along this narrow metal bridge over the lake which comprises the top half of the falls. As the rain began to trickle down a little faster, my group and I walked about ten minutes along this bridge to catch our first glimpse of the falls. As we got closer and closer, you could see a wall of mist rising in the background. With each step a new sense was let into the secret that the falls were just ahead. First you could see the cloud of mist rising in the air, then you could hear the pounding of the water, and finally you could smell the fresh water dissipating into the air. When we got to the end of the platform we were literally standing on top of the falls. It was incredible. Staring into the water rushing down at god knows what speed it was easy to become lost in the sheer mass of water rushing over the edge. Swifts flew rapidly over and into the falls. Like many other waterfalls in tropical climates, there is a huge population of swifts which lives just behind the rushing water of the falls on the cliffs behind them. The swirling rush of white water was frequently punctuated with the small black swifts like a black and white Jackson Pollock painting or a page littered with periods and semicolons.
We spent a good fifteen minutes at this vista point admiring the sheer force of nature and taking lots and lots of photos. I mean lots. It felt like senior prom all over again, only this time I was in a rain jacket and denim cut-offs which were slowly becoming plastered to my body.:
The group lumbered on to the other circuits to gain different perspectives of the different sides of the waterfalls. We admired Brazil and Paraguay from across the water (they looked exactly the same as Argentina at this point). The view points were excellently executed. You could see the falls from afar, up close, to the left, to the right, over, under and beneath. By the time we got to the third circuit it was pouring rain. At this point, almost everyone who had not brought a rain jacket bought one for a ridiculous sum at one of the man souvenir shops located throughout the park. There were one or two who refused to cave in however, and I can pretty confidently assume that by the end of the day they were more than ready to head home.
However, the vista of the falls in the pouring rain was nothing compared to the “gran aventura” that we were about to take. I say gran aventura because that was literally the name of the next part of our trip: a boat ride under the falls. Now, in any normal circumstance, it seems kind of crazy to go in a relatively small boat under pounding waterfalls. But I guess if it had been a really hot day, I could see the appeal in that. However, in the freezing cold rain, it was a whole different brand of crazy altogether. As we walked down to the dock where the boat was everyone crossed themselves and said they’re last prayers. I honestly thought if the falls didn’t kill me, the hypothermia would. (Okay, I’m exaggerating here a little bit. But just a little). We waddle down to the boat, shoes full of water, rain jackets at this point making a joke out of us, but cameras in hand. “Here we go!” I thought as I sat down and splashed into a seat full of cold water. (Please note that the photo of my friends below was taken before we went under the falls, not after):
Because the falls are so powerful, they create a bit of a rapid river underneath them. We buckled up our life vests and dove head-on into the whirlpools. At this point everyone was screaming and I was hysterically crying. No, I jest. Actually, I’m pretty sure my friend Teddy who I was sitting next to, was hysterically crying. We were all holding on for dear life and the boat jumped into and out of the water. Finally we could see the falls around the bend. We can’t really be going into those falls, I foolishly thought to myself. Boy was I wrong. Not only were we going INTO the fall, but we were going into a section of the falls call la garganta del diablo. For those of you non-Spanish speakers, that roughly translates to the devil’s throat. THE DEVIL’S THROAT. Eh hem. So here we are, racing full speed right INTO the devil’s fucking throat. I almost blacked out. Right before we were totally submerged and swallowed up by the devil, the boat slowed down and we coasted slowly under the fall, being careful to not crash into the cliffs behind the falls (I hope this was intentional, at least). The water came pouring down on us and we were officially soaked. I felt like I was on some bad Nickelodeon show and was being slimed. Only, this was actually really fun! The water was super warm, way warmer than the outside air, and everyone was just screaming and yucking it up.
I was pretty ready to get off the boat after the first dunk, but we did two more for good measure before we got off back at the dock. All in all, I have to say, going to the falls and going under the falls was probably in the top three of the most epic things I’ve ever done in my life. (Number one involved eating an uncomfortable amount of In N Out grilled cheeses). But yeah, all in all it was pretty great. If you're a facebook user, I definitely encourage you to check out the videos that my roommate, Natalie posted of us going under the falls (that lucky duck has a water-proof camera! Pretty smart). The videos are not completely comprehensible, but should be at least fairly amusing.
I’m glad to be back in good ole BsAs now. It was great to get out of the city, but kind of sucky to share my room with 7 other girls in a hostel. Sunday was the first day of Spring here, and it’s starting to show (very, very, VERY slowly). The trip to the falls definitely whet my appetite for traveling outside of the city while I’m here and I’m definitely going to try to plan some more trips around Argentina and hopefully into Uruguay before I head back to the states in another six weeks. That’s not much time at all to travel, so I’ve got to get on it now while I still can!
As always, thinking of you all every minute. (Not all of you simultaneously, everyone gets one second per minute. You know if you’re in the top 60. If you’re not sure, don’t ask. That would be really awkward for both of us).
Hasta luego!
***************************************************************************************************
UPDATE!
I'm posting the videos that my roommate took below. I was sitting in front of her on the right, you can't really see me, but you can get an idea of the craziness that was going on!
Hope you enjoy!: