This past weekend, I went with 9 other kids from my study abroad program to see Iguazú falls. This is one of the country's major tourist attractions and definitely one of if not the most incredible natural sites I have ever seen.
Iguazú National Park is located at the northern tip of Misiones, a relatively small province at the northeastern corner of Argentina that sticks out between Paraguay and Brazil. It's about 2 hours by plane from Buenos Aires or about 18 hours by bus (keep in mind that there is nothing like our interstate highway system through most of this country). We chose to travel by bus overnight on Thursday and Sunday nights, giving us most of Friday, all of Saturday, and all of Sunday before heading back to Buenos Aires.
This country really knows how to do bus travel. I was a little bit worried about spending that much time on a bus, but it ended up being extremely relaxing. We bought tickets on a bus that had "camas" (the spanish word for beds), which were essentially like large recliner chairs with footrests. Immediately after pulling away from the station, a flight attendant-type employee came around and offered everyone mints. This was followed about 30 minutes later by whiskey on the rocks, and about 30 minutes after that dinner was served. Surprisingly enough, bus food beats airline food by a long shot. This meal included a cheese/meat appetizer combo, 2 types of bread, crackers with cheese spread, a hot entree (I also learned that they do provide vegetarian options upon request), an alfajor for dessert (this is a traditional Argentine dessert...it's basically a large sandwich cookie filled with dulce de leche...awesome), and your choice of wine or soft drinks. After the dinner trays were collected, we were offered champagne before the lights were turned off for the night. They also served breakfast the next morning...hard to complain about that! After sleeping about 10 hours on the trip there, I was pretty well rested for our first day in Puerto Iguazú.
On Friday afternoon, I went on a horseback riding tour through the nearby forrest. This was pretty touristy, but overall really enjoyable. The group was led by a guide who was probably around my age but extremely knowledgeable about the area and its history. In the middle of the woods, we parked the horses and stopped for a demonstration of some of the trapping/hunting methods used by the Guaraní people, the area's native population. These were the kind of thing that seem really elementary (ex--a hole covered with sticks and leaves, a tree that is triggered to fall on an animal that takes bait set out on the ground), but it was pretty cool to see these things in action. There also was a lot of information about plants with medicinal value and the differnt uses that the Guaraní found for each of them.
Saturday and Sunday we spend walking through the national park, which was really awesome. The falls sit right on the Brazil/Argentina border, but a Brazilian visa is a few hundred dollars so we were only able to see it from one side (although the Argentine side seems to have the most viewing options). Apparently it's pretty common for American tourists to hire cab drivers to illegally enter Brazil by driving through Paraguay, but I decided that one more view of the falls was not worth risking a visit to a Brazilian prison or a hefty fine. It's pretty difficult to describe the falls, so I will leave most of that to the pictures I took, but they are probably a little over a mile long and divided into 2 sections with a little island-like formation in the middle. There are catwalks built out over the top and around the base of one section, so it really takes very little physical effort to see everything (except for walking up and down some stairs). We were also able to do a boat ride that essentially takes you under some of the smaller sections (and gets you absolutely drenched), but I don't have pictures from that (there was one camera fatality in our group after that was attempted).
The pictures from the trip are on my facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2048005&id=1495500074
Let me know if you have trouble seeing them...they should be accessible even without an account.
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