Antarctic Adventure #20, Iguassu Falls, 1 Jan 2020

Antarctic Adventure #20, Iguazu Falls, 1 Jan 2020

Woke to a beautiful morning.  View from our balcony.  Had to leave early - on the bus about 7:15am!  And yep, if you read our previous day's report, we were up past midnight drinking our Anniversary champagne & watching the fireworks!  So we were a little sleepy!

We headed straight to the park. Arrived a little before they opened, but still quite a few folks in line before us! This is a popular tourist stop! I downloaded a few pictures from Wikipedia to give you an idea of just how massive this fall system is. To give you a comparison, Niagara is almost 4000' wide where Iguassu is 8900' wide! Victoria Falls (dividing Zimbabwe & Zambia - remember from our Africa visit?) is 5600' wide. Iguassu has many little islands that divides up the water, so it is considered the "largest" falls in the world, but Victoria has the longest continuous curtain of water. Niagara on the other hand has the highest rate of water falling.

We hopped on the little train to head to the top of the falls - trying to reach the "devils throat" before the massive crowds of the day - and to beat the heat (supposed to be about 100 degrees today). We left our Antarctic expedition to head to a hot subtropical humid climate! Hummm? Left our bright red parka's at the hotel in Buenos Aires!!!

After our 30 minute train ride, we disembarked to take the .6 mile raised walkways to see the Devil's Throat. The park was opened in 1934 & the walkways are amazing. There are beautiful trees filled with birds, butterflies, & lots of the adorable Coati (even with babies!!!) all along the way. Of course we could see fish of all shapes & sizes in the water below us & the birds were everywhere! 

And then when you reach the Devil's Throat, you think you've died & gone to heaven. It's totally indescribable!  

In some of the shots you can see across the river to the tower where we were yesterday.  That's Brazil.

There were huge flocks of birds overhead. Unsure what they were. Didn't have binoculars with us. Probably Dusky Swifts. Our guide pointed out the bigger grey/white birds, Gavalon Caracolero - Snail Kites (picture from the internet!!). They eat the fresh water snails that were everywhere on the rocks.

Here's a short video to give you at least a small idea of the power & majesty of this location. And the water level appears to be a bit low now - can't seem to get verification, but they have been under a drought situation recently - still getting rain, but not the amount they would normally have at this time of year.

 

We took the little train down to the lower Falls circuit & spent a couple of hours viewing some of the 275+ individual waterfalls along the circuit.  Saw one of the snails down below the walkway.

We saw a Green Heron & lots of Anhinga's. The vegetation was a limitless green & had very unusual (for us at least!!) buds, flowers & fruit growing in it.

We were entertained by an acrobatic monkey on a radio tower.  He was having a great time!

After lunch we took an open truck through the rain forest (uneventful - no birds even!!) and then headed down to board the boat for our exciting trip "into" the falls. 

We did see a Great White Egret! Not an exciting Birding trip!!!

We continued on to the falls.  We did this when we were here before and couldn't wait to do it again.  Most exciting adventure!!!  Don't miss it!!

I had taken my water proof camera just for this adventure, but didn't really capture any photo that was worth while.  It is certainly exciting to experience!!!

Here's a very short video of us going under the falls!! It's loud, so turn DOWN the volumn!! And yes, I'm screaming.

For whatever reasons, I didn't take any pictures of our last evening at the hotel in Misiones Province, just this couple of photos from the balcony.  We had a lovely supper & got ready for a long day of travel to get back to the US.  Antarctic Adventure is almost over!!!