Waterfalls and rainbows in Argentina

27 May 2007

Ok, so a little more about my days at the falls and the story itself. Iguacu Falls, in Guanani means Great Water. It is based on a Guarani legend of a forest god who got angry at a warrior for stealing his daugther and escaping on the river Iguazu in a canoe. In his rage he caused the river bed to collapse in front of the lovers. Throwing the daughter over the edge and turning her into a stone, whereas the warrior survived and later was a tree that overlooks his lover. Isn't it romantic.

Well the falls themselved can be seen on both the Brazilian side as well as the Argentinian side. My first day was spent on the Argentin side, where you get to get up close and personal with the falls. Like I said before it is unbeliveable and difficult to put into words on how to describe what you see. The falls are the largest in the world, where as Angel Falls is the highest and Niagra is the widest for one waterfall, but Iguacu Falls spans almost 9000 ft total, between both countries.

When we arrived we took a jeep and rode throught the jungle, it is a sub-tropical rainforest and has many different species of birds, including 5 different species of tucans, snakes, butterflies and plants. They also have jaguars and courgers, but of course we didn't see any of these, apparently you have the best chance of seeing them in the morning. We then got onto this speed boat which takes us up directly to the falls and you get soaked by them. In fact we almost went underneath them. Because the river was flowing at 4000 cubic feet/sec (normally only 1700 cubic feet/sec) we couldn't actually ride up the the Devil's Throat, one of the biggest and seemingly most powerfull of the falls, but I do have pictures from it on the Brazilian side. The boat tooks us under two different falls and it was amazing. After the boat ride we get back into the jeep and go for another ride. There are the upper and lower falls that you can walk through and you walk up to both the upper and lower, which is where some of the pictures are from. On this walk you are literally walking right above where some of the falls spill over.

The two pictures are from the Argentinian side. Like I said before, there are rainbows everywhere and all you want to do is keep taking pictures because it is just so amazing.