The Grand Iguazú

We got back from Iguazu this afternoon a couple hours later than we were supposed to due to some delays on the part of Aerolinas. I have lots of thoughts but basically Iguazú was nothing short of amazing, and it also seemed to be a very clean and well run park. I'm dividing this post up into several sections:

Part 1: You know where you are? You're in the Jungle, Baby!

Technically Iguazú is a sub-tropical rain forest, but it pretty much looked and felt like a jungle to us. It consists of a large flat flood plain which empties into a rather abrupt drop in the land, into the Iguazú river. This is a view from the air coming in:

Here is a panoramic view of some jungle:

This is a view of the Iguazú river. The center island is where King Kong lives.


Part 2: Around High Iguazú
Most of the park facilities are in the upper falls; that is to say, on the level with the tops of the falls. We were very impressed not only with the views and how easy it was to get around, but most especially by the clean and pristine nature of the park:

This train carried us between stations:



We rarely set foot on the ground - almost all pedestrian access is on elevated walkways

There were lots and lots of mariposas:

lizard type things:


a crocodile (or is this an alligator?):

Bunches of long nosed racoon type things:

But it was the falls themselves that were most impressive of all:

Part 3: Lower Falls
We signed up for the Gran Adventure which involved a boat ride under the falls themselves. Here we are embarking:

Approaching the falls:

After this I had to put away the camera as we passed under the falls and got very wet. Here are some pix from the climb back up afterwards though:


After this in our giddy excitement we took the train the wrong way and lost our tour group (which was finished anyway, we were just heading for the exit) as a result we got caught in a brief but heavy thunderstorm and i had to put away the camera. I did get this picture of the rainbow afterward :-)

So, now we are like full on jungle explorers. Pretty cool, eh?