Tuesday, March 1, 2011

[waotkapwsojg

I last updated before I went to Puerto Iguazu.

Puerto Iguazu was a nice little town, but a little beat up looking. It has some upscale restaurants and hotels though, since it's main reason for existence is to support tourists. I checked into my hotel, the Bosetti Apart Hotel. I decided to stay at a hotel instead of a hostel mainly because I wasn't okay with leaving my laptop behind while I went out each day. I saw a hostel for about $14 a night though, pretty good deal. The first night I went to a restaurant to try the local fish. It was a Pacu, basically a bigger relative of the piranha. It was really good, and came with a Rocquefort sauce and some weird potato ball things.

The next day I got up at 8 AM to go to Las Cataratas de Iguazu. They're campaigning right now to be voted one of the next 7 wonders of the world. I didn't know where the bus station was so I asked someone at the hotel if they could call a cab for me but they said it'd be 80 pesos, one way, which is pretty expensive. But she told me the bus station was only a few blocks away and that each trip was about 7.50 pesos. So I did that and rode the bus with a bunch of tourists and park workers to the waterfalls. It was about a 25 minute ride there (bunch of stops), and then I got there, bought my tickets and  got a 50% off next day admission since I was there for a few days.

I first walked through to the visitor's center, got a map and looked at a few of the exhibits they had. Mostly about park development, and the local flora and fauna. Then I stopped by this hut that was selling tours, so I got the Gran Aventura package, which takes you on a jeep tour of the jungley area and then drops you off at a dock by the river for a speedboat tour of some waterfalls. The jeep tour was okay, about 15-20 minutes. The guy spoke in spanish and english. Stopped by some cool looking trees and also showed us a bunch of crazy spiderwebs. The spiders were huge, probably about 8-10 inches in diameter. Scary, but apparently they weren't venomous. Still, imagine that crawling on your face.

The speedboat tour was awesome too, the driver just blasted around the river for a while and there were some really cool sights and pictures of the cliffs surrounding us. They took us to 2 waterfall sites and near the waterfalls so we'd get soaked. I think if we would have gone under the waterfalls we might have drowned. They're mighty.

The rest of the park was a bunch of trails. It had the upper and lower trail. I went on the upper trail for the first day and saved the lower trail for the second. That was awesome, and you could see the origins of the waterfalls from the top river and watch them cascade down the edge of the cliffs. The main attraction was the Garganta de Diablo or Devil's Throat. That was the largest set of waterfalls. It was really cool, and made Niagara Falls look like shit. The water was really brown and murky from all the deforestation that uproots sediment, I don't think Niagara Falls had that problem. Anyway, the power of the falls was impressive.

There were also these little raccoon-like animals running around everywhere called coati. They would just come up to people looking for food. They seemed nice, and some people were even petting them, but they're apparently known to bite. I think they're used to human contact now, since they don't seem afraid at all. I want one.

I'll update more later.

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