Our South America Adventure - Day 10 Iguazú National Park

We had a slow morning today. We are in a sorry state today. Our cat died and we are still trying to process it. It made everything about today harder. We woke up and watched the sunset from our balcony. It was pretty cloudy so there wasn’t much to see, but the falls looked quite impressive this morning. We also watched the monkeys take over the balconies at the Gran Melia Iguazu this morning. 

We wandered downstairs for a late breakfast. Then we packed up our bags and checked out of the hotel. We have loved this hotel. The location is amazing and you can’t beat the view of the falls. All of the staff are so friendly and helpful and kind. It is a luxurious place. We have moved hotels a lot on this trip - almost every day. We were excited this morning because we will check into a new hotel tonight and then tomorrow we check into our hotel in Rio and we are there for the last 4 days of our trip. It will be so nice not to have to move hotels anymore. 

We headed out of the hotel and into the national park. Today we started with the upper trails loop. This loop took us up close to many of the waterfalls. We were above the falls in many cases and could watch the water crash down below us. These waterfalls are so powerful. 

Of all the places we could have been when we got the news CC passed Iguazu is far from the worst. We have seen about a million rainbows since that terrible call and every time we see a rainbow we smile and sometimes we cry a little too. Iguazu is a peaceful place and our long walks by the waterfalls gave us an opportunity to share memories of our little cat and process our grief. 

The upper loop was quite long. We took our time enjoying the scenery. We were in no hurry today.

When we finished the upper loop we took a train to the trail leading to the Devil’s Throat (Garganta del Diablo). This is the most famous viewpoint since the majority of water flows through this area out of all the waterfalls of Iguazu. Half of all the water flowing through Iguazu comes through this relatively small area. The train takes ~20 minutes to reach the trailhead. 

We were getting off the train when we spotted the most unusual-looking creature. It looked kind of like an anteater or raccoon. Turns out it was a Coati, and there were tons of them in this area. They were curious-looking animals. 

South American coati

We walked about a kilometer out to the Devil’s throat. The trails here are quite remarkable. They have built these nice metal walkways over the river that provide access to all of the viewpoints. 

The Devil’s throat was quite impressive. The sound of the waterfalls was deafening and the falls flung a huge cloud of mist into the air. We found a spot of marveled at the falls for a while. 

When we were done we caught a train back into the main section of the park. We walked back to the Gran Melia for lunch. I had empanadas that were easily the best empanadas I have ever eaten and Alison had hummus with vegetables. While we ate we saw many rainbows appearing over the distant falls. 

Plush-Crested Jay

After lunch, we headed back down to the lower falls. When we were exploring the upper trail we noticed some platforms and walkways we didn’t see yesterday. We went searching for them. First, we retraced our steps from yesterday and we hadn’t overlooked anything there. Then in the main area, we noticed another path we hadn’t tried. We went down this path and found the trail and platforms we had seen from above. Here we were treated to new views of more falls and in some cases, we got close enough to get drenched by mist. 

Once we thoroughly exhausted all of the walkways we headed back to the hotel and found a place to sit and wait a few minutes for our scheduled ride to our next destination. From our seats, we had that perfect view of the falls. We are going to miss this hotel - it was one of our favorites. 

At 5pm our driver arrived and helped us load our bags into his car. We were headed to our hotel on the other side of the border in Brazil. Crossing the land border couldn’t have been any easier. We didn’t even have to exit the car on the Argentina side. It was a drive-through where we handed them our passports and they checked a few things and waved us through. On the Brazil side, we wouldn’t have even had to even do that, if we would have been going back to Argentina, but since we will be leaving Brazil through Rio we had to park and go inside to show them our vaccine cards and get our passports stamped. It was a quick and easy process. 

Our driver dropped us at the hotel Colonial Iguazu. It isn’t the nicest hotel we have stayed at, in fact, it is one of the worst, but it is within walking distance of the national park and right next to the airport so we can’t complain too much. We ate dinner at the hotel (this hotel is far outside of the main town) and then I called it a night. Alison stayed up looking at pictures and videos of our CC cat. She is missing her a lot right now.