Legend has it that upon seeing the Iguazu Falls, Eleanor Roosevelt said: “Poor Niagara!”. We’d all concur. We saw a lot of falls in Western Canada and we have all seen Niagara Falls before this trip. To us, these falls felt like we could combine everything we had seen in Canada, multiply it by two and then still come up short compared to Iguazu. Being in person, it was another “oh wow” moment like Moraine Lake , but unlike Moraine Lake, the pictures below can’t possibly capture the 275 falls spanning 2.7 kilometers in quite the same way. So you’ll have to take our word for it that it was spectacular and hopefully you get a little sense of what it was it like.
La Garganta del Diablo
The falls are on the border between Argentina and Brazil. The Argentina side has a lot more trails out primarily to the top of the falls. The first trail we did is the furthest upstream. It is called Devil’s Throat, has the largest drop and is the largest section of the falls.
After a train ride, we had to take a 600m walk-way to get out to Devil’s Throat that hopped from island to island. We had to get the rain gear ready as we got close because there was a large mist cloud.
From the top of Devil’s Throat, looking downstream to the left and upstream to the right.
Circuito Superior
The Upper Circuit trail took us along the top edge of many of the smaller (but still big!) waterfalls.
Circuito Inferior
The Lower Circuit trail was anything but inferior and provided some of the best views of the falls from the Argentinian side.
Tango!
We had hoped to do a tango show in Buenos Aires but the timing just didn’t work out. However, we saw that the same theatre company had a show in Puerto Iguazu. It was a lot cheaper than Buenos Aires and since we didn’t have a morning flight the next day, we decided to try the 10pm show. We were unsure what we were getting into since it is associated with the casino but it was well done and we also enjoyed the live music that accompanied the show. They did more than tango, with some drumming as well as twirling ropes with a hard ball against the floor to make a rhythmic sound. If I remember correctly, those are called bolas and one of the daughters from our friends in Uruguay was learning to use them as part of her school skit so it was kind of fun to see them in this show as well.
