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Iguassu Falls

After Touring Buenos Aires, we flew up to Iguassu Falls.  Iguassu Falls makes Niagra Falls look like a little stream.  There are over 275 separate falls in the Iguassu Falls system.

This is Devil's Throat of Iguassu Falls.  This is looking towards Brazil.  Devil's Throat is a thundering hole that is really very exciting.  

Here is a picture of us on top of the Argentine side of Devil's Throat. The river is over two km wide here.  We walked out 1.5 km on a catwalk to get to this point, which is effectively the most upstream part of the falls.  We had gone directly (via trail, train, and catwalk) to Devil's Throat from our hotel that was a couple of miles away.  The next picture (taken from Brazil) shows the lower end of the falls feeding into the river via a fork in the river.  Devil's Throat is about a mile upstream on the left fork at the base of this picture.  We planned to go to the top of the lower end of the falls the next morning after seeing Devil's Throat from Argentina and then going over to the Brazilian side of the falls the first day.  We had no idea of the extent and beauty of the Argentine falls until we got into Brazil and were able to look back across the river.  There is really no place to see the full extent of the complete falls, especially from the Argentine side.

This is Devil's Throat from the middle plateau (about half way down) on Brazilian side.  This morning we were up on the dark spot under the tall cloud in the picture looking up the throat (less than one-half mile away).  The Brazil-Argentina border runs down the middle of this part of the river.  It took us a 1.5 km walk on an elevated walkway above the river, a 20 minute narrow-gauge train ride, another 15 minute walk to the hotel, a 45 minute taxi ride crossing over the border to the Brazilian National Park, a 20 minute National Park bus ride to the park's cliffside foot trail, and another 45 minute walk along the trail to get from the Argentine lookout to this lookout in Brazil.

The following morning we hiked from the hotel to view some more of the Argentina side of the falls.  Then we took a 8 km nature ride in a 4x4 truck through the jungle down river to connect with a river excursion boat.

This boat took us up river and literally under the falls in the above picture.  Devil's Throat is about a half mile to the left.  

Then the boat came back downstream and took us up another fork and into the boil of the lower end of the falls shown above.  Again,  it took us literally under the falling water.  This was one wet and wild ride.

After the boat ride, we had to hike up the cliffs and back to the hotel.  

On the way we passed these twin falls which were the last of Iguassu's

upper level of falls .

These are the Petrohue Falls.  They are a major tourist attraction near Punta Arenas, Chile.  They are at the base of a volcano that slopes

up to the left (east).

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