Cal & Rachel Litwiller's Adventures: Thursday, June 18, 2015

This morning after breakfast we changed hotels here in Puerto Iguazu. The hotel we stayed in last night was barely ok, and we all agreed we were willing to pay more for a nicer hotel located up the street - St George Hotel. They had availability, so within 10 minutes we packed and moved all our gear! This was a time warp!!

After changing hotels, we are finally ready to leave for Argentina’s Iguazu Falls National Park. Once inside the park, which is a rainforest, you take a narrow gaged rail train to the location where there are walkways out over the water to what is known as the “Devil’s Throat” part of the Falls. A long walkway cuts across the Upper Rio Iguazu and jungle river islands before arriving at the lip of the 260 ft high horseshoe shaped falls, Garganta del Diablo. Wow! Wow! That is all you can say. You can feel the power!

Mist in the background is our first glimpse of The Diablo part of Iguazu Falls

The Walkway

One side of The Diablo

A Panorama of the Diablo - The Devil's Throat

We were There

Our Group of Iguazu Falls Travelers from Iowa

We returned by train to an area where there are hiking trails – Upper and Lower Falls trails. We hiked each trail. Wow! Wow! Wow! There is a Wow at every turn! This water comes from Brazil via the Iguazu River. Due to lots of rain in the last month, the river was high and the falls were running full. They say there are 250 falls, but our guess is that there are more than that, as the river was so full of water. The word Iguazu means “big water” and it is BIG WATER! The river at this point is extremely wide, wider than we ever imagined, so there is a large spans of continuous falls. It really was breathtaking, awe-inspiring. At one point we put on ponchos so we could get near the falls without getting soaked by the mist. Today we just stayed on the Argentine side, tomorrow we will see the falls from the Brazilian side.

Rachel with More of The Iguazu falls

A Panorama of More of the Falls

A Rainbow because of the Mist

Looking Down over the top of the Falls

Double Layer of Falls

Cal, close enough the he can almost touch it

Another falls nearby

We saw different species of birds and mammals today. The Coati’s (in Spanish) or Quati's (in Portugese) look a bit like a raccoon, but they have a snout like a pig, AND are they an annoyance. They are actually very aggressive when it comes to food. Mid-afternoon we had a snack at the snack shop. We went outside to sit at the tables with umbrellas, like other people were doing. There were 3-4 Asian girls nearby. The coati’s attacked their food on top of the table. Within a second, one jumped onto the table and crabbed a piece of food, and following him was 7 more of the animals. The poor Asian girls lost all their newly purchased food, plus it was so scary - it all happened so fast! The girls were screaming, but that didn’t bother the Coati’s! The rest of the people at tables, including us, grabbed our food and stood up to eat. It could have happened to us too. Later Cal had a bag of crackers – they heard the noise of the paper bag and came running! The Coati were around his feet and standing up on their hind legs around Cal, begging for food. What a sight, but actually a dangerous site as they injure people when they are after their food. When you see the Coati’s away from the food areas, they are digging in the dirt with their pig-like snout looking for grubs, bugs, etc.