Sunday, 12 October 2014
It's exactly 2 months since I left home on 11 August 2014! I can hardly believe it, I have already been to 5 countries, seen so many different places, people, cultures, traditions, been through all kinds of weather conditions, experienced many things both good and bad, and done so many things, and yet it feels like it's been a very short time, certainly not as long as 2 months! And today I entered the 6th and the last country on my travels - Brazil!
Today the tour only started at 9.20 pm. It was good for me because I could do with more sleep, and there was enough time for me to pack everything. Then we went to Brazil! The town where access to the National Park is, is known as Foz do Iguazu. It is 3 times larger than Puerto Iguazu. The Brazilian National Park was created in 1939, and is more than 5 times larger than the Argentine National Park. Brazil has a population of about 200 million people. I am beginning to think that everything is bigger in Brazil. Certainly the people I have met thus far on my travels who are from Brazil, I find to be happy, loud, boisterous people. The waterfalls itself is technically in Argentina, but the falls are from the river Iguazu which is in Bazil. It comes from 1,320 km away in a place called Serra do Mar (Curitiba) and 20 km downstream in joins the Parana river where Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet. It is estimated that the waterfalls are about 150 million years old, where the Iguazu river first formed the basaltic rock canyons where the waterfalls now are situated.
The jungle here and in the Argentine National Park is a sub-tropical forest, which is different from the rainforest in the Amazon jungle. According to my guide, the difference is in the amount of rain, it rains more in a sub-tropical forest, up to 2,000 cubic meters annually (I am not sure whether I heard this right from the guide and I didn't have time to clarify).
After paying the entrance fees (USD22), first we took an open air bus to to the Path of the Falls. There are many trials to the falls, but this is the easiest, about a 1.2 km walk. The view from the Brazil side, in my opinion, was better than the view from Argentina. Here we got to see the Devil's Throat from a nearer distance, and we also saw the San Martin waterfall, the 3 sisters waterfall and another waterfall known as the 3 Musketeers, among others. There was one look out point really close to the Devil's Throat, where I got wet all over again, but I got to see a rainbow! It was beautiful.
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