Day 14 - Iguazu Falls

What can I say....we woke up super early, packed a day pack full of stuff and headed for the local airport (this one is a short cab from downtown and right on the water). The driver actually had no idea how to get there. We kept saying Aeropuerto LOCAL and he kept saying "Aeroparque?" and we kept saying "no no Aeropeurto LOCAL!" Eventually we realized we were saying the same damn thing.

A short 1.5 hour flight later we land in Iguazu and take a shuttle to our hotel "Hotel Cataratas *****". Yes the hotel name has 5 stars next to it. No, it is NOT a 5 star hotel [shrug>. Actually the hotel is VERY nice and does not live up to the lower expectations we had from reading TripAdvisor. Perhaps they did a remodeling since the last reviews.

We dropped our bags off in our lovely room overlooking the pool complete with cascading waterfalls and waterslides. Nice. We wanted to hit the park right away so we didn't spend much time at the hotel and were soon on our 5 peso bus to the park. Local transit kicks ass. I believe the taxi's were charging 70 pesos.

The park was magnificent. There are no words to describe it. Perhaps just dumping a few pictures might suffice. Sandy was sad that they wouldn't allow pregnant women to ride the "Grand Adventure" which roughly translates to "we take you in a speedboat up to the falls and you get soaked".

We toured the park as fully as we had time for end landed back at the hotel around 8pm. We stopped by the Sheraton which is the only hotel INSIDE the park with rooms overlooking the falls. Pretty cool but not worth the cash, the falls are way cooler up close and the hotel isn't all that close (which is a good thing).

There was an incident of the bus NOT stopping by the hotel on the way back and we had to hike it backwards to the place but it wasn't as bad as it initially seemed. Regardless none of that made the day less amazing.

The view from the Sheraton in the park

written by

yungwesl on January 20, 2009 from Puerto Iguazu, Argentina

from the travel blog: Sandy and Wes in South America

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Yep, same side of the falls on the same day at the same time. So frustrating! The four of us will all have to go back someday and ride the speedboats when Sandy can join. It was an AMAZING experience!!!

written by Kathleen Scanlon on January 22, 2009

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