Iguazu Falls. The Planet’s Most Awe-Inspiring Waterfalls.
Today we will feel the power of earth’s most powerful waterfalls, hundreds of them, creating a truly visceral experience.
NOTE. Regardless of how the images and videos from this day look to you, I promise we took every single picture or video here. And, no, not a single one is green-screened. And you’ll understand why I say that, when you see us standing just feet from millions of cubic feet of water coming down from above us.
We will explore these falls from the water, including our full morning shower (and yes, we will take you with us, quite literally, into the water, plus on land via hike, and from the air.
There’s a LOT of images and videos here. I wanted to take you with us. I wanted to revisit the journey as often as I wanted. Wade as you so choose.
FUN FACTS ABOUT IGUAZU FALLS
It sits in the middle of 167,000 acres of subtropical rainforest. There’s an Argentinian side and a Brazilian side to the falls.
Following a worldwide poll in 2011 of potential wonders of the world, and, taking in more than 500 million votes, it’s now included as one of the great natural wonders of the world.
There’s typically an average of 275 waterfalls that make up the falls but this can vary from 150 to 300 depending on time of year.
They are taller than Niagara Falls (and four times as wide) which led Eleanor Roosevelt to exclaim on her first sight of them: “Poor Niagara!”.
During most of the year, the volume flow is about 60,000 cubic feet per second or 3.4 million U.S. gallons every second. However, during the rainy season, it can often reach 450,000 cubic feet per second (25.5 million U.S. gallons per second).
The falls have been featured in various Hollywood blockbusters, from The Mission and Miami Vice, to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and most recently, Black Panther.
What will it take us to get there?
Fly from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Iguazu Argentina (store all our luggage except for a 33 lb checked back and 17 pound carry on).
Hotel to crash. 6:30 AM breakfast. 7:30 departure by bus.
Give up all passports for mass exit from Argentina and wait for Argentinian security and customs to clear us.
Exact same process getting into Brazil. But then, park the busses, and stand in a LONG line to gain access to Brazil through customs one at a time.
Then entry into the National Park on the Brazilian side.
Then we will take an electric vehicle through the sub tropical rainforest down a narrow dirt path until it’s too steep down to the river for it to continue.
Then we switch to jeeps to get further down the rainforest closer to the river.
Then we climb aboard a funicular to cable us down to a dock where we will board a boat.
Then we get aboard a high speed board and sign up for the special wet adventure.
Then,
Then,
OH, WAIT. I said I’d take you on the journey with us! My bad. Let’s go back a few steps and fill in the blanks. I wouldn’t want you to miss some of the experience.
Day 1 we travel by plane which strangely, including full airport experience, takes the entire day practically, and arrive in Iguazu. As we land, it’s very obvious we’re no longer in the area of one of the world’s alpha-cities, Buenos Aires. We are hours away, by plane, and it’s just mother earth around this airport. Yes please.
We take a bus from the airport to Iguazu and arrive at dusk. It’s nearly 8 AM. Before they take us to the hotel they tell us we have to see the view from this one spot in town where we can see three countries from this one point… Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. People are in the sleeping and eating mood but we take it in all the same.
We are standing in Argentina as I take this picture, and the bridge seen connects Brazil on our right, to Paraguay on our left.
It may or may not be obvious from the picture below (and we’ve only been outside for about 9 minutes at this point), that it’s a little humid here.
And, then it’s dinner, and bed, as quickly as possible.
Rise and shine for what will be a huge, long, hot, magical day with my family. The group we’re a part of booked this beautiful 5-star hotel for our 2 nights here. Truly southern hospitality, but in South America… and it was stellar service and care. Slightly 70’s color palette in the rooms but they were truly suite. I didn’t get a good picture of our Iguazu Grand Hotel but this was the view out our window in the morning…
A quick capture that I loved at our breakfast was how they served honeycomb… like, pull it from the bee hive, and place it here… SO good.
Let’s go back to step 4… getting through customs on the Brazil side of the border…. after all of the other hurdles…
And, if you’re curious, NO, the line is not moving quickly.
But after we finally get through, and are the first back to the bus, someone spots our first wildlife of the day, a burrowing owl nearby so I hop out to take a picture.
Okay, we’re all back on the bus, finally and that took forever. So, let’s go.
Uhm, let’s go! Let’s go please?
By this time, as we sit and sit… Trina can see out and there’s more and more Brazilian Federal Police approaching our bus. Then they have the driver get off the bus. Then, a leader of the police force comes on the bus and asks us all to put on our seat belts and he wants us to be safe. More police. More. Then, the drone that the a guy in uniform is operating standing outside our bus, looking in the windows at us. And then, then sobriety test they give the driver. Uh… this is not feeling great. Our guides hop off the bus. The Brazilian guide gets off the bus. Waiting. Waiting.
And then, we’re cleared. What happened? Oh, it’s Brazilian Federal Police training day and they’ve brought new people here to this site in Brazil to train and out of the all the tour busses traveling through the area, we drew the short straw for their training. Sweet. I’m already feeling lucky about the day!
ORDER OF BUSINESS FOR THE FALLS: WATER. LAND. AIR. BIRDS. (sweat in between each)
PART I: WATER
And so, yes, before we hike it, we signed up for a high-speed boat to take us up to the falls, and into the falls, and we’re taking you with us. We gave mom and dad the option of taking a dry boat tour, like, multiple times… and that was a hard no… especially from mom. She was going, wet and wild!
What does it take to get to the river?… First, an electric golf cart type vehicle to take us through a mile stretch of subtropical rainforest. The canopy is beautiful…
Our dirt path for a mile.
If you want to go on the ride and just view the canopy the video below is for you… not exciting… but I loved looking up the whole time.
Then the end of the road for electric vehicle as it can’t handle the terrain or descent from here so we switch to a jeep:
The jeep takes us to a funicular that will then cable us down to the dock.
And then it’s time to saddle up. Can you guess from this picture who’s most excited?! Oh and those are our new friends Doug and Polly and Karen and Shelley waving hi!
And off we go! This first video just gets you up to speed.
This part of the ride takes you all the way to the first views of the falls.
And then we see some of the first views of the smaller side of the falls revealed.
A little zen-like moment to take it in before we kick it up a notch.
BEST VIDEO 1 of 3 of high speed boat adventure. Feel free to take a shower with us and crank up the volume and take these videos full screen! And, don’t cut it short as there are two dunks to take in here. And I think #2 and #3 are even better!
As we come out of the falls for the second time I shoot this video below just upstream and above the location where we are. The still shot from mid-video below it shows you where we will trek to later and look down at this area from above on our hike.
A few sweet videos of the falls next to us before we get a surprise revisit of the falls shower experience.
BEST VIDEO 2 & 3 of 3 of high speed boat adventure. Why are these video’s below better than the first? Because dad obviously hit up the boat captain, disappointed his side of the boat didn’t get the full experience I got. And when the boat captain decided to back the boat into the falls in order to help dad not feel left out… let’s just say he might have gotten a wee bit more shower than he wanted! AND, Trina captured it all. And of course the kids in front loved it… > 65 years dad’s junior they are! #TakeItLikeAChamp OR #TakeItLikeAGramp
And then… just a wee sprinkle as a cherry on top….
FAVORITE PICTURE during the high speed boat trip was mom after the major waterfall shower! Epic joy captured by my gal!
MOM… you’re as TOUGH as they come and you overcame a LOT to pull this off. LOVED so much that you did it with us!!!
One happy gal…. and guy!…
A view of the funicular from the water as we return to the dock.
PART II: LAND
And now, we will hike the Brazilian side of the falls. As extraordinary as every other part of this day ends up being, this will be my favorite part of it all. Even though the trek is a bit extreme from a soaking humidity standpoint (I guarantee you I lost 5-7 pounds of water sweating on this part of the venture), there’s nothing like being literally feet away from this enormous, powerful body of cascading and tumbling water.
I will comment with brevity and just let you meander with me from the farthest point up until we’re mere feet from some of the largest parts of the falls.
This next video gives you a sense of what is was like walking through this side of the falls before we get close.
I stopped here and asked Trina and mom and dad to go ahead out onto the walking path and I would capture some images of them from here…. had to love mom giving me a wave!
In this video above, I stop the video partway through to capture a still shot of the image below, and put an arrow to show you where the falls are that we went under on the boat. And, that’s the area where, when I captured mid-video earlier while on the boat, and used the red arrows to point upstream, and above, was to this point where I’m standing now and where we are all walking.
Below are two of my favorite images of Trina and I, from this entire day.
PART III: AIR
Trina and I make the decision that we’ve seen the falls from a high-speed boat and hiked the path on the Brazilian side so it’s time to take to the air. Mom and dad stay behind and take in some of the amazing aviary wildlife in the refuge nearby and we spend some time there too. Birds come after our own flight though. Join us!
Trina’s first helicopter adventure!
Take off and in route to the falls…. from a couple angles….
NOTE: I need to edit these next videos down, to better capture the best parts of each. For now, due to time constraints and need to post this in order to share with my colleagues 2/14 & 2/15, I’ll just post these. I’ll remove this note when I’ve edited the videos to cherry pick the best images.
In the video below, you see from the air, the stunning Belmond Hotel Das Cataratas on the Brazilian side of the falls. A Forbe’s 5-star designated hotel (one of the toughest to get). There’s no better place to stay, actually, AT the falls and it has a rich, pink, history an lives amidst the rainforest with the falls audibly in stereo from every corner of the property.
The video above is the last capture from the air of the falls. If you care to follow us to the ground, that’s the last video below.
This was a amazing experience for us in person. Difficult to capture via video to share but hope you caught a few elements that showed the majestic nature of what we experienced from every angle we could on this day.
PART IV. BIRDS
Parque das Aves. This 12 acre Atlantic rainforest park was created by Dennis and Anna, who came from Namibia. She’s a vet, and he’s in love with birds. It was inaugurated in 1994 and is now the largest bird park in the whole of Latin America. Home to more than 800 animals of 200 species, is also a shelter for species seized by the Brazilian Federal Police and the Environmental Police, and they are kept in particular as Dennis and Anna are on a mission to save the many endangered in this part of the world. The park not only has birds from all over the world but has some mammals and reptiles, and only has native trees to the region.
The park is primarily responsible for breeding and conservation works. It prioritizes natural breeding, where parents incubate and raise their offspring naturally, with minimal human interference, and then they are released out into the wild.
Lastly, forgive me. Yes, a lot of canopy shots because I LIKE TREES and love the hundreds of native subtropical forest trees here.
Oh, and yes, this is all STILL January 31st, 2024… the day we started in Argentina. Humidity 96%.
The Pink Flamingo.
Crax. From the family of curassows native to tropical South America.
Psittacara. Parakeets native to South America, from the tribe Arini (above and below).
Above is a Penelope, a turkey-like species. This guy has a seriously raucous honking call.
Corvus. South American crow.
NOTE: I include the video below less for the visualization of the canopy, which is more for me… but, so that you can listen to what it sounds like to walk through here with all the native bird sounds filling the air.
Golden Parakeet. Known as the Queen of Bavaria. Neotropical parrot native to the Amazon basin.
I did not capture this image above, myself, but I did see these here and watched them for a bit. Just had never seen one in person and the Toucan was made famous in the U.S. when I was a child as Toucan Sam was the mascot for Fruit Loops starting even before I was born.
Blue & Yellow Macaw native to this sub-tropical rainforest area of South America.
Note: I have loved that each nursery has a sign in English, Portuguese and Spanish that explains the animal’s origin, latin name and habits. We had to hurry, due to delays early in the morning at customs, but appreciated this nonetheless.
The glorious species BetterHalf native to PNW in North America. Definitely endangered as there’s only one!
Butterflies cheek to cheek.
Papilio Anchisiades or Ruby-spotted Swallowtail butterly.
Above. Malachite, a neotropical brush-footed butterfly.
Bananas. Duh. Hat to capture as I’ve never seen them in the wild.
It’s difficult to gather, capture, and express my thoughts on this day. There’s so many different elements that brought me immense joy. Am I awed? YES. Is mother nature’s beauty and power sometimes so extensive, illogical, and other-worldly it’s hard to take in and understand? YES. If I laid out what it took to get here is it worth it? YES.
But, back to those moments of immense joy. Awed, by falls. Enamored by creatures and forest canopies. But the immense joy came from hearing the screams of my wife going into the falls, the expressions of my parents after bathing in one of the world’s most beautiful waterfalls, and my wife leaning her head on my shoulder as we stood facing the massive major falls, with them running under us, and literally 360'° around us.
And I recognize, in those moments of immense joy, there is no exhaustion, no heat, no humidity, no lack of sleep, no obstacle course on the way to this moments amidst the journey, that exists.
I also recognize we don’t have to go around the world to have these moments, together.
However, even with all that recognition, still there’s the truth that exists for me, that similar to the snowy peaks, pristine bays, childlike and playful penguins, the sounds of the running water, the birds, the smell of the rainforest…. that there is a constant calling for me, of me, to be in places that aren’t cities, and are preferably void of major highways, and the constant barrage of everything that seems to bombard my mind and soul in my existing life. No idea how to marry what I love, with what my soul needs amidst the planet. It is my challenge to figure out.
Tomorrow we return to the alpha city Buenos Aires, Argentina. The antithesis of what my soul craves. But, amidst the presence of those I love, we will find our moments there too.
Rest. Now, rest.