Iguazu is one of the largest sets of waterfalls in the world and a cultural World Heritage site. You shouldn’t go to Argentina and NOT see the falls. At least, that’s what we had heard. So, we booked some short flights from Cordoba so that we could spend a few days seeing the falls before we left Argentina.
Our flights to Iguazu went really well, and we arrive at our hostel late in the afternoon. We decided to stop in town the next morning to try for a Brazilian visa to see the Brazilian side of the falls, as well as the Argentinian.
The thing about Brazilian visas is that they’re expensive for Americans – $150 each. They are as expensive and complicated for Americans to get as American visas are for Brazilians. Typically Americans have to apply in their home country and use their visa within 90 days of it being issued. The bonus is that the visa is valid for 5 years, so you only go through the complicated process once, no matter how many times you visit Brazil.
We arrived at the Brazilian embassy, and asked about visas. Unfortunately, we had four strikes against us in our minor quest to see the Brazilian side of the falls:
- You have to fill out a form online before arriving at the embassy, which we didn’t do.
- Visa applications are taken from 8am to 11am; we arrived at 11:22
- The office in Iguazu only issues 30-day visas, so it wasn’t worth it for us (we’ll visit Brazil soon, but not on this trip – we just wanted to see the Brazilian side of the falls).
- I was wearing my Argentinian national team futbol jersey, so I don’t think the Brazilian behind the counter was too kind to us. Even though we were speaking decent Spanish and he knew we were Americans, he spoke to us in Portuguese the whole time!
So, we didn’t go to Brazil. But we did head over to the park to see the falls for the afternoon, and it was awesome – way better than we thought it would be. The sun was out, it wasn’t too hot, and there were rainbows everywhere!
Our second day in Iguazu, we headed over early to catch the sun at the Garganta del Diablo – the devil’s throat. This is the biggest site at the falls, and worth it. You can actually see the mist that rises from this from the plane as you fly in; here’s a view from up close:
Later that morning, we hiked down a small “jungle-like” trail to the final waterfall to see in the park. It wa hot, but fun to see. On our way back, I caught some bits of a spiderweb, and trailed a huge spider (the size of my hand) along with me until Stef brushed it off. We also passed by a few monkeys hiding in the trees…
Then we left the next morning to get back to Cordoba. What really struck us was that the airport was completely cloudy and overcast when we left. Our flight back wasn’t as easy as our flight in, but you’ll read about that tomorrow…
