A little Bit of Amazonia Goes a Long Way …

Travel

Lima: La Parte Uno

The following day I had another early morning flight to the third country on my itinerary, Peru. Having prepared my bags, etc, the previous night, I set the wakeup time for 4:30 which would allow me enough time to shower and such and meet the 5am pickup time (once again having to forfeit breakfast). As soon I roused myself and start to get ready, the phone rang, it was reception, the transfer driver was already here, 30 minutes early! I told reception he had to wait. Either he or the local Chimu reps had got it wrong again! When I came down, just after 5, I could see that the Argentinian taxi driver was fuming, you could cut his seething anger with a gaucho knife. I reiterated what I had told reception, he was at fault coming half-an-hour early. This seem to propel him into an even bigger rage, responding with belligerence and rudeness. Once we were in the taxi, the intemperate oaf proceeded to drive like a coke-fuelled maniac at breakneck speed to the airport (fortunately there was very few cars of the freeway at that time). It was a very frosty trip with both of us seriously pissed off at that stage. I was glad to get to the airport in one piece. At least I didn’t have to deliberate over whether to give the turkey a monetary gratificación for his service(?).

Lima protest
Lima ‘happy’ protest San Martin Plaza

The Flight to Lima was largely uneventful. Coming out of the Arrivals, I checked the cambio rates as I had no Peruvian sols but was still holding a surplus of Australian dollars. They were offering around 2.70 to the US dollar, which was not bad, but only 1.50 to the Aussie dollar. Considering that Australia was 1.05 or 1.06 to the US$ at the time, this was a rip-off of a deal. I put my Australian dollars away & withdrew sols from the Airport ATM instead. As I was leaving for Amazonia the next morning, The tour agent had booked me in to the nearest hotel 50 metres from the Arrivals gate, Costa Del Sol. This was the first modern hotel I had encountered on the tour! I had a complementary pisco sour at the bar. Notwithstanding my initial reservations I was starting to warm to this quintessentially South American drink. As it was still only mid-afternoon I decided to head into the city. Tossing up whether to go back to Jorge Chávez to get a Green Taxi or the convenience of booking one there at the hotel reception, I went for the convenience (and an extra 15 sols). Despite the reception guy saying it would there in a moment, 15 minutes of moments passed & still no sign of the cab! I walked out into the airport street and hailed one straight away. The drowsy old codger with a rundown taxi charged me 45 sols and then proceeded to drive like someone possessed, zigzagging between cars all the way into the centro. I hadn’t been prepared for such an unnervingly hairy ride from such a senior driver. But, based on my later cab experiences in the Peruvian capital, such dangerously wayward motoring is the norm for everyone. Lima, at least the part I saw on my first day, was very grimy, dirty and faded. There were some grand colonial buildings in the city, but all of them aside from those in Plaza San Martin, were in dire need of a clean and a fresh paint job. There appeared to be hardly any gardens or green areas to speak of in the central region. Of course there was the obligatory protest against the authorities going on in the Plaza, it was typically noisy, very musical with everyone apparently enjoying themselves! In the limited amount of exploring I did, the one street that raised a little bit of interest on my part was Jr Pierola in the downtown area. This curious street was composed largely of small ‘backyard’ printing presses, stretching one after another for blocks. I had thought it strange at the time that there could be a need for this many printing shops in Lima. I didn’t find out until much later that Lima was the counterfeit banknote capital of the world! it now made more sense. Unaware of the back story, I had been thinking only in terms of legitimate, domestic demand!

Order of the White Knotted Rope
Order of the “White Knotted Rope”

I walked down to the end of the street full of old technology printing businesses onto the main link road where I saw, not for the last time in Peru, an odd kind of religious ceremony. Outside of this big church, there was this line of about 20 priests standing outside the church entrance. They were all wearing a distinctive rope knot around their necks (I later dubbed them “the Order of the White Knotted Rope”). Watching the spectacle for several minutes I got the impression that I was observing some kind of phenomenon of celebrity priests. Clusters of people were standing in the street outside the cathedral (all with the devotional Catholic parishioner look about them) craning their necks and earnestly trying to get a glimpse of the “sacerdotal heavyweights”. And the priests themselves seemed to relish being the centre of attention, lapping up all the unconditional adoration like the strutting peacocks they seemed to be. Central to this spectacle was the priest in purple (rather than the standard black) who arrived late, making a rather grand entrance with quite a theatrical flourish (I didn’t actually notice if his white knotted rope was larger than the others). So, picture the scene, a cabal of monk celebrities being lavishly feted by the pious crowd, to a noisy backdrop of roving street vendors, women and girls, shrilly trying to peddle a range of religious icons, relics & souvenirs to the faithful. I felt the need to move on quickly. I tried to hail a taxi to take me back to the airport hotel but every single driver I stopped on the main avenue, shook their heads vigorously and sped off when I disclosed my intended destination. This left me perplexed, I couldn’t work out

San Jose turrones
San Jose turrones

why were they disinterested in my fare, passing up a chance to rip off another gullible tourist. I walked back in the direction of the church to try a different street for cabs. I passed a very brightly-lit up shop selling something called ‘San Jose turrones’. These were rectangular slabs of biscuit topped with multi-coloured lollies in a gooey base, which despite being very unappetising-looking were very popular with the local customers. Curious about these delicacies I googled them later, the manufacturers themselves don’t describe these turrones as food or biscuits, but as “edible products of Peruvian traditional custom!” Back home, I consulted a work colleague who comes from Peru on the turrones, his opinion was that the most distinctive aspect of these delicacies was their rock-like hardness. Looks like I saved my teeth some wear and tear there. I asked a young Peruvian couple also trying to hail a cab why the taxis wouldn’t take me. The guy informed me that many of the city taxi drivers did not have a permit to enter the airport. He managed to engage a taxi whose driver had the permit and was prepared to take me. This was very considerate of him, but then, when I was getting into the cab, the young fellow, astoundingly, paid the fare for me (which he had negotiated at 40 sols). My protests at such generosity were deflected by the Good Samaritan. It was all I could do to slip a 20 sol note, I had in my pocket, into his reluctant hands. I must say that I was quite blown away by the kindness of this stranger! Twenty minutes later, I was having serious misgivings about having got in this particular taxi. We’d gone about 3-4km when suddenly a traffic policewoman pulls our taxi over. She speaks curtly to the driver (who is already looking quite contrite and sorry for himself) and then she starts writing a ticket. I hadn’t been paying much attention so I was not certain of his misdemeanour, but I suspect he had run a red light. After the policewoman had issued the ticket and moved away to catch some other unalert transgressors, the driver remained sitting there in the cab, crestfallen, motionless for several minutes, reading the infringement notice, then placing it on the dashboard, picking it up again, re-reading it, reading it in minute detail as if not believing the words contained on it. Seemingly stunned by his misfortune, he appeared to have completely forgotten about me in the back, the passenger! Finally, he snaps out of his torpor and slowly put the notice in the glove box, and having regained some composure, restarted the engine and drove on. Our route to the airport, circuitously down various dark backstreets, was very different to the one taken by the ageing speedhog who had brought me into town, and it took a tortuously long time to return to the airport. Finally, outside of what looked like the entrance to the airport, he came to a halt, pointed vaguely in the direction of some amorphous building in the mid distance. I was a bit dubious at about exactly where I was. The driver’s motives for abandoning me outside the airport were not hard to fathom. I figured that he was trying to recoup some of his losses (the ticket still dominating his thinking), by not entering the aeropuerto precinct he was saving money on the permit usage. Whatever! I was still a good seven to eight minutes walking from the hotel but I didn’t care. After the ordeal of the long, long journey I was glad just to get out of the taxi. The next morning I was woken up at 6am by what sounded like a Tijuana brass band playing in an unrestrained fashion. Forty metres from my hotel window a collection of musicians were loudly welcoming a returning local Lima football team.

When I got to the airport to catch my flight to the next destination, Puerto Maldonado, I found there were huge queues at the domestic airline check-in, and LAN had one line only open. After 15 minutes in the queue, the line had hardly moved, so I switched to the next line (also LAN) which had only a handful of passengers in it. After some time in this line, a LAN staff person came up and ejected me from the line, because apparently this was for ‘special’ check-ins. I remonstrated loudly with the staff, saying that LAN should have more than one lane open to cope with the overflow of passengers, but they would not budge, so I found myself relegated to the end of a now much longer queue. After three-quarters of an hour and little progress, it was pretty apparent that I would miss my flight. And I would have done so, had not a savvy American traveller I was talking with alerted LAN to my plight. The LAN staff person OK’d me to go straight to the departures gate carting my luggage with me. The sudden spike in passenger numbers at the airport was down to the school holidayers starting their trips, which underlined just how inept LAN was in planning for this annual occurrence. The plane flew first to Cusco for a stopover before going on to the Amazonia region. The Cusco trip turned into a wild salsa party, courtesy of the Latinos on board raucously singing, bumping and grinding their hips to the cabin music most of the way. Even some of the LAN cabin staff were getting into the action, turning up the volume on the music and dancing enthusiastically to the rhythm. I for one was relieved when most of these out-of-control Peruvian 20-somethings danced their way off the plane when it landed at Cusco! On the onward trip to Maldonado, the normal and more subdued in-flight entertainment replaced the passenger-generated entertainment. We were collected by a bus at the less than impressive Puerto Maldonaldo Aeropuerto. The posada lodgers gathering together in the bus were a very mixed group, nationality-wise. I had a nice conversation with two friendly American guys on the bus (not the typical loud, boastful type). On the advice of Lizbeth (our guide) to travel light, we unloaded all of the baggage not needed for the three-day trip to Amazonia in a secure storage holding (at least I was hoping it would be secure). At the river (Rio Tambopata), we took the long boat trip to the resorts (the bus group were going to three different lodges), fortunately ours’ was the closest.

Departure point for Amazonia
Departure point for Amazonia

As we chugged down the Tambopata, I enquired “Are we in Amazonia yet?” Lizbeth replied in the affirmative, so, suppressing my instinctive reflex to say “If that’s so, where is the Amazon River then?”, I instead asked “Is this a tributary of the Amazon?” Lizbeth‘s halting response was that it was a tributary of another river which was a tributary of the Amazon. A tributary of a tributary? Someone else asked the obvious question, “How far are we from the Amazon River itself?” The guide hesitatingly replied that it was 4,000 kilometres away! The other questioner was incredulous and thought she meant 400 kilometres, and corrected her, which under pressure she eventually agreed to in an appeasing gesture. I checked later, it was 4,000km away! Not to mention several tributaries of tributaries away … through eastern Peru, across Bolivia and of course deep into Brazil. All of my tour group were caught off-guard by this revelation! Before coming to Peru we had thought along these lines: the itinerary says we were going to the Amazonas region of Peru, given we know that the Amazon River itself flows through part of Peru, ergo we will actually be on the Amazon River! Not so apparently! (I discovered later that the Peruvian part of Rio Amazon flows much farther north in the area around Iquitos).

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Rio Tambo

We pulled over to the mooring for the Posada Amazonas and walked up the track a short distance to the rainforest lodge. After a welcome session in the restaurant/bar, my group settled into our rooms which were hobbled together with wood, bamboo, palm fronds, adobe mud and clay, nonetheless the rooms appeared solid enough. They were not however soundproof as all rooms were open at the top, nor were they secure as the verandahs were windowless, opening out to a view of the close-by jungle. Needless to say guests at the lodge would have been foolhardy not to use the room safety deposit boxes.

Posada Amazonas room
Posada Amazonas room

My room had a grand, four-poster bed with a (essential) mosquito net, reminding me of the room I had once stayed in at Livingstone in Zambia alongside the Zambesi River. The hammock in the corner seemed an over the top “Jungle Jim” cliche (and it didn’t come with a mosquito net!). In the afternoon we did an exploratory walk thorough the Amazonas jungle, climbing a 37 metre-high scaffolding canopy tower to get a view of the native bird life. Unfortunately, we didn’t see much of anything of the avian family. Lizbeth, our guide, claimed she got a glimpse of a toucan in the canopy from about 500 metres away but I couldn’t see for sure that it was a toucan! The meal in the Posada that night comprised a set menu and was excellent. Variety was provided with a good rotation of dishes each night, and breakfast and lunch were of a similar quality. Not so ideal was the electricity supply, a couple of times each day the lodge turned on the generator for an hour to allow guests to recharge their batteries, phones and cameras. The problem with this was that the generator’s availability tended to coincide with our boat excursions, so this made it difficult to keep our devices charged up. The electricity also was cut off each night at 9pm, usually ensuring an early night for most. Still, we were deep in the jungle and should have expected to forego the usual urban conveniences and rough it to some extent to give the experience more of an authentic flavour. The next day we pulled on the black wellies supplied by the lodge (most of the trails were permanently muddy in the tropical wild) and crossed the Rio Tambopata by boat to an oxbow lake called Tres Chimbadas, where we circled round the lake in a catamaran. We were on the lookout for caiman and hoatzin (could find any) and giant river otters, which we did see. I asked why we didn’t see any pirañas in the lake. Lizbeth reckoned it was because the otters love to hunt them. We moved to a different part of the river where Lizbeth supplied us with wooden branches fashioned into primitive fishing rods. This time pirañas were plentiful and quite a number were caught by the group, mainly by a Gippsland farmer’s wife (none by me!). The pirañas were surprisingly small (given their fearsome reputation), but any feelings of complacency we might have had were dismissed when Lizbeth demonstrated the razor-sharpness of their teeth in effortlessly cutting through a leaf! I was reminded of this several weeks after the trip when I heard a report of how a host of pirañas had attacked swimmers at a beach in Argentina.

Piranha!
Piranha ha!

After lunch we went to a nearby Collpa (salted soils) on the river bank. Here at the Clay Licks, neotropic birds ingest the clay from the side of the river bank. Lizbeth had forewarned us that macaws might not be present at the parrot clay licks and we may only see parrots and parakeets, but we were in luck as scarlet macaws were there on mass. From a elevated screen cover constructed next to the clay lick we were able to observe the normally shy macaws feeding on the clay. Without the cover we wouldn’t have been to get that close to the timid but spectacular red, yellow and blue macaws.

The Clay Licks: Scarlet macaws
The Clay Licks: Scarlet macaws

Later we did a short boat ride downriver to the Infierno native community’s ethnobotanical centre (Centro Ñape). We were escorted around the ‘medicinal’ garden by an Indian medicine-man who showed us the plants that were used by the community for treating different ailments and conditions. At the end of the tour the shaman invited us to sample some of the concoctions which he claimed could treat everything from cancer to diabetics to arthritis to impotence! No one else was game but I tried a couple of the fawn to darkish brownish-coloured drinks which had a taste somewhere between sour whiskey and cough medicine. I didn’t notice any benefits but fortunately I didn’t experience any adverse after-effects either.

Jungle's medicinal cabinet
Jungle’s medicinal cabinet

At night after dinner we did a hike in the dark and the rain looking for jungle organisms which are more nocturnal in their activity. The night patrol turned out to be a bit of a meaningless wander as we only managed to glimpse the occasional frog, a few unexciting insects and one well-camouflaged monkey in the trees. In the morning the Amazonia adventure at an end, I said goodbye to Lizbeth who implored me to give a very good report on the tour evaluation sheet. Her earnest entreaties were of such a magnitude, as if a life or death outcome rested on my favourable response, so I was only too happy to oblige her request. In my jungle room each night when retiring, I had gone to obsessively lengths to ensure that the moissie net covered my body 100 per cent, so intent was I to try to escape the dreaded bite of the Amazonian mosquito. But just as I was leaving, they had finally got a piece of me, causing my skin to become increasingly sensitive and itchy as the day wore on.

Tambopata boat
Tambopata boat

After a 45 minute boat ride and a final photo or two of the Tambopata, we returned to the port and the Maldonado storage depot. After the bus was unloaded, I discovered that my baggage from the lodge had not been brought back. I had been a bit apprehensive that they might have missed my bag because my room was at the far end of the lodge. Indeed I had actually gone back just prior to departure time to make sure that it was still not outside the room. It had been taken so I was (deceptively) reassured. The depot staff were all relaxed about it when I reported it missing (typical Latino insouciance) and the supervisor told me not to be concerned, “no te preocupes señor“, on the next bus no problem. Frustrated, I was left to cool my heels, thinking that I should not have trusted the inept fuckers and instead carried the bag myself. I was less than amused to find out that the porters had placed my bag with another group of bags in error. Fortunately I was running early for the flight back to Cusco, so the lodge’s cockup wasn’t costly. Puerto Maldonado Aeropuerto was about as threadbare and lacking infrastructure as any airport I could imagine in South America, befitting I guess a remote jungle outpost! There was no air con and not much in the way of snacks or refreshments in the cafe. There was very few seats in the terminal and woefully few in the Departures area. This was not a place you want to get stuck in for a long time, the boredom factor would probably kick in pretty swiftly. Interestingly, the electronic detector at the baggage point seemed to be activated only by footwear! Waiting in the Departures lounge I looked round for something to distract me and find it in the shape of an odd sign on the wall. The notice lists a number of points, including a warning to passengers of their potential criminal liability in the event of flights being delayed by wild birds coming in contact with the aircraft (not sure how this could be attributed to a passenger?!?), something about passengers ingesting drugs and then being apprehended, and then later it turns out that they didn’t actually ingest any drugs and so are allowed to stay on the flight after all (I’ve no idea what this means!!!), and a statement indicating the possibility of a bomb being discovered at the airport or on board (no mention of what procedure would follow the discovery – just that there could be a bomb and folks you should know this!). El bizarro! I sighed heavily and was just happy to see the LAN jet appear on the tarmac soon afterwards.

Iguazú – Argentina’s Waterworld Wonder

Travel

Argentina: La Parte Uno

Early the next morning the taxi does indeed get ‘removed’ to the airport at Santiago, but fortunately for the continued progress of my trip I get to keep it company on its journey. In the cab the transfer driver hands me a sheet from CTS to evaluate my experience of the Chilean leg of the tour. As the trip proceeds I find that this becomes the norm for Chimu – someone gives me a form with five minutes to complete it, just enough for a fleeting, impressionistic take on their performance, when you’d like to be take the time to be expansive about the things you didn’t like! The skeptic in me rails against this dubious, paying ‘lip service’ kind of practice, but nonetheless in the few moments I get before we get to SCL Airport I make a rushed attempt to summarise my complaints of the Chilean experience. I return the sketchily-filled questionnaire back to the driver and offer him some of my pre-breakfast snack (chocolates).

On the catwalk at the Devil's Gorge On the catwalk at the Devil’s Gorge

At the airport I find myself once again exposed to the vagaries of LAN customer service. The seemingly complacent, unhelpful staff are vague and imprecise with their directions as to where I go next. I try to print my own boarding pass for Argentina from the self-serve ticket machine as advised by LAN staff, but the machine is not cooperating! Fortunately, a useful Chilean representative of Chimu Adventures is at hand and he comes to my assistance and manages after a few tries to print out my tickets (I’m absolving him from my general criticism of Chimu). By the time I get to the Immigration control point for departure, SLC’s signage is misleading and some of the necessary passenger forms are missing, the immigration official at gate 17 is not only unsympathetic and typically blasé when I protest about the shambles of the setup, she is seemingly sarcastic to boot! She forces me to go back and repeat the whole immigration passport check stage. Her inflexible, uncooperative manner leaves me to wonder, following on from my earlier experience with the LAN front counter, if the phrase LAN public relations is an oxymoron! If its anything to go by, some of the staff I’d met so far were certainly oxymoronic.

The flight to Buenos Aires is uneventful and pretty smooth. After touching down at the Airport I have a lengthy delay waiting for my connection to Iguazu. I pass the time sampling my first taste of Quilmes whilst staring out of the airport bar window at the Rio de la Plata, trying to see if I can chance a glimpse of the distant Uruguayan coast (the vast River Plate is up to 40km wide at some points). The Quilmes seems quite a decent cerveza, but maybe I’m just thirsty. After a second sampling, no, I decide, I do prefer this Argentinian drop to the Cristal I had in Chile. The flight is a fairly brief one, as the plane nears Iguazú the jungle becomes more and more dense. Then just as we get the “prepare for landing” instruction, I get my first, partial sighting of the Iguazú Falls. It’s certainly partial because I can barely make out the misty spray of the falls on the horizon, spiralling upwards out of a broad patch of deep green. I sit back and wait for mañana, when all of the mystique of the Falls will be revealed, hopefully.

Iguazú Falls are a cis-trans-border phenomenon, encompassing both Brazil and the Argentine, with a third country, Paraguay, on the same river very approximate to the location. My hotel in Puerto Iguazú, La Sorgente, is not old but its not new either, and the room door uses those old cumbersome latchkeys which I always have trouble with, but that aside, it is a quite reasonable lodging (outstanding even if I might extend to hyperbole, if the point of comparison is the dire AH Hotel in Santiago!) After settling into my room, I wander up for a look round the town. Frankly, it is a quite unprepossessing place, old dilapidated buildings, many signs have faded or partially unhinged. The surface pavement(sic) of the roads are a strange and primitive concoction of jagged pieces of broken rock mortared together, the result of which is unfriendly to both car tyres and human feet. The local youths seem to spend all day cruising up and down Avenida Cordoba in their defect-laden, beat-up old cars, their hands manically tooting the horn for no reason. And, as in Chile, the many mangy-looking, roaming dogs are an integral feature of the rundown local ‘picturesque’. Whatever money the Government makes from Iguazú Falls tourism (and I imagine it would be lucrative), by the look of this place it is certainly not being pumped back into the Iguazu infrastructure!

My first night in Puerto Iguazú I had dinner at the popular Colors restaurant in the Avenue. I’m not really much of a ‘foodie,’ someone with an always active and overdeveloped appetite, but in the spirit of “when in Rome …” I went for the whole meat package, the formidable bife de lomo, cooked Argentinian parrilla-style – an enormous 135g slab of tenderloin steak. More rare than I would usually have it, but I did enjoy it, and managed to get through it all, probably in part because I had skipped lunch and was a tad ravenous by 7pm.

Sth America's Waterworld Sth America’s Waterworld

The next morning was a scheduled early start to fit in a full day at Iguazú Falls. This left me less than 15 minutes for a ‘run-through’ breakfast, even less given that the Iguazu bus arrived five minutes early, meaning I had to quickly grab my bag upstairs and scoot out the door brushing away the bread crumbs as I go. Like the early morning departure from Santiago, this was basically a sans breakfast day. I find that the bus isn’t ‘full’ as claimed by la guia who was obviously trying to hurry me up to keep on schedule, however we do make several hotel stops on the way to pick up a lot more people, so in retrospect I can understand his desire to expedite the action. We get to the entrance of the Falls complex and of course it is full of visitors, international, Argentinians from other regions, school groups, etc. After getting our tickets and navigating the turnstiles, the guide decides that we should by-pass the train immediately inside the gates and walk a couple of kilometres through the bush to the next train station. This sounds a bit curious to me, walking when the train is just there, but when we get to the second station he explains the method in this, the entrance train (which didn’t get to the second point until after we had got there by foot) had to terminate, and so passengers would have to alight to await the other train which is the one which goes to the Waterfalls. Our advantage, the guide was at pains to stress to us, was that by getting there first, it would ensure that we were in the first train to the Falls. Fine! But I was left wondering why, a) there was wasn’t more trains scheduled seeing that Iguazu was a world-class highlight on the global tourism calendar, and, b) the first train just didn’t go straight through to the Falls, considering that both trains left from the same track! To me, that would be logical, but it may not be the Argentinian way!

The tour’s main guide, Rodrigo (who I renamed ‘Rodrigid’ as the day wore on), a smug dude with good English, displays an irritating trait of always referring to members of the tour group only by their surnames (no mister, señor, señorita,and so on). He annoyingly persists with this military-style form of address. Now, he may just be lazy and not want to bother to learn tour members’ first names, but I find it disrespectful and decide to throw it back at him by pointedly calling him “Mr Rodrigo” or sometimes plain “Apelido“, which made him laugh but I’m doubtful if he got my point.

El Diablo El Diablo

The entirety of the Argentine section of the Falls can be split into two parts, the Cataracts and the Gorge. We arrived at the Gorge first, the entrance to which in Spanish is called Entrada to El Diablo Garganta, still needing to walk almost 1200 metres on a linear footbridge to the actual ‘Devil’s Throat‘. This recently-constructed metal and wood bridge or catwalk is somewhat of a marvel of engineering in itself, as it would have posed considerable challenges to erect across such turbulent waters. As you get closer to the throat, the roar of the powerful waters gets louder and louder and a couple of hundred metres away the spray shooting up from El Diablo can be seen. So, two trains, a hike through the jungle and a further ‘walk on water’, all of the preamble is worth it, 100 per cent, when you finally get to see it! At the edge of the waterfall, the footbridge bends round into a U-shape (more accurately, fork-shaped) to maximize the number of people that can view the waterfall from point-blank range. The viewing platform extends out over the edge of the land (as it does at the Grand Canyon), so that anyone standing on it, cannot avoid getting a decent old drenching! Ponchos are definitely the preferred fashion garb at the Throat! Standing on the catwalk, getting soaked by the spray, trying to look and take photos and videos at the same time, you get the overwhelming sense of all that cascading power! There is water everywhere you look, the impact of the spectacle is just totally fixating! I was fascinated by dozens of little birds that would rapidly dive into the enormous mouth of the waterfall, disappearing into the all-encompassing spray as if the mouth had swallowed them up, only to return skywards several seconds later. It was like they were playing ‘chicken’ with this, most powerful beast of nature, the whole spectacle was quite mesmerising.

Paseo Inferior Paseo Inferior

Later we explore the multiple, other reaches of the Falls, walking on the National Park’s two trails, the Paseo Superior (Upper Trail) and the Paseo Inferior (the Lower trail). This gives us a different viewpoint and lots more photo opportunities. We also explore the Park’s flora and fauna. Unusual, dazzlingly beautiful butterflies can be seen as can the coatí, which are plentiful in number. These small, long-nosed relatives of the raccoon show no fear of humans and tend to hang round close to the Park kiosk and restaurant having recognised the visitors’ role as purveyors of food. As we cross one of the waterfalls on a catwalk we notice a family of the raccoon-like mammals directly below our feet on another rung of the bridge making the same crossing but seemingly unperturbed about how close they are to getting swept into the rushing waters of the falls.

As 80 per cent of the Waterfalls are on the Argentinian side of the river, the best panoramic views tend to be from the Brazilian shore. As I hadn’t had time to arrange a visa for Brazil before leaving Australia, I did the next best thing which was to pay for the optional Macuco Safari speedboat ride under the Falls. Before you get onto the boat, an attendant gives you a green waterproof bag and asks you to divest yourself of as much clothes as practicable. I was rather disdainful of the guy in front of me who had stripped right down to very brief swimmers, thinking that this turkey was really overdoing it, maybe he just had an exhibitionist bent? When I realised how drenched we would get in the boat, I took it all back. Only then did I remember the advice from the Chimu consultant in Sydney to pack my swimmers (I was kicking myself because I packed them but left them behind in the hotel room that morning!). Once underway, I soon realise that my concern was less about the threat posed by the precipitation from the Waterfall above, than from the action of the powerboat. As the boat accelerates and powers through the water, swerving rapidly from side to side, the huge waves rushing in over the side of the speeding boat douses me and fills up the bucket seat with water. Every time this happens, I instinctively rise from the seat and frantically start scooping the water out whilst clinging urgently to the seat in front. And as I do this the boat attendant immediately orders me to sit down. This pattern is repeated every time a horizontal flow of water rushes in. I bounce up and down continuously to keep bailing the water out; at the same time I had the added anxieties of trying both to avoid the vigilant watch of the zealous crew member and not to lose my camera overboard. Eventually, when I realise that it was inevitable that I was going to be saturated, I give up and stoically resigned myself to my fate. Mercifully, the ordeal is soon over and we return to the shore where I seek out a rock in the sun to dry myself on. Notwithstanding my discomfort due to a temporary state of sogginess, the boat afforded the perfect, up-close viewpoint of the falls.

Cory - the long-nosed Argie coatí Cory – the long-nosed Argie coatí

After the speedboat escapade the tour guides shuffle us immediately on to an open-top truck for a slow drive through the Nacional Parque jungle and rainforest, stopping several times to have our attention directed towards different types of forest vegetation. If the idea to pile everyone into the back of an open-top truck was devised to help the boat passengers dry off, it was certainly appreciated – the hot jungle sun took care of the rest! If there was a disappointment with the jungle part of Iguazú ,it was with the paucity of wildlife that we managed to spot. Apart from the conspicuous, aforementioned raccoons, little else in the way of fauna could be spotted. I wasn’t exactly expecting to see jaguars or ocelots in the trees (perhaps thankfully so!), but I was hoping for a glimpse of the odd tapir and certainly, of the elusive toucan, given that this South American bird appears on just about every Falls souvenir painting, plaque and fridge magnet sold in the local shops!

Most of la Catarata visitors seemed to be be from other parts of Argentina, probably a big proportion from BA, but the day-trippers in my tour group were a real mixed bag, North Americans, Britons, Australians, other South Americans, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch. I engaged in a stimulating conversation with a young Spanish honeymooner who has surprisingly good English. An endearing sidelight of our talk was, if I said anything she thought of note, she would turn and patiently translate it to her new husband who was both monolingually Spanish and seemingly monosyllabic. As the señora and I conversed in English at great length, this was considerate of her, making him feel connected to the discussion.

La Catarata La Catarata

Argentinians like to refer to Iguazú Falls as ‘la maravilla‘ (the wonder), witnessing its massive power and sheer scope is undeniably one of the world’s great sights. Given that ”comparisons are odious”, as the cliché would have it, I am be reluctant to speculate as to which is the greatest waterfall, Iguazú or Victoria Falls in Southern Africa (even leaving aside the problematic question of what we mean by ‘greatest’). That I visited both waterfalls when they were not at their peak complicates this issue further. Rather than trying to rank them, it is more useful to recognise that both waterfalls are stupendous natural phenomenons in their own distinct ways.

For another thing, it is a bit of an “apples and oranges” comparison, they are both waterfalls but are quite different in their form and composition. Victoria Falls or Mosi-o-Tunya, is the largest, single curtain of water in the world, at its highest it is 26 metres taller than the highest point of Iguazú. Iguazú, conversely, is composed of approximately 275 discrete waterfalls (rather than one continuous stretch of water), and extends all of 2.5km along the Argentine-Brazil border, the sheer number of individual waterfalls scattered about the place makes for an unforgettable spectacle. The pros and cons can be stacked up against each other, one after another. there is nothing at Iguazu to equal the Devil’s Pool in Zambia! The metal footbridge at Iguazú allows you to get right on the edge of the waterfalls, palpably face-to-face with an incredibly imposing curtain of water known to Argentinians as the Devil’s Throat, but at Iguazú you can’t leap into the rushing waters of a rock pool which pushes you to the very precipice of the waterfall, as you can at Victoria Falls. Both of these falls, you can see, have their own distinctive characteristics, and both are world-class natural wonders, exceptional in their own ways.

On returning to the hotel I had intended to eat at the hotel restaurant, until I notice that they are still painting the interior. Accordingly, I decide to avoid the paint vapours and head back to the township to eat. I discover that Puerto Iguazú is much larger than the one street (Av Cordoba) ‘hick town’ I had assumed it to be on my first day. Cordoba Avenue is not even the main road but leads on to Victor Aguirre, a much more central street with its own little side streets. This part of Port Iguazú is made up of a liberal smattering of largely unexciting bars and eateries, and a welter of souvenir and gift shops all basically duplicating each other’s products as you commonly find in any tourist Mecca. After dinner I take a last look round the township and head back to La Sorgente. My last night in the port of Iguazú.