Iguazu Falls

The last week has flown by and I’ve loads to catch up on so I’ll start with my trip to Iguazu falls! Georgia had to do a boarder run to get her passport stamped before her 3 month tourist visa ran out and having heard the falls were ‘not to be missed’ I decided to join her. So on Monday we got dropped off in the nearest town of Santa Rosa and waited for the night bus to Ciudad Del Este that we were told would arrive between 11pm and 1am. One of the volunteers had to be dropped off at 2pm to catch a bus back to the capital to carry on his travels so we had a long wait. We had been warned not to attempt to get a ticket too early as the guys at the bus station would try selling us tickets for an earlier bus. At 10pm we headed down to pick up our tickets only to be told our bus wouldn’t be arriving until 7am the next day. We narrowly avoided being sold tickets to god-knows-where to get a different bus, it turned out this was just another attempt by the bus men to sell us the wrong tickets. Our bus came at 12am and 5 hours later we were in Cuidad Del Este where we got a taxi over the boarder to Brazil to get our passports stamped then over to Argentina. We visited the falls on Wednesday. No picture can do it justice but here are a few to give you an idea of how amazing it was.

The area surrounding the falls is a national park with plenty of wildlife. Thanks to the public feeding them the coati have become pests, the capuchin monkeys we saw were minding their own business until some tourists got out a banana and offered it to them. Georgia and I watched them much longer than the average tourists wishing our troop at Laguna blanca could be as habituated as they are.

Some other wildlife we encountered:

Snake necked turtle

Cavy

 Coati 

Giant catfish AKA Monocholo 

Black Tegu 

Capuchin

Spectacled or dwarf caimenn

We also saw toucan and the boat guide told us there are cougars and leopards in the park.

The second day we visited Guira OGA wildlife sanctuary. Located in the middle of 19 hectares of protected forest, the sanctuary acts as a buffer to the forest surrounding Iguazu falls. We waited at reception for the transport to rock up.

After a 10minute ride into the forest in we met a tour guide who spoke in Spanish and then in English about the different species. The animals on view would never be returned to the wild for a variety of reasons and were being held captive now for educational purposes and for captive breeding programmes. She explained how they used training such as falconry to prepare some rescued animals for release.

Hornbill

Capuchin

Tamandua

Eagles

Howler monkey

The overly friendly howler monkey was due to be released when a fellow fever outbreak hit Northeast Argentina and postponed his release and caused him to habituate. Released on-site he now comes back to visit and assist with tours by posing for the tourists.  

The way back to Laguna Blanca went smoothly until our bus broke down 3 hours away from Santa Rosa. The bus had just enough life left in it to reach a mechanic where we waited 4 hours for the bus to be repaired. At around 2am we made it to Santa Rosa, we walked half a mile to find a hotel that wasn’t shut. I don’t think security guard at Hotel Crystal was expecting to young white girls to arrive at 2am and he looked at us though he had seen a ghost. Not knowing exactly when the bus back to Laguna blanca would arrive, we headed to the bus station at 9am but the bus wasn’t until 11:30. One 38degree, bumpy bus ride later we were back looking pretty bedraggled but relieved to be back at Laguna Blanca.