At last it was time to travel from the windswept pampas of southern Patagonia to the thundering falls of Iguazu. During a brief overnight stop in Buenos Aires (less than 24 hours) before our flight, I dug through the contents of my luggage searching for the mosquito repellent that was somewhere near the bottom. Javi had advised us that we’d definitely want it in the rainforest. I also put my sun block, sun hat, and rain hat where I could readily access them. It was going to be hot and humid in Iguazu.
After working our way through the chaotic Aeroparque (the small airport near the downtown area), we boarded an Austral Airlines plane that had only two seats on either side of the aisle. I instantly knew that my seatmate, an attractive young man, was Argentine. How did I know? It was because he was traveling with his maté gear, i.e. a fancy leather box with handle and compartments specially designed to hold a thermos of hot water, a maté cup, the special straw, and a bag of Yerba maté.
As soon as we walked down the steps from the plane onto the tarmac, the summer heat choked me. Thank goodness there was air conditioning in our waiting minibus. As soon as we, we were inside the Iguazu National Park in the province of Misiones in northeastern Argentina, near the border with Brazil and Paraguay. Looking out the window, I was struck by how green the area was.
On our way to the nearby Bio Center, Rodrigo, the local guide who met us at the airport, explained that we were in a sub-tropical (temperate) rain forest and he pointed out many of the plants growing at eye level. Unlike the tropical Amazon rain forest, a rain forest in the temperate climate zone gets cold in winter and many of the taller trees lose their leaves. This allows the light to get through to the forest floor whereas in a tropical rain forest, the sun never penetrates the year-round thick canopy of foliage. As a result, there is dense growth at ground level only in the temperate rain forest.
When we reached the privately-owned Bio Center, located south of the town of Puerto Iguazu, a solitary black coot was gliding by in a pond.
Just inside, I marveled at the host stand, which was inlaid with geodes. It was a reminder that this area is known for its many deposits of minerals and semi-precious gems.
We sipped cooling fresh fruit juices and checked out a display of local plants - maté, palmito (the plant which provides hearts of palm), mamón (Spanish lime plant), and yacaratia (a tree with edible wood), plus food products from the region, which included maté, maté liqueur, maté cocido (“cooked” maté, actually maté tea bags), and maracuya (passion fruit).
Maté is a plant that is native to this region. It thrives in the subtropical climate and the red soil that gets its color from iron oxide. (By the way, stevia is also grown here.) The local Guaraní community was the first to drink maté tea and they introduced it to the Europeans.
The brunch consisted of composed plates that gave us a chance to sample some regional specialties, many of which were unfamiliar to me. Several dishes featured corn and river fish.
There was the chipa guasu, a delicious Paraguayan corn cake made with round yellow fresh corn, onions, and Paraguayan cheese. We also tried a square of Paraguayan sopa, a corn bread made with dried corn flour. Two empanadas were served. One was filled with meat and the other with surubi, known as the giant tiger catfish. The ceviche combined pacu (an omnivorous freshwater fish related to piranhas), surubi, and dourada (known as the gilded catfish). Sweetness was provided by a passion fruit mousse and an unusual edible tree bark “candy” from the jacaratia shrub, which was served on a banana leaf with a piece of buffalo milk cheese.
Following our brunch, we walked back to the greenhouse, which was filled with orchids, bromeliads, ferns, and other plants.
In the separate butterfly house, butterflies and moths flitted through the air. One of the most beautiful and elusive is the aptly named tiger butterfly.
Afterwards, we boarded special all-terrain vehicles that could handle the deeply rutted unpaved roads leading to a Guaraní village.
The Guaraní came here from the Amazon rain forest about 2000 years ago and conquered the people who were living here. Today, there are more than thirty Guarani villages in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay and the people can travel freely from one country to another without passports. The Guaraní live semi-nomadic lives. In addition to hunting, they raise crops and animals on their land, which they own. The government provides them with water, electricity, and subsidies that allow them to maintain their traditional lifestyle. This particular village is home to 230 families, comprising about 1400 people.
A well-spoken young member of the community, who was fluent in Guaraní and Spanish, met us and took us on a tour.
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He first showed us three different kinds of animal traps: for small to medium sized birds like wild turkeys, for deer, and for armadillos. The trap doesn’t actually kill the animal so young ones and females are often released.
While we sat around an open cooking fire where a young village woman was preparing an afternoon snack for us, we learned much more about how the Guarani live today.
They’ve been able to adopt some customs and technology from the outside world while still maintaining their traditional way of life. For example, they still marry young, at 14 or 15, but nowadays, women go to the public hospital to give birth rather than giving birth at home. And while the shaman is still an important healer in the village, a public health doctor comes to the village once a week.
They’ve adopted certain technology, such as cell phones and satellite dishes, but WiFi is still only available at the school. Walking remains the preferred mode of transportation. There are no cars in the village although a few people have motorcycles.
When I asked about how the children are educated, I learned that there is a bilingual primary school in the village. After finishing primary school, children are able to attend high school in the nearby town of Puerto Iguazu.
We tried a bitter herbal tea and tasted manioc flour and yucca flour crackers that we dipped in wild honey. The manioc crackers were white and the yucca crackers were yellow, and they both had a strange but pleasant chewy texture that’s hard to describe. I’ll have to look up the difference between the two plants – I think both are roots.
Our young Guarani guide told us that the villagers grow sweet potatoes, manioc, yucca, and corn, and they hunt for various kinds of meat. He mentioned that armadillo was his favorite food. It’s easy to prepare – you cook it in the shell and then eat it right out of the shell. And, of course, there are other types of food that they buy in stores.
Our visit continued with a musical performance by a group of village children. While the girls played a traditional instrument of bamboo sticks that they stamped on ground to keep the rhythm, a couple of the boys shook maracas (seed-filled gourds). A couple of the older boys played western instruments, a guitar and violin, although they held them in unusual ways. The Guaraní believe that people communicate with the spirits through singing. The final performance was accompanied by a shaman who gave each one of us a blessing.
During our time in the Guaraní village, we heard thunder several times. I kept glancing up at the sky, wondering if we were going to get caught in a downpour. When we left the village in the late afternoon, a soccer game was getting underway and the sun was still shining through the clouds.
I’m so grateful for the opportunity to visit the Guaraní village. I brought back a couple of wooden animal figures that were carved by the villagers. The decoration comes from burning.
After a very busy day, I was glad to have some time to relax at our hotel. Even before we stepped into the lobby, though, we stopped outside to try to clean all the red mud off our shoes. Getting it out of all the little grooves in the soles was nearly impossible and I wished we’d gone barefoot like the Guaraní.
Our hotel was a modern resort-like property located a short distance from the center of the town of Puerto Iguazu.
According to Rodrigo, Puerto Iguazu is a former port city situated at the confluence of the Iguazu River and the Paraná River, where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet. Before the town was settled in the late 1800s, the sole occupants of the area were Guaraní people. Many of Puerto Iguazu’s settlers came from countries in northern and eastern Europe, such as Poland, Ukraine, Germany, and Sweden. Rodrigo, whose ancestry is German, told us that people sometimes call him “Polaco.” Nowadays, the economy of the town is based on tourism due to its proximity to Iguazu Falls National Park.
For dinner at the hotel, we had a vegetable quiche followed by pacu, the local fish which Javi referred to as “vegetarian” piranha because of its primarily plant-based diet.
The strawberry ice cream we had for dessert was the best ice cream I’d eaten since arriving in South America.
Once it was dark, several of us went up to roof terrace. Now that the temperature had dropped with the sunset, it was actually comfortable. From this vantage point, we could see the bridge that will connect Brazil (on the right) and Paraguay (on the left) when it opens in 2026. The bridge will form part of the Bioceanic Route that will traverse South America, facilitating trade and transport by linking the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast. Although the bridge isn’t open yet, it is beautifully lit up every night with the colors of the Paraguayan flag and the Brazilian flag.
I was inspired to get up early the next morning to take pictures of the sunrise from the same location. To the east where colors glowed on the horizon. As dawn was breaking, golden trumpet flowers, native to Brazil, welcomed the arrival of the day. The only sounds were the twittering of birds and the occasional growl of a passing motorcycle. It promised to be another summery day, with temperatures reaching the mid-90s. My hair already attested to the high humidity level.
The breakfast buffet featured a couple of new items: reviro, described as salted, scrambled flour dough (strange); and chipitas, cheese and manioc flour biscuits (yum!). Of course, there was also a wonderful assortment of tropical fruits.
Since I’d gotten up early, I had time to walk around the area surrounding our hotel before we headed out for the day’s excursion There was a small park area overlooking the rivers and a number of stalls selling items to tourists. The only stall that was open at this early hour was selling leather items, such as these holders for carrying your maté gear.
I was looking forward to seeing the Foz da Iguaçu (as the falls are known in Portuguese) from the Brazilian side, where you supposedly get the best views of this UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was a very short ride from the hotel to the bridge connecting Argentina and Brazil, and it took just a few minutes in the Brazilian border station to get our passports stamped.
I was surprised to see all the commercial and residential development on the Brazilian side of the border. The city of Foz da Iguaçu has a population of about 250,000, including many people from Arab and Asian countries. On our way to the entrance to the national park, we passed modern shopping malls, housing complexes, theme parks, and golf courses as well as horses grazing in lush green pastures.
Brazil’s Iguaçu National Park was established in 1939. Rodrigo told us we could expect to see the raccoon-like coati, capuchin monkeys, and lizards as we walked through the park. We’d certainly see swifts, the medium-sized birds with curved wings and forked tails who live behind the falls. They spend almost their entire lives in flight, rarely touching the ground. And if we were lucky, we might catch a glimpse of a jaguar, a panther (black jaguar), or a puma.
Before I came to Iguazu, I naïvely imagined that I was going to see a single waterfall. I guess I was thinking of Multnomah Falls in Oregon. In reality, Iguazu encompasses up to 275 separate waterfalls, depending on the amount of rainfall. This is the biggest number of waterfalls in the world. From Rodrigo, I learned the Spanish word cataratas, or cataracts in English, which means a grouping of waterfalls. Iguazu contains the world’s widest grouping of waterfalls, one that stretches a mile and three quarters wide.
We set out on an easy walking trail that brought us to spectacular views of some of Iguazu’s mightiest falls. I could hear the mighty roar of the rushing water well before the cataracts came into view. It’s impossible to find words that adequately describe these natural wonders and photos can’t really do them justice.
I spotted some fast-moving coatis scampering in the forest beside the walking trail. Too bad they wouldn’t hold still for photos.
As I continued walking on the trail, I was constantly stopping to take photos of one breathtaking vista after another.
I finally tore myself away from the falls long enough to get lunch. There were limited dining options within the park. However, I found a new fish to try – pirarucu, one of the largest freshwater fishes. It’s a thick and meaty white fish that’s native to the Amazon River basin. It’s not unusual for a pirarucu to reach seven feet in length and some have reached fifteen feet! By the way, it was delicious.
Before we left the park, there was time for a little shopping, too. I found a T-shirt with a sequined butterfly that I couldn’t resist although it's a bit flashier than my usual style.
The following day, we saw Iguazu Falls from a different perspective when we visited Argentina’s Iguazu National Park. Javi was adamant about getting to the park to see the famous Garganta del Diablo (Devil’s Throat) before it was overrun with hordes of tourists. As a result, we left the hotel at 6:45am and were among the first to enter the park. To reach the trail to Devil’s Throat, we took the park’s open-sided green train that travels slowly (5 kilometers) through the jungle, making stops at several different areas.
La Garganta del Diablo is the largest and most powerful cataract within Iguazu Falls. The short trail leading to the viewing platform passes over the delta of the Iguazu River, which is only three feet deep at this point. We saw tiger butterflies flitting over the babbling waters. Turtles, catfish, cormorants, herons, and kingfishers also make their home here.
When we saw a big cloud of mist, we knew we were getting close. And the roar of the falls became deafening as we approached. Rodrigo told us that 1.5 million liters of water crash over the falls every second.
Thanks to our super early start, we were able to experience the awe-inspiring Devil’s Throat without competing with crowds of people. We did, however, get pretty wet from the spray as we stood and took photos. I took plenty of pictures but they don’t really convey the majesty of La Garganta.
About half an hour later, as we prepared to make our way to another area of the park, we saw the long line of people heading in our direction and thanked Javi for his foresight.
After taking the train to another station, we set out on the blue trail that you can see on the map below.
As I walked along, everywhere I looked, there was a beautiful view.
The last cataract we reached was Salto San Martin, the second largest group of falls in the park. “Salto,” which literally means “jump” in Spanish, signifies a waterfall in this context.
By the time we finished our second walk, the sun was beating down relentlessly. The temperature had been rising steadily and was now in the mid-90s. I knew I needed to take a hydration break. Fortunately, we weren’t far from a food court. A cup of tea, a vegetable empanada, and a little air conditioning helped restore me so that I was ready for the day’s most thrilling activity, a boat ride right into the falls.
The “Great Adventure” boat ride was an optional activity that I knew would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The first photo below, taken the previous day from the Brazilian side, shows a little boat approaching the falls. The second photo shows the boats we were about to board.
I was able to take a few pictures looking up at the falls until we were instructed to put our phones and cameras away in heavy rubber sacks that we securely sealed. The moment was drawing near. We were heading directly into a wall of tumbling water. At the last instant, I closed my mouth and my eyes. And then the roaring sound and the full force of the water hit me simultaneously. Javi had warned us that we would get wet. Hah! Wet is an understatement. We got thoroughly drenched. But it was so, so exhilarating!
All that was left on our itinerary was a final dinner, which was held at Yabuticaba,
an unusual restaurant in Puerto Iguazu that was named for a local tree. The setting made us feel like we were in the middle of the jungle. In fact, the owners, who were born and raised in the town, started the restaurant with a goal of helping to preserve the natural surroundings.
We began with a cocktail made with maté-infused gin, tonic water, ice, and an orange slice. Over the past few weeks, I’d managed to politely sip hot maté a number of times. However, I could barely swallow my first taste of the cocktail. It was like drinking a smoldering cigarette.
On the other hand, the food, which featured many local ingredients, was beautifully prepared and quite delicious. When the salad was served, I could dress mine with any one of a number of olive oils from Mendoza province that were set out on the table. The main course was surubí, the giant South American catfish. The dessert plate was a variation on the familiar combination of cheese and sweet. I noted that the cheese was dusted with powdered maté.
On the lower level of the restaurant, local products, including wines, jams, honey, and of course, maté in many forms, were available for purchase.
Tomorrow we’d be flying back to Buenos Aires and then on to our home cities. After 22 days in South America, I was looking forward to getting home although I knew I’d be returning to wintery weather.
Packing for the flights home (Iguazu to Buenos Aires to Atlanta and then on to Dulles) was no problem. I hadn’t gone on a shopping spree on this trip so there was still plenty of room in my luggage. I was bringing back “souvenirs” in the form of photos and memories. Over the course of the trip, I’d taken over 2000 pictures of the gorgeous landscapes, so full of contrasts, from the windswept pampas to the towering peaks of the Andes to the majestic falls of Iguazu. Perhaps what left the biggest impression on me was meeting so many people who open-heartedly shared their lives with our group. Most of all, I’ll remember our tour leader Javi, whose wide-ranging knowledge, positive energy, and contagious sense of fun made this South American adventure a truly exceptional experience.
