Las Cataratas, Los Critters

Last week I headed out with a friend to the Argentine tropics to see Iguazu Falls, or, as they're called here, Las Cataratas. Iguazu is at the very tip of a finger of Argentine land that pokes northeast between Brazil and Paraguay. In fact, there's a place you can stand in the town of Puerto Iguazu where, we were told, you could throw a rock across one river to Brazil and across another to Paraguay. Not wanting to provoke any international incidents, we didn't try that.


Which country today?

As it turned out, I couldn't visit Brazil without buying a rather expensive visa -- it used to be possible to go to Foz do Iguazu for the day without one -- so we stayed firmly planted in Argentina. No hardship there, really. The Argentine side held plenty of wonders.

On the silly but cute little train to the falls: me, my friend Jemma, and a contemplative Argentine

The Iguazu River runs between Brazil and Argentina and at the point of the falls is 1.5 kilometers wide. In perhaps almost as impressive a feat of engineering as of natural superlatives, the boardwalk to the falls in this place is a kilometer long.

Most superlative of all, of course, are the falls themselves. Apparently Iguazu, in the indigenous Guarani language, means Big (i) Water (guazu). Well put.

As you walk along the boardwalk to reach the falls, you see white clouds of water vapor floating up long before you see the falls themselves. When you reach the Garganta del Diablo, or Devil's Throat, words pretty much fail you. But I'll try. It's a kind of giant cul-de-sac of water thundering down in all directions, not just along one wall or down one rock face, but in a big U of falls to your left, spreading out before you, then curving around to your right, beneath you, and then out to your left again. When you look down you can't see the bottom at all. You know it's a long way down but all you can see is clouds of vapor booming up from the impact of the water.


The view of one small part (across to Brazil) at La Garganta del Diablo


The boardwalks are built in such a way that you can look straight down over the falls in some places (and at La Garganta del Diablo, you cannot see the bottom). As I remarked to Jemma, if you saw anything like this from a boat on the river, you would be about to die.


Sound and movement give you a much better sense of the falls than photos...

Obviously the falls are the big draw to Iguazu, but for us an enormous highlight was seeing all sorts of exotic animals. It was remarkable to leave a busy, wintry Buenos Aires, spend a night on a bus watching bad movies (and being offered whisky, or in Jemma's case, being hit on by our bus attendant), and then emerge in the tropics, in a sleepy little town full of red dirt and banana trees and warm wet air. (Not unlike Hawai'i!)

We got to see all sorts of interesting critters. The monkeys may have been the most entertaining. Well, no, maybe the coatis. But I'm getting ahead of myself.


We saw this fish several feet below the boardwalk, holding on somehow against the flow of the water.


We also saw this very naughty lady feeding the jays


A jay with a little more self-respect -- and check out the blue eyebrows!


A wistful monkey moment

We walked through the jungle along a small trail called Sendero Macuco, named after a native bird. Apparently only 2% of visitors go on this trail. (Like at most parks, I guess.) The monkeys, however, came out in force. They followed each other along a path through the trees, one moment nimble and agile, and the next, hurling themselves into the next tree, branches swaying, leaves falling, making a big comical mess.


Monkeys snacking on some sort of delicious palm fruit -- one later took umbrage and started raising his eyebrows and shaking his palm leaf at us. We were suitably intimidated.


The tiny but lovely falls on the Sendero Macuco

A view of the gorgeous jungle from the top of the falls -- it seems endless. Unfortunately, only 60,000 hectares still exist of an expanse that once covered 1 million.


A leaf insect -- so realistic! -- that we never would have seen had it not alighted on a rock

In our first afternoon in town, we had a few hours but not enough time to visit the park, so we went to a wildlife sanctuary called Guira Oga, which means "home of the birds" in Guarani. It was a treat, a kind of a preview of the many animals we might later be able to see in the wild.

I won't post many photos they mostly show cages and aren't pretty, but the animals seemed well cared for, and the guides were friendly and informative -- one chatted with us all the way back on the bus. (I will even forgive him for telling us that meat-eaters live longer than vegetarians.)



They somehow make the whole operation work just off of occasional donations and the entry fees. It's run by a couple and their daughters, at least one of whom is a veterinarian. They also take volunteers, in case you know anyone who's looking!

(Even if you don't plan to visit, you can click on the link above to enjoy the sounds of the place.)

The refuge started as a haven for birds, primarily -- the owners are falconers -- and there's an entire room full of incubators which in turn are full of eggs.


The next generation


A watchful peregrine falcon


The capybara, my candidate for world's absurdest animal (well, ok, there's also the Chinese water deer). We didn't see these in the wild but Marty had a great post about them back at Easter. They're the world's largest rodent, about the size of dogs, even though they look like hamsters.

The next day, in the park, we took a boat ride, the "Paseo Ecologico," and it was incredibly tranquil, even though we weren't far from the falls and had to wear dorky life preservers. I didn't know the Spanish names for any of the plants our guide told us about, and he often didn't know English names, but we were able to use Latin, which is, of course, the whole idea of Latin names. Pretty great.



Oh, and we saw caimans. That's right, caimans! Like alligators! Four of them!

Here's one now.


The part in the picture is about 3 feet long -- the tail, which is huge, muscular, and prized for its meat (and could knock all your teeth out) is probably another 3 or 4 feet long.

Fortunately all the caimans were snoozing in the sun and seemed uninterested in having people-kebabs. Also, a couple of them were quite small -- one, just a year old, was only about a foot long, like a big lizard. It was strange to me that they grow so much without changing proportions -- as if a baby looked like a small tall person.


We wondered at this a bit before realizing it must be a walkway for the animals, like the monkeys and coatis.


One of many gorgeous butterflies

We are now reaching what I have to admit was the high point of the trip for me: coatis. Coatis are a lot like raccoons, only reddish brown and snufflier. They root around in the leaf litter for bugs and other delicious food items.

The coatis at Iguazu view the bridges for people as if they are bridges for coatis. So they traipse along the banisters, much to the delight of all the people.



It seems that the naughty lady on the boardwalk is not the only one who has fed an animal at Iguazu. The coatis may be a little spoiled. They are quite interested in what people smell like. One was very thorough in pointing its long and no doubt extremely sensitive nose at us.


Encounters with not-so-wildlife

I imagined it thinking, "ok, let's see, here we've got bread, cheese, an apple, oh, no, two apples, some nuts, oooh, this one's got chocolate..."



Well, when it was sniffing at me, it overbalanced a little and had to put a foot out. On my stomach. Somehow I also got a photo of this.


"Oh yes, this one definitely has chocolate in that pack"

I would just like to state for the record (and I think the photo corroborates this) that the wildlife molested ME.

Once we'd finished cruelly refusing to feed the coatis, we went on to see more falls. Yes, there were more. Lots more. It's probably apocryphal, but one story says that Eleanor Roosevelt visited Iguazu and said, "Poor Niagara!"

Iguazu Falls is quite a lot taller than Niagara, and is wider by some measures than Victoria, though more water flows through Victoria and it's more one big sheet of water. I've seen various different measures and they're all kind of confusing, but suffice it to say that Iguazu is one of the biggest waterfalls in the world.



On the way up, Jemma had set a clear goal for this trip: she wanted to see toucans. We saw toucans at Guira Oga, but of course it'd be better in the wild. Our boat guide had told us that they're like government employees: visible before 9 and after 5. And sure enough, at 5:05, some toucan-like birds came out: chestnut-eared aracaris. Quite spectacular, with red bands across their chests.



And then the toucans in all their glory, absurd beaks and big dark eyes and all.



As if all that weren't enough, we decided to round out our day in the park with a full-moon hike.

First we had to kill a couple of hours drinking beer as the sun set, then watching the southern constellations come out. It was lovely. It felt like we were all alone: no one seemed to care about two gringas standing around looking at the stars after the park had closed.

We ate a quick dinner and then headed back to the Garganta del Diablo for another look, this time by moonlight. Unfortunately Jemma's camera was a little overwhelmed by all the darkness, so we weren't able to get many photos. And it was wet. But it was gorgeous and ghostly and the falls were somehow much more intimidating.




In which I try to salvage a picture w/too much Photoshop... but you can sort of see the moonlight and the water whooshing into the Garganta, no?


If you look closely you can actually see the moon over Jemma's shoulder. You don't have to look closely to see how wet we got!

Poor Niagara perhaps. But I feel very lucky.