Iguaçu Falls, Brazil

Dec 5 - Dec 7

Iguaçu Falls[1] was one of the places we were scheduled to visit in 2021.

The flight to the falls was the longest on the trip. We left Baltra, Galapagos to fly to Guayaquil, Ecuador. Our plane was waiting for us there. We changed to the international section of the terminal, boarded our plane, and we were off. The 5 hour flight took us over the western part of the Amazon which appeared as a green carpet below us.

We arrived fairly late (with a 3 hour timezone change) so that concluded Dec 5. We had only one full day in Iguaçu.

December 6 Touring

The hotel was located right across the street from the falls.

View of Falls from our room

Walk to the Falls

Shortly after breakfast we set out for a "pre public" walk down the trail to the falls. The falls are large and the view dynamic so most of what I captured was video which better captures the drama

Trail to Falls

Boat Ride

Our next adventure was to descend into the gorge and take a boat to the falls. Two options were presented; wet and dry. We chose the dry and it was a good decision since "wet" meant driving the boat into the falls themselves which seems pointless.

Getting to the falls required several changes of vehicles. The last leg was a vernacular that took us the last stretch down into the gorge.

Since we were in the "dry" boat we hung back and watched others go into the falls. Our boat did the typical hard turns to scare the tourists

Helicopter

Next we were shuttled out of the park to catch a helicopter. I got a good view of the falls. Unfortunately Carrie reports she did not.

These are the best two pictures. I don't expect Nat Geo to be calling for them.

Cachaça Demonstration

The final event of a very long day (for me) was a tasting of the local liquor Cachaça. This is very similar to a rum, but there was a very long story why we were not supposed to just call it "rum".

[1] There are several spellings of the location name, Iguaçu (Portuguese), Iguazú (Spanish), and Iguazu (Anglicized) Since we visited Brazil I am using the Portuguese version of the name in the text, but the Anglicized version in filenames to avoid internet problems.