Iguassu Falls are waterfalls of the Iguazu River located at the border of Brazil and Argentina. Our hotel was on the Argentinean side in a small town called Puerto Iguazú. We arrived there in the afternoon and the tour company arranged a BBQ for us in a small town on the Brazilian side of the falls. Since it was Carnival time, they arranged for two almost-naked Samba dancers to perform for us. It was quite the show!
Brazilian Side
The next day, we came back to the Brazilian side to see the falls. The Brazilian side is known to have more panoramic views. I couldn’t help comparing the falls to those in Niagara and I definitely prefer Iguassu. The main reason being that it is surrounded by a national park which has been protected from developers so it has been left in its natural environment as opposed to being surrounded by casinos and hotels. That, and it was a lot bigger and more spectacular.
There are many wooden walkways built around the falls so that you can get different perspectives and one even takes you right in front where you can feel the spray of the water. The place was packed with tourists, most of them locals. We later found out that it was a holiday weekend in Brazil for Carnival.
After visiting the falls we went for a helicopter ride over them. This was my first time in a helicopter so it was pretty exciting and the views were amazing!
Argentinean Side
The next day we visited the Argentinean side of the falls. This side has more walkways and trails around the falls. We saw two toucans fly over us on the way in but didn’t have time to take a photo and hopped that we would see more but unfortunately they are very difficult to spot.
We had the option on this side to do a speed boat trip around the falls. We thought it sounded like fun and decided to go with a few others from our group. 
This also included a short jungle safari on the way. It started to rain just as we jumped on the open air truck so we weren’t able to see much at all. We then changed into our bathing suits for the boat ride as we were told that everyone gets wet. 
As we were waiting for the boat to arrive, it started to pore down and by the time we got on the boat we were already soaked. It continued to rain for our entire ride and even got worse as we approached the falls. When they finally drove the boat in front of the falls, we weren’t sure if we were feeling the spray from the falls or the rain. Water was coming from all directions. All we could do was laugh at the situation. We couldn’t believe that people were still pulling out their cameras for pictures.
Afterwards we went into a snack bar for shelter and after about an hour, the rain stopped and the sun came out so we started our walk along the path around the falls. The first thing that we noticed on the path were all the butterflies. They were everywhere and there were all different. I was determined to get a photo of one of them. Here are the two that I managed to sneak up to.
There were a lot less people on this side of the falls which was nice. We also saw some interesting looking birds which I later found out are called Plush-crested Jays.
It was the last day of Carnival and it is not only celebrated in Rio but all over Brazil so there was a small Samba school competition going on in Foz de Iguazu in Brazil. Carnival usually consists of a parade of Samba schools competing which turns into a big street party. Unfortunately, our tour leader got the time wrong and we arrived too late for the Samba parade but there was a concert after the parade and everyone was dancing and enjoying themselves.
In order to get to the party, we had crossed over to the Brazilian side and since we were only there for the evening we didn’t get a stamp on our passport. There seems to be a process set up for tourists crossing over so that you don’t get a stamp until you actually enter Brazil for good, i.e. more than a few hours. (The Argentineans don’t have a process in place so I now have a passport full of Argentina stamps from all the times we went back and forth over the border). The condition is that the driver fills out a form with all of the names and passport numbers of the people crossing and at the end of the day, he takes the same group back over to the other side, handing this form in to immigration.
So our guide had arranged for our driver to pick us up from the Carnival at 2am to take us back to our hotel. It started to pour down rain just before the meeting time and when we got to the meeting point, the driver wasn’t there. The only shelter that we could find was a small snack bar on the side of the road with an awning that barely covered us. We waited there with the group for an hour thinking that maybe the driver got confused with the time change between Brazil and Argentina (Brazil was still on daylight savings time) and was going to show up at 3am instead. As 3am approached and the rain was poring down even worse, we started to think he wasn’t going to show and tried to figure out what to do. We couldn’t get cabs to the border as we didn’t have any Brazil stamps in our passport and none of us spoke Portuguese so we wouldn’t be able to explain the situation to the customs person. As more and more dodgy people started to crowd under the snack bar awning, glaring at the girls, we decided to get cabs to a nearby hotel. (We remembered the name of the hotel that we were supposed to stay at before they moved us to the Argentinean hotel.) The receptionist there was very nice and allowed us to stay while we tried to contact the tour company to ask them to call the driver. After a few calls back and forth and a few more hours of waiting, we were told to just go to the border and try to explain our case. It was 5am at this point and we were exhausted. Luckily, the guy at the border spoke English and allowed us to go through. We finally got back to our hotel and after two hours sleep, we had to get up again in time check out. We later found out that the driver had fallen asleep!
Our 24-hour bus ride to Paraty in Brazil wasn’t leaving until the evening so we had to option to spend the day across the border in Paraguay for some shopping.
