Yesterday’s dinner knocked me out: a typical Brazilian evening at a local Churrascaria. We had a lot of meat (and I mean a LOT), some great wine from Argentina (Malbec from the Mendoza region) and nice talks. Today, I was planning to visit the Cataracas of Iguacu, the famous waterfalls, on the Brazilian site. Usually, I also wanted to visit the bird park which is close by but after visiting another zoo in Foz, I was not bothered anymore to see animals in cages. It is simply too sad to see those beautiful creatures imprisoned on a couple of square meters.
The Iguacu waterfalls
The Iguacu waterfalls certainly belonged to my travel highlights and were a paradise of nature which everyone should see at least once in a lifetime.
A nice path along the jungle brought me along spectacular sceneries, one more fascinating than the other. Small little bears with large noses and tails were looking for food from tourists and could become pretty nasty in order to achieve their goals. They might seem cute but keeping the distance is not a too bad idea. Someone should tell the tourists who don’t realize the risk 🙂
While the many waterfalls were imposingly dropping off their water along the way, large black eagle were circulating in the cloudless blue sky.
La Garganta del Diablo
The final destination of the Iguacu falls trek was marked by the so called “La Garganta del Diablo”, the absolutely impressive devils throat. Standing in front of the miracle, the surrounding seemed to be surreal. The impressive amount of water falling down the falls created tiny water droplets which formed sort of clouds and the imagination of being in heaven came pretty close. Additionally, the combination of sunshine and those water droplets were creating a double rainbow. It was just mind-blowing!
On the other hand side, imagining to be in the middle of the devils throat itself must be hell! The masses of water were incredibly smashing with such a violence on the surface that it was difficult to understand each others words.
Wildlife Encounters
The longer the day went the more beautiful the colours of the nature became while the sun was going down. Just before sunset we walked back again the same way we came just to encounter even more wildlife.
As we stood at another lookout, we saw four to five birds flying towards our direction coming from the Argentinian side. I first thought about eagles when suddenly I realized they had long orange beaks. OH MY GOD! Those were Tucans, flying directly over our heads. Such beautiful birds… unbelievable!
It was not over yet… as we approached almost the end of the path we heard some noises coming from the trees in front of us. We saw something dark crawling up there and realized those were actually little monkeys.
Conclusion
Our day was just magical and found the perfect ending with a homemade Spaghetti Bolognese and a glass of wine in the hostel.