Igazu Falls

Our first look at Iguazu falls, one of the natural seven wonders of the world, was through our hotel lobby in Argentina.  On our first full day near the falls, we took a ten minute train ride up to the top.  We got off and saw these weird furry animals we'd soon learn to call Coaties. Coaties are part of the raccoon family, they measure 33 to 69 centimeters and have very sharp white teeth.

Coaties aren't afraid of people

Coaties kept stealing empanadas from people's lunch and my Mom and Ruby were terrified of them. After staring and taking pictures for about five minutes, we started the kilometer "hike" over the river. The "hike" was just walking on a slippery metal catwalk and occasionally stopping for a nice picture. When we reached the end, we were not disappointed.  The walkway stops right before three different sections of the waterfall drop into a cavern so foggy, we couldn't see the bottom.  To add the effect, there were swarms of birds diving down, fly back up and doing all that again.  We spent quite a while there just admiring the sheets of water flying down into the abyss below.  For the rest of the day, we just walked around the Argentina side of the park.  We did some more "hikes" and witnessed a Coatie attack during lunch.

Heading out to the top of the falls in Argentina

The next day, we took a taxi to Brazil.  We checked into our hotel and went to visit the second biggest dam in the world, Itaipu Dam (after the Three Gorges Dam in China).  It wasn't too interesting since we didn't go on the special tour (Ruby was to young -.-).

The following day, we visited the Brazilian side of the falls.  This side wasn't as big but it had great panoramic shots of the falls.  We were wondering about taking a speed boat up into the falls but then decided against it.  None of us wanted to get wet and cold and the fact that it cost almost $300 for all of us to go didn't really help.  In the end, we were all tired, excited and wistful because while we were in a new country, we wouldn't be going to any more Spanish speaking ones on this trip.

Just part of Iguazu Falls