The Falls

So, they´re one of the ancient wonders of the world: The Iguazu Falls. We´d always planned to go, whether it was going to be from the Brazilian side or the Argentinian. Got our malarials and everything. However, clearly I was far too busy stuffing all-you-can-eat meat and following art teachers around in Brazil to even contemplate the trip. And for a moment there, after an impromptu decision to go 10 hours out of the way on our tight schedule to visit Mendoza, it didn´t look like it was going to happen in Argentina either. But we gritted our teeth, sat out (quite literally) the 40 hour bus ride and went for it. And man, I´m glad we did.

It had been suggested that maybe it wasn´t worth our while as the Falls are currently pretty dry, although I didn´t really notice. To me they were just incredible, and the perfect cure for the hangover I was suffering after a night out with a bunch of 18 year old boys (seriously, I´m starting to feel so old) the night previously. The roaring sound, the spray on your face and the way you can´t even see how far they go down from the mist was breath-taking. The only thing that slightly ruined it was the fact that we´d randomly got Geri Halliwell´s Look At Me stuck in our heads (ba bada bada). I blame the malarials.

We then took a little trek through the tropical woods surrounding the waterfalls (just because my legs haven´t had enough mosquito action.) There´s signs everywhere to watch out for racoons - they do and WILL bite. Allegedly. In the posters they´re made out to be right sneaky, grabbing your food if it´s on show etc.... Anyways, we didn´t see one. That was until Duncan and Tristan had gone off to do a steep bit of trekking and I decided to wait for them (hate trekking, don´t I?) With that 2 massive racoons started chasing me down the path. For some reason I was convinced they were going to try and steal my camera (they´re tree rats Sam, of course that´s what they were after) so I ran, screaming to the boys. By the time I reached them there were about 12 racoons in single file, just ambling off in another direction. I guess they weren´t chasing me at all. Plus I missed the perfect, up-close photo op. But I´ve avoided being mugged in South America for 4 months now, I wasn´t ready to chance it.