Iguazu Falls, baby!

Oh. My. Gosh. It was worth every single penny. Iguazu Falls was everything I had anticipated and more. I’ve been wanting to go there for so long that I didn’t really know if it could possibly live up to my expectations; instead, it FAR surpassed them. There was no way I could have imagined the absolute vastness of them, how many there would be and what an amazingly beautiful and completely natural setting they are in the middle of (unlike Niagara Falls, which is in the middle of, um, casinos and chain restaurants). Wow. By far the coolest thing I have done here to date!

Iguazu consists of about 275 separate waterfalls set in the middle of a sub-tropic jungle that covers roughly 167,000 acres. There is one point where you can stand and see Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. They've been deemed a World Natural Heritage site, which I hope means that if I come back one day, I won't find a Burger King on the grounds. One still has to hike out to the various areas to see the different sets of falls. Being surrounded by that kind of pure nature was overwhelming. At one point, a guy from Holland that I was hanging around with put down his camera and said he just couldn’t take any more, it was too much to take in and truly appreciate all at once. Well said! There’s really not much more that I could add. Other than the fact that is was like 12,000 degrees there. Or 95 degrees with 90% humidity, which might as well be 12,000. It was hard to tell if people were soaked from the spray of the falls or from sweat. It was probably best not to know.

Also, at the end of the day I opted to do the boat ride which takes you not just near, but TO the falls. Drenched does not even begin to describe it. Super cool. Especially after sweating for 8 hours straight!

The thing that I like about traveling alone is that you very rarely ever end up actually traveling alone. In the park I met Jill from Minnesota and Helen and McKeely from Ireland and we spent the day together like old pals. Jill and I ended up meeting up for a fabulous dinner in town last night and it turns out that Helen and McKeely are staying at my hotel so we hung out a bit today, too. I’ve met so many great people since traveling here!

My plan for today was to go into Brazil to see the falls from that side. But then I was informed that Brazil now requires a visa for American citizens to enter (because the US first started requiring a visa from them, so fair is fair!), which I do not have. My options were to get up incredibly early today to go the embassy to obtain a visa for the price of $150 or to take my chances in sneaking in and hoping I didn’t get caught, which could result in a fine of $1,500 and possible deportation (now THAT would make for an interesting blog entry!).

After pondering my options (yes, I considered it), I decided to bag both ideas and spend the day hanging out at the hotel instead. Once I made the decision, despite the disappointment of missing out on Brazil, it started sounding better and better to me (and once I scheduled my massage, I was feeling MUCH better about it). Turns out it was a fine decision. It was the first day since arriving here on Feb. 5 that I haven’t HAD to do anything. And it will probably be the last as my remaining 3 weeks are already all mapped out and very full. So I decided to use it to chill, get organized (like, for example, taking my approximately 50 little random scraps of paper with all of my hotel, transportation and flight reservation details on them and putting them all in one place), hang out at the pool, paint my toenails, have the massage…. divine, I say. When I travel, I tend to have a weird sense of guilt if I’m not doing or seeing or experiencing something new and productive every possible minute so I wrestled with the decision and started searching for something else nearby that I could do instead but, in the end, overcame it and figured out a way to just truly enjoy the day. It was good for me. And now I’m ready (and semi-organized) for all the rest to come…. woo-hoo!

P.S. The hotel advertises a mini-golf course on its grounds. There's a big sign and everything. The picture on the left is it in its entirety. Made me laugh.