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I think Iguazu Falls is one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World…but I am not sure about that. When I was a kid I simply remember the 7 wonders of the world but now there is a list for everything that it has gotten much to complicated for my brain to handle.
Maybe ALL of these other “wonders of the world” have always existed, again, I don’t really care enough to research whether they were around in the 60’s but I think it is a little ridiculous.
Think I am joking? Don’t know what I am talking about? Here are some of the “natural wonder lists” that are being thrown about these days:
- Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
- Wonders of the Medieval World
- Wonders of the modern world
- American Society of Civil Engineers
- New 7 Wonders Foundation’s seven wonders of the world
- USA Today’s New Seven Wonders
- Seven Natural Wonders of the World
- Seven Wonders of the Underwater World
- Seven Wonders of the Industrial World
- Travel wonders of the world
- Man-made travel wonders
- Natural travel wonders
The other strange thing is that it is difficult to tell where a site should or shouldn’t be placed and whether any of this is accurate or not. We have seen different sites on different lists, the marketing for a particular place may use language that suggests it is on a particular list when it really isn’t, and so on, and so on…
Like I said I don’t really care…
What I do know is that Iguazu Falls is really, really cool :)
After saying goodbye to our friends in Obera and after having spent more than 5 weeks housesitting we headed North to the border between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina where the confluence of 3 rivers meet and the city of Puerto Iguazu is located. You can reach the falls from any of the 3 countries, and it was suggested that we explore them from both the Argentina and Brazil side, but we did not have plans to spend any time in Brazil and the cost of visa’s for our family approached $600 bucks…we decided to visit the falls from only the Argentina side.
We were not dissapointed.
The town of Puerto Iguazu was not bad. We had read a bunch about it and there were not a lot of nice things being said about the town, but we found it a charming little tourist town with lots of amenities; cheap hotels and good food, and for us it was a refreshing break from that past couple of months housesitting.
The Iguazú National Park was really nice! We were very impressed by the accomodations, cleanliness, infrastructure, and access to the falls it provided. In fact, we spent almost 2 full days hiking and exploring the falls and the park. We were there in the off season and it might look and feel a little different if the place was packed, but our trip was wonderful.
We were blessed with 2 days of beautiful weather. Blue skies and mild temperatures greeted us and were definitely welcomed. The last 2 days in town it poured and poured and we couldn’t imagine having fun traipsing through the park in that weather, and most of the year it is very hot and humid (it is a jungle for goodness sake) and there is a lot of walking and some VERY steep hiking. BUT, we had none of that to worry about because we had 2 incredibly beautiful days. I think the pictures show how wonderful it was for us…
The falls are impressive and really beyond my ability to describe them or for the camera do to them justice. What every “wonders list” they may or may not be on is more than justified. From every angle the light reflects differently and creates a whole new experience. The sheer size of the falls and force of the water leaves you with your mouth open in awe of what your eyes are seeing.
The other thing that I really liked about the place is that it was not all “touristy cheesy”! They did have a few gift shops that we walked past, and there was the proverbial super expensive park food, but for the most part you felt as if you were in a natural park setting with paths and walkways and beautiful waterfalls. We took the local/city bus that took about 30 minutes to get from the city to the park each way and was very inexpensive.
Admission to the park was a little steep, for tourists/foreigners it cost 60 Pesos for adults (and 13 year olds) and 30 Pesos for kids so the cost was 210 Pesos or $57.00…I am cheap what can I say. It was certainly a better value than many tourist jaunts…the crazy prices in Costa Rica come to mind where it cost us more just to look at a simple little local waterfall than it did to explore all of Iguazu Park. The 2nd day was 1/2 price with a previous days paid admission, so it cost us $26.00 on the 2nd day and we were able to see the rest of the park we did not see the day before.
Gigi, Grant, and Sean Getting Wet at Iguazu Falls
We brought our own lunch both days. On the second day Gina was attacked by a pack of Coati’s and we lost ALL of our food so we were all pretty hungry by the time we got back to town that night. One of the funniest things I have ever seen, although I was none to happy to loose our lunch meat and cheese 
We stayed around Puerto Iguazu for a couple of more days just hanging around town and then jumped on a bus to begin our trip south heading for Buenos Aires.
All told we spent 2 months in the Missiones district of Northeastern Argentina and really enjoyed ourselves in this part of the country and all from what began as a last minute decision to skip Mendoza and head to Obera, Argentina to housesit for some people we had never met before.
Things worked out…
Click on any of the above pictures or here to see all of the photos we took at Iguazu Falls.
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by Sean
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