Iguacu Falls - Brazilian side

My time to visit the Brazilian shores of Iguacu Falls was severely limited. I had to get back to Puerto Iguazu in Argentina to catch a bus. If I missed it I would be late for the hockey in Rosario.

I though the weather the previous day was disappointing, but my third day at the Falls was much, much wetter. Thunder rumbled and lightening played as I splashed through the puddles to the bus terminal.

Getting a bus to Brazil was easy, but border crossings are notoriously tricky. We stopped at Argentine Immigration. Everyone got off the bus, was processed efficiently and reboarded. Over the bridge and into Brazil. The bus stopped at Brazilian Immigration and only the tourists got off. Goodness knows what the system is for the locals but it doesn´t involve a queue or a questionnaire. And when I emerged as a legal person in Brazil the bus had vanished. No waiting on this side of the river!

A Japanese girl in a blue rain cape looked even more lost than I felt. "What do we do?" "We get the next bus, I suppose." The next bus was, of course, a different company so we had to buy tickets all over again.

The ride to the bus station in Foz de Iguacu seemed very long. The town is not very close to the Falls. Signs were starngely familiar. Portuguese must be similar to Spanish.

At the bus terminal there was an information office where the attendant spoke English. We needed bus 120. Luckily Argentine pesos were accepted. There was nowhere at the teminal to change money. The system was very strange. We had to pay to get on to the "platform", but that included the bus fare. Why bother when every bus has a fare collector? The system on the bus was odd, too. A passenger boards at the front and is admitted to a small area with about 4 seats. To get off they have to pay a fare to the collector and pass through a turnstile into the main part of the bus and exit through the rear door. It seems to make no difference whether you pay as soon as you get on or just before you alight. The turnstile takes up an awful lot of space. It must significantly reduce the carrying capacity of the bus.

Before setting off the driver performed a strange ritual. He scattered sawdust over the steps and the floor of the not-yet-paid area. That makes sense. It is raining and people will be boarding with very wet shoes. He then produced a large bottle of mineral water and poured it all over the sawdust. Why? Please leave a comment.

The bus weaved it´s way around Foz de Iguacu for what seemed like an age before moving purposefully back along the road from the border. We passed so close I could see the immigration building.

On the bus I discovered that, despite being able to interpret many signs around me, I could not understand a word of spoken Portuguese.

The Japanese girl´s name was Ai. Well, it was pronounced "Aye" so I guess that´s how it is spelled in our letters. She also had a deadline to get back to Puerto Iguazu, one even more tight than mine. By the time we had detoured to the airport and finally arrived at the Falls Park it had taken us 2 hours to do little more than cross the river.

The entrance to the Brazilian park is so far from the Falls that there is a bus to take you to the viewing places. The tariff for using the buses is shown separately but it does not conceal the fact that visiting the Brazilian Falls is notably more expensive than going to see the Argentine side.

We rode on past the optional extras to the main viewing path. In Argentina the visitor gets up close and personal with many more cascades, but from Brazil you can get a much better impression of the whole system, particularly the two levels.

Ai´s English was not very fluent and her Spanish almost non-existent, but she was adept at using sign language to coax strangers into taking photos for her.

When Ai chose to have a photo taken with me I quickly handed my camera over as well. Our hoods are down so that our faces are visible. The umbrella on the right confirms that it was still raining.

Ai was first to spot this little snail enjoying the moisture on a handrail.

But Ai didn´t spot the much bigger coati that ambled past her and almost into the ladies´ toilet before vanishing into the undergrowth.

The Devil´s Throat is in Argentina. Brazil does not have a single cascade of comparable size, but there are some pretty substantial falls and cunningly sited walkways to permit close observation.

There are more of the great dusky swifts on the Brazilian side. And they were demonstrating their famous habit of flying behind and even through the curtains of water.

This shows how the birds can take advantage of small breaks in the cascade to dodge behind the water. Some, probably the guy swifts, just zoom straight through the main current to the perches and nests behind the falls.

Ai and I were barely in the park for an hour and a half before hopping on a bus back to the entrance. There we parted, Ai to race back to Argentina and self to make a pilgrimage to an adjacent bird park.

This park is noted in the Lonely Planet guidebook an had received good reviews from travellers I had met along the way. There was no way I was going to miss it. I reckoned I had about an hour before I should line up at the bus stop. Well, maybe an hour and a quarter.

These blue and yellow macaws have their perch at the entrance. They were slack about greeting visitors because, as you can see, some mutual preening was going on.





The common crane is not an American bird, but it makes a delightful picture.





There are several walk-through aviaries. In one of these I was able to photograph a toco toucan. Those I saw in the wild were much too high for a picture.





The birds were is marvellous condition. Clearly they are very well looked after. However, some of the sun conures had been rescued from bird smugglers. The parrot trafficers clip some of the feathers (see this bird´s tail) to persuade the purchaser that they are chicks. Young birds are preferred and presumably command a premium price.

I really wonder at the intelligence of someone who is willing to pay the small fortune these gorgeous yellow parrots can fetch and yet knows so little about birds that they are taken in by this clumsy fraud.

Fortunately the treatment at the bird park has restored the conures well enough that they have started to breed. I believe the mutilated feathers will eventually be moulted and replaced with normal ones.

In the last walk-through aviary there are large numbers of parrots, including several species of macaw. Visitors are warned that they enter at their own risk.

As you can see, this tourist´s pack is being checked for anything edible or shiny.

Naturally I thought this was most amusing and I was still laughing when a similar unidentified parrot perched on my day pack. However it was not so funny when it was chased away and its place taken by a hyacinth macaw, the biggest of the family. Do you know how very big a macaw is when its beak is level with your eye? And it is true that a macaw can crack a brazil nut. Taking aggressive action against this feathered pirate seemed like a poor option.

It decided that the toggles on the drawstrings of my red waterproof looked like a shiny new kind of nut to sample. Another visitor intelligently suggested that I slip out of the day pack but the parrot wouldn´t leave until the toggle was entirely removed. So the garment is now minus one toggle.

Somehow I had the discipline to leave the park after my self-imposed hour and a quarter. It would have been so easy to spend all day there.

The buses back were just as tedious as in the morning. What is wrong with waiting at the Brazilian side of the border, I wonder? But I got back in good time to recover my big pack from the hostel and catch my bus.