Buenos Aires and Iguazu Falls

November 14, 2023

Buenos Aires and Iguazu Falls

Buenos Aires

Fun street art in Palermo

Our apartment in Buenos Aires is gorgeous. It’s on the top floor of a stately old building on the edge of the botanic gardens in Palermo. Big open rooms, wood floors, tasteful decorations. Aelie loves the old style cage elevator. Most lovely, though, is the fact that our host shouts us breakfast at a cafe nearby after an overnight flight from Lima and organises for us to leave our luggage and check-in early. He’s a ‘political educator’ and, after making sure we are sorted out for the day, heads off on a 7 hour trip to talk with communities about the upcoming Argentinian election, which will happen while we’re in the country.

Stately apartment building

We’re all a bit exhausted after the overnight flight and excitement of Peru and from the trip more generally, so we’re ‘slowing things down a bit’ for these final 2 legs in Argentina and Chile. Even with me scheduling a few extra days here and there for downtime, it’s still been a VERY busy trip.

In Buenos Aires this means Sim and Aelie go ice-skating a few times while I wander the local streets. Palermo is excellent for this, with lots of boutiques to potter through and street art to appreciate.

Street art of Palermo

We also visit Plaza de Mayo, which has multiple forms of demonstration and protest on the day we’re there (as with most days, we read)…

Rocks memorialising disappeared people

La Boca neighbourhood…

Recoleta Cemetery…

El Ateneo Grand Splendid book store in an old theatre…

My favourite thing in Buenos Aires is an airbnb experience called Secrets of Asado where we learn about the Argentinian tradition of coming together to prepare and share a meal, usually grilled meats served with traditional chimichurri sauce and wine. Our host is very poetic, describing the pre-salting of the meat as ‘a gentle rain’ and the measure of vinegar for the chimichurri as a ‘tear from your eye’. The wine and food are fantastic, the other guests are good to talk to and the host and his father are delightful.

Preparing to season the beef with a gentle rain of salt

A little note about the Argentinian economy…it’s a basket case! Inflation is high at around 114%. Prices change almost daily. There are several exchange rates. As a tourist, you want to pay for things using the official exchange rate, which makes things cheaper, but you want to exchange your money for pesos at Western Union (WU) or on the street at unofficial exchanges for the ‘blue rate’, which gives you more than the official rate. Foreign credit cards give you the ‘MEP’ rate, which is a bit lower than the WU or blue rates, so a helpful back up although credit cards aren’t reliably accepted or functional here and most places give significant discounts if you pay with cash. Sim spends quite a bit of time standing in line at WU and we end up with huge wads of cash, mostly 1,000ARS. In terms of prices, we’re finding food to be remarkably cheap but most other things to be comparable to Australia, sometimes a little more expensive.

Iguazu Falls

We fly from Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazu, which sits on the border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. We hire a driver for the day, which is cheaper than doing a tour and gives us a little more flexibility but means we don’t have to navigate public transport across country borders!

We visit the Argentinian side of the falls in the morning and then head across the river and the border to visit the Brazilian side in the afternoon. The falls are truly magnificent, really in a league of their own. They were closed the previous weekend due to significant flooding and there’s still an absolutely mind-boggling amount of water pounding over the multiple falls.

The falls stretch along the river mostly on the Argentinian side and then curve around to meet the Brazilian side of the river at the point known as the Devil’s Throat, or Garganta del Diablo. There are walkways on both sides. Parts of them are washed away on the Argentinian side due to various flooding events, including the walkway out across the top of the falls to the Devil’s Throat. The views from those that are open are just incredible, taking you down passed a few to feel the incredible updraft from the falls hitting the water below, and across the top of several others, where you can peer along the drop-offs. You also get to gaze at the whole structure and marvel at it’s sheer size and the occasional rainbow. There’s so much splash-back and mist from the flooding it’s impossible to see up into the Devil’s Throat from here, making for a mysterious and tantalising experience. Little did we know what was coming!

Argentinian side - up close and personal with the very top of the falls…

…plus stunning views…

…and rainbows!

Most of the Brazilian side offers multiple direct views of the falls on the Argentinian side, all of which are stunning.

Front row views from the Brazilian side

So much spray from the sheer volume of water pounding down

But then the path takes you down and you start to see through the trees a walkway that takes you right out into the falls. Queue much excitement! As we get closer we see people coming off the walkway saturated, so we grin with relief (it’s bloody hot!) and pull the water proof covers over our back packs.

Is that what we think it is?!?!?!

Yes it is! The walkway of amazingness!

The walkway goes out along a middle level of the falls right in the heart of the Devil’s Throat. To our left is water gushing down from the very top of the falls and to our right is the drop off for the lower level of the falls. There’s mist and spray everywhere and it’s absolutely thrilling! You’re right in amongst it all, hearing the roar, feeling the power, getting drenched. Back on the banks, there are a few platforms right next to the top level of falls and the few that brave standing close for a photo are dripping wet when they walk back to their photographer, laughing with joy. Absolutely brilliant!