The landscape around Buenos Aires doesn't look much different from my home in Illinois. I think like 80% of the food for the country is produced in this Pampas area to the west of BA.
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Buenos Aires has like 14 million people, so there is plenty of sprawl. This looks like a newer developer far far from the city center. The interesting thing is that the corrugated steel roofs show that this is not a super developed country.
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Nice colors and nice views. I love having the window seat on an airplane.
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Another residential development out past the airport, but this one is obviously more upscale.
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Had to transfer between airports upon arrival in Buenos Aires in order to catch the ongoing domestic flight out to Iguazu Falls. Since there was enough time for a coffee, we passed through Palermo for a quick look at the area.
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Another quick look at a street corner in Palermo. It was about 5pm on Christmas Eve, so shops were closing up early and people were heading home.
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I took this photo from the domestic airport which is right on the Rio de la Plata downtown. This is the river delta, so it is so wide you can't see the other side.
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Apparently this Austral Air merged with the old Aerolineas Argentinas. There are a lot of other airlines down here that you don't see elsewhere: GOL, AeroSur, Taca, LAN.
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Yes, this is a big city. There aren't many really tall buildings but a lot of medium risers.
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Paid for the jeep ride and longer boat trip approach to the falls. It is more expensive, but it is a fun way to approach the falls from down river.
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It was billed as a jungle jeep tour which is kinda true. The falls are in a huge national park that is really densely wooded. At 25 south latitude it is plenty warm year-round.
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There is a lot of wildlife in the park, but the butterflies were the biggest surprise. There are some more beautiful ones later.
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The beginning of the boat ride is peaceful with nice scenery all around. These cliffs are what make for the nice waterfall up ahead.
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You can't see much here, but there were some serious rapids on this boat ride and we were going UP. The boat is super powerful and the drivers obviously have some skill.
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And there is the first view of Iguazu Falls when you approach from the long boat ride. Already we have a hint of something big.
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We are sitting on the Argentina-Brazil border at this point. The Brazilian tours can only come this far because the falls we see are on the Argentina side.
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First the boat takes you close enough to get good photos without getting wet. This is still one little part of the falls.
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Up ahead is the Devil's Throat which you can't even see with all the mist. For a good view of that, you need to take a long walk on the Argentinian side from the right.
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That is what the boat looks like. They make good money off these tours. The basic one is 30USD per person and the longer version with jeep lead-up is $60.
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You can't really tell but my shirt is soaked. I had to put my camera in a dry bag for the rest of the boat ride. They take you right up into the mist as you can see from the boat below.
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The main falls are so spectacular that it is easy to miss all of the other beauty around the park. Notice the people on the lookup at the top left. Many nice viewpoints.
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So many crazy curtains of water and lots of this two-step action. It is really mesmerizing to watch and it is surrounded by all this green beauty.
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One of the more colorful butterflies. This was still the dry season so there weren't a lot of other insects but plenty of mariposas.
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This is another one that you see a lot. I think the other side of the wings is blue, but they always show-off this 88 image. Seems like some kind of gang-
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After 1km of walking along a suspended walkway over the upper part of the river, you come to the Devil's Throat.
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Amazing volume and power here. It does seem like the devil is trying to swall this big river.
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A curtain of falls over on the Brazilian side. Most people like to see both sides of Iguazu, but the visas are expensive for Americans. I was quite satisfied with just the Argentina side.
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Lots of these cute little Coati around the park. Apparently they are common throughout South America and not too afraid of people.
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Found a family of coati sleeping together just off one of the forest paths through the park.
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One of the lesser falls found elsewhere in the park. Normally this would be a main attraction at a national park, but here people hardly notice.
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Two of these walked onto the trail right out in front of me! Pretty big and had me scared for a minute until I realize that they were more scared.
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This is a free boat that takes you across a quiet part of the river to San Martin Island which sits right in the middle of the falls.
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Another view of a curtain from San Martin Island. You can get pretty wet just from the mist.
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This is not the Devil's Throat. Just another big chute of water heading down through the rock formations.
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Another beautiful green spot. I wonder how some of these plants hand-on to the cliffs because there is even more water rushing over these parts in the high season.
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At the back of San Martin Island. This could be impressive with a bit more water. There was actually a huge Yacare Caiman (type of crocodile) sitting on the rocks, but you can't see it here.
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Nice framed view of the Devil's Throat from a viewpoint on San Martin Island. Really, this place is some kind of crazy paradise.
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Scenes like this reminded me of the Pixar movie UP. This place would certainly be worthy of Frederickson's life-long yearning to visit. Apparently, Angel Falls (formed by a similar process) was the actual inspiration: http://science4grownups.com/archives/2009/05/29/general/the-real-world-behind-ups-paradise-falls-530
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