Iguazu Waterfalls.

One of the rare moments I managed to get a butterfly to stay still. Some sweet words of kindness did the trick.

Jurassic Park isn´t it!?

To give a sense of scale, that thing in the water is a huge powerboat maybe 20ft long.

The clouds are a coming.

I was right. It was whisky again, and this time the waitress just poured and poured until I had half a glass (yes proper glass) tumbler of the stuff. I had quite a pleasent night´s sleep as you can imagine.

The landscape had changed completely from Salta to proper tropical jungle. The mud on the sides of the roads are a deep orange and the nearby tress and grass a lucious green. Either side of the road is what seems to me like just jungle. So dense and full of different types of plants. I wouldn´t want to walking in it that´s for sure. If it´s even possible.

The main attraction of this town are the nearby waterfalls, of which a famous person once commented ´Poor Niagra´upon seeing them accroding to our guide book. A half an hour bus from the bus station in town and we were at the gates of the park. The price for entrance seemed a bit steep at 85pesos (around 15pounds), especially when Argentinians pay 15pesos, but we stumped up and off we went.

Nothing could have prepared us for the sheer beauty and sound of the waterfalls. It was like stepping onto the film set of Jurassic Park just without the dinasaurs. Absolutely incredible. The sound of being up close to a huge wall of water was mesmerising and coupled with being covered in the mist and water spray it was a real `experience´, maaaaan. The cool spray was a nice relief from the humidity too. I mentioned the humidity in the last post in Salta, well that was nothing. Here you were literally covered in sweat no matter what you did.

Aswell as the waterfalls, what really impressed was the wildlife that you could see. More so the butterflies. I´ve never seen so many different types of butterflies in one place. (Except for ´Pili Palas´on Anglesey maybe!). They were of all colours, bright reds and black, vivid yellows and some had the most amazing patterns. They came in all sizes too. The only trouble was getting a photo. For such beautiful insects they make awful models. As soon as you got your camera out and focused, wham, they´re off flying around all over the place again.

So a great day in the waterfalls park. Worth even the 85pesos I´d say in the end. We caught the bus back into town and back to our hostel.

This has been our cheapest hostel so far at only 2.50 (pounds!) a night each so we have been impressed that the place isn´t a complete dirty hole. What makes the place almost unbearable is the woman who runs the place. She has to be the most incompitent hostel owner in the whole of Argentina. To give you an idea, we were greeted to our ´breakfast´this morning by a plastic cup from the top of a flask sitting on top of a plastic saucer surrounded by the toasted crusts of a tiny baguette. All of this on a table that had been wiped with the dirtiest rag imagineable. Good Morning dear guests!

We´d met a nice older couple from Devon, Rob and Jo, who´d been there a night longer than us and after here an argument from our bed this morning between them and the lady they obviously couldn´t hack it any longer. Accompanying our lovely breakfast this morning was a note saying ´We couldn´t bear it any loner, have a nice trip´.

It´s one more night for us also before heading off to Sao Paolo. This also sadly means the end of our visit to Argentina. I think we´d both agree that Argentina has been our favourite country of the trip. It is a great great country, but unfortunately also has deep deep problems that are really holding the country back from progessing. Politics is still completely corrupt (President Kerchner was on trial a few weeks ago for stealing money), the bureaucracy of getting the simplest things done is unbelieveable, there´s no loose change AT ALL which means you get small change in the form of sweets and there doesnt´t seem to be a seriousness in anything. In spite of this the people are, on the whole, extremely kind and generous and our time in Buenos Aires especially was without doubt one of the highlights of the trip.

So, Brasil here we come. A nice little factoid for you is that the city of Sao Paolo has the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan. Around 1million I think. Avid readers might rememeber our love of the Sushi in Buenos Aires so we´ve decided to stay in ´Japan ´Town in Sao Paolo. There must be even better Sushi there!!! Adios!