No Fixed Plans

We finished our stay at the ranch by having breakfast at 9am, and hanging out with their dog and sheep-dog until our 11:30am transfer arrived. 

We all knew we had roughly 24 hours of travel ahead so we were enjoying our last bits of fresh air for a while

It was about an hour to the Argentinian boarder. After we got through, we drove about an hour to supermarket so we could all load up on snacks. 

We then drove about 10 more minutes to where we could get lunch.

We then carried on for a while where we then stopped at the side of the road, waiting for a public bus to pick us up. While waiting, we noticed a hitchhiker and one of our Spanish speaking group members went up to ask him how long he had been waiting, to which he responded a few hours. We were able to see him get picked up before our bus arrived though. 

We all settled into the bus, expecting to be there until 10am but being surprised by arriving at 7am. 

This did mean though that we had to wait for about 30 minutes at the bus terminal for our private transfer to arrive. 

We had about a 20 minute ride to the Brazilian boarder, which took us 20 minutes to cross. 

We then had 30 minutes to our hotel, learning that we had to leave our bags and take everything we wanted for the day as we wouldn’t be able to check in until 2pm. 

We all headed to a buffet breakfast and then walked to a different place to get coffees. We all then took Ubers to see the Brazilian side of iguazu falls and the national bird park. We were all in seperate groups as we all had to take separate Ubers. The girl I was with and I ended up in the bird park first (which wasn’t intentional but lucky in the end) where we walked around for roughly two hours, looking at all the birds, turtles, crocodiles, snakes and butterflies before heading over to the falls. We took the bus over to the falls and walked the trail down the whole falls. The trail finishes with a bridge where you get really close to the falls and end up getting soaked. 

After we had taken enough photos we went back on the bus, which helped us dry off a bit. We then went over to where our uber that morning had dropped us off to order one back to our hotel. When we got back to the hotel, we were able to check in and shower straight away as it was 4pm. We both also got lucky with needing to do laundry anyway so our wet clothes got put straight into the laundry bags. We then had about 2 hours before dinner at 8pm for a different girls birthday. The girl I had been with all day ended up at the shopping centre with about two thirds of the group whereas the other 6 of us went to the place where Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet before dinner. We then all went to dinner, which lasted a few hours. We all got to sing happy birthday to the birthday girl who got a brownie. We then went back to the hotel and got ready for our 6am start the next day. 

We left at 7am the next day to head to the Argentinian side of Iguazu falls. We got there around 9am and walked around for a couple of hours, making sure we saw them from all different angles

We then went down for a boat ride that went right into the falls. 

We got given waterproof bags for our bags and got given warnings for when to put our phones away. 

After the boat ride, we gave our bags and lifejackets back and took a bus back to the cafeteria where we got picked up from. This is where we all got changed into our spare clothes that were in our bags and then we were able to get lunch before leaving. On the way back, we stopped at a local community. It’s the biggest group that lives around Iguazu with 70 families living there. We got shown around, explained the festival like event they were currently having (it was basically a party for all of the kids- something that they don’t get to do often). We got shown how they used to build their houses and shown into their greenhouse where there was a bunch of plants. We then got to pick a tree we were to plant as a group and give it a name. We chose the name “meow”, which made the guy laugh. We then were able to buy some locally made things before heading back to the hotel. 

We had about two hours from getting before majority of us were heading into Paraguay to shop duty free and have dinner. 

We got back around 10pm, everyone picked up and paid for their laundry and we all packed bags for our departure the next day, using our group chat to figure out who’s spare laundry we had