Iguazu Falls

I did a trip up north to Iguazu Falls. Iguazu Falls is at the border of Argentina and Brazil near the border of Paraguay. It is 275 waterfalls about a mile and three quarters long that drop between 210 and 275 feet. During times of flood it is basically a single waterfall. Iguazu Falls is in the running to be listed as one of the wonders of the world. It is an awesome place. The waterfalls are surrounded by tropical jungles full of birds like toucans and parrots with monkeys in the trees. From the air flying into the area the falls are visible from a long way off as a big cloud. Then as you get closer the details start to emerge and the clouds become sprays of water coming up from the roaring falls. There are rainbows in the mist. The river leading to it winds in a serpentine fashion and then spreads out into a wide shallow lake like lagoon before plunging over the horseshoe shaped edge for more than a mile and a half.

I spent my first day there only looking at it from a distance off my hotel balcony because I arrived in the late afternoon, too late to make the hike to the falls and back in the dark. I checked into my room and went downstairs to the outdoor bar/ restaurant to relax after my hard day of traveling to get there from Buenos Aires. It should have been a simple short flight to get to the falls but the airline was on strike and the workers were intentionally making travel slow. It seems like from what people told me that the airlines are on perpetual strike in Argentina. Such is life. I still made it it just took a long time.

While I was sitting at the patio drinking my beer and munching on some food the people around me started to look behind me and then they all got up and were taking pictures of some monkeys climbing on the balconies of the hotel. Everybody thought that they were real cute and they took lots of pictures. I had seen a lot of monkeys and they had destroyed my condo in Costa Rica three times by breaking in and throwing a wild party inside with food fights and pissing and shitting all over inside. So I did not think they were quite as cute as some of the people watching them. I talked to a girl from Norway that I met at the table next to me. She was traveling alone and we agreed to hook up later to do some hiking and to have a drink in the bar later on that night. I wanted to take a shower and rest a bit before I started to go out for the night. So I went back to my room to clean up.

I unpacked some of my clothes and straightened up the room in case I had any visitors later and then jumped in the shower. I took a nice long hot shower and shaved, brushed my teeth and the whole shebang. I thought I heard someone in my room and I rushed out of the bathroom naked to find three large monkeys sitting on my bed eating my oreo cookies I bought for the plane ride. I yelled at them thinking that it would make then run away but they just sat there eating my cookies totally unafraid of me. I went back into the bathroom and got a big glass of water and a towel and I raced back out into the room making as much noise as I could while swinging the towel over my head and whooping. Then I threw the glass of water at them. They stood up on the bed and bared their teeth at me and the largest one got up on all fours and growled at me. I called the hotel and asked them what to do and they told me there is nothing I could do and I would have to go out in the hall and wait until the hotel staff told me the room was safe again. I told them I would wait in the bathroom but they insisted that I leave the room. So I stood out in the hallway wrapped in my towel.

I think a couple of bus loads of tourists had just arrived because while I stood out there a hundred people must have walked by thinking I was some kind of perverted flasher. The staff showed up and they opened the door and watched until the monkeys decided to leave. They kept giving me grief about leaving the door open. I had closed and latched the balcony door but I had not locked it. The monkeys knew how to open the door if it wasn't locked with the key the hotel staff told me. In a few minutes the cookies were gone and after a quick sniff around to see if there was any more food they just went back out the balcony door. The hotel went in and cleaned up my room for me with a stern warning to lock the door with the key in the future every time I went in or out of the door. Ok I had learned my lesson.