Tom and Noel's South America Cruise: Iguazu Falls 2/13 and 2/14 The excitement continues!

Our flight on LAN airlines from Buenos Aires to Iguazu was running about one hour late by the time we boarded. The plane had taxied a short distance and we had stopped for a few minutes when we felt some sort of impact and shaking of our plane. Looking out the window you could see a large number of ground personnel pointing at the rear of our plane making gestures to our pilot. Soon we had a huge crowd of various vehicles and people gathered around us. It turns out that a plane from another company that was being towed had hit the tail of our plane with the end of their wing. We sat on the plane for over one hour before the planes were separated and we were towed back to the gate area. We stayed in the terminal for about another hour and a half then boarded another plane for the completion of our flight and arrived at Iguazu Falls about 4 hours late. Our ship delayed the Tuesday departure time so we could extend our time at the falls and do our entire scheduled program. Nine people decided to return to the ship after the accident and not continue the tour. Their loss. The accident was front page news in the Buenos Aires newspaper with several pictures and even a double page spread on the inside section!

Front page of the paper

Inside story with more pics

View from our hotel room

It is difficult to describe the falls, They are immense, 1.7 miles across with 275 different falls. There are 4 large ones with The Devil's Throat being the largest. Our Sheraton Hotel is the only hotel within the National Park and looks directly at The Devil's Throat. Once we arrived we got a few minutes to change clothes and then hiked down 600 steps, viewing some smaller falls along the way, and arrived for our boat ride. We were given life vests and a water proof bags for our belongings. We were taken close to the Devil's Throat, made a pass under a smaller fall, then made two passes under the San Martin fall, (the second largest). We were absolutely soaked, like someone had turned a fire hose on us! We then headed down some rapids where one wave came over the side and a foot of water hit Tom in the chest as he was sitting on the outside seat. We traveled about four miles down river where we got out of the boat and than walked up about 200 steps to reach a big 6 by 6 truck (WWII vintage) that took us through the jungle and back to the hotel.

View from our boat

Soaked to the skin!

We had a nice buffet dinner at the hotel and Tom tried some Argentina Cabernet and thought it was quite good. We had a great first day with the added excitement of the airplane incident.

In the morning we had breakfast and checked out of our room, leaving our bags in storage before meeting for our two walks that ended up being about 3 or 4 miles total. Our first walk took us to the area above the Devil's Throat. The view from above was utterly spectacular and we again got very wet from the spray that was blowing back on us. There was a system of raised walkways that connected all the areas of the upper river to reach the different view points. In several places you were right above a fall looking straight down, amazing! We then walked back to the hotel for a shower in the health spa and a nice lunch before going to the airport for our flight back to Buenos Aires. We made it back to the ship in time for Tom's normal 6 pm martini. This experience ranks right up there with the best we have had. Off to Montevideo again for another visit, Goodbye to Argentina!

Above Devil's Throat