We crossed into Argentina relatively hastle free and stayed in Puerto de Iguazu. The falls from the Argentinian side are even more breathtaking. We took the train up to Devils Throat which is the biggest and most powerful section of the falls and a long walkway takes you directly over the falls, just a few feet above the torrents of water that are crashing down beneath you.We stood there for over an hour just marveling at the immense power of the water. As you stare downwards into the the mist rainbows appear beneath you and birds flitter in and out of the mist. It was a bizarre experience to look down beneath your feet and the grass underneath you and see birds and rainbows as if everything was strangely inverted. To the left you can see huge gorges and more falls disappearing into the distance.
We spent the day walking through the rainforest to see close up many of the other 275 falls. Everyone took hundreds of photos, some of which i will upload when I can. In the forrest we saw troops of monkeys, iguanas, lizzards and ginuea pigs - I still find the concept of "wild" guinea pigs roaming the forrests slightly bizarre.
We left Iguazu and headed for the Argentinian wetlands. We were stopped three times by the police on our first day of driving. They went through all of our bags and stuff in the main body of the truck and brought a sniffer dog on board. However "Bonita" the dog wasn´t the snarling Alsatian that you expect but an incredibly nervous laborador who kept on hiding behind her handler, quaking everytime one of us jumped off the truck. We are begining to realise that the police checks are a regular occurence but generally tend to be nothing more than an inconvenience from bored policemen trying to push their luck and get some bribes out of the gringos.
After a bush camp by the road overnight where we saw our first gauchos whooping through the grasslands as they rounded up horses, we set off for the second days drive towards Carlos Pelligrini the town at the edge of the wetlands national park. We had initially worried that we wouldn´t be able to make it to the park as the road in is notoriously difficult and often becomes impassable. We set off at 7.30am and travelled until lunchtime covering about 250 k without seeing another vehicle except one poncho clad gaucho on his horse.
It had been raining since 2.30am and the road isn´t tarmaced but has a sand/earth surface which turned to rutted mud in the rain. We drove for hours through grassland and the cows gave us the same quizzical looks that lots of people do when we passed them raising their heads from grazing, all eyes pointing towards us. My nose was suddenly jerked out of my book where it had been buried for some time as the truck started skidding and swerving across the road. It was a long protracted and quite violent snaking skid and we headed almost on two wheels toward a deep ditch at the side of the track. We stopped just in time but the sandy surface had become like wet clay. I remember from pottery lessons at junior school that wet clay is know as "slip" and now I understood why. It had been like hitting a patch of black ice in a 14 ton truck at speed and the tyres were well and truely burried. We all had to get out and start digging and then put sand mats down to help us out. One of the guys was thrilled as it finally felt like a proper adventure, and I have to say secretly I shared his thoughts. After a couple of attempts and lots of skidding around ourselves we got Tortug, our truck, out.
Carlos Pelligrini must be an incredibly dull town to live in. Its sole amenity´s were limited to one public payphone and a tiny bar that had an interesting crazy paving and bamboo construction. We were camped right on the banks of the main lake which covers 53sq km and the majority of the park is made of floating islands in the water. We headed into the forrest on the edge of the lake and heard our first howler monkeys. We found several groups of howlers and another type about 3 metres above us in the canopy. As we stood gaping upwards open mouthed and taking photos they all took aim and showed us exactly what they thought of the stupid gringos beneath by each in turn emptying the contents of both their bowels and bladders on us. Luckily the distance between us and their orrafices meant that you could see the welcome presents starting to fall towards us and we could jump out of the way in time, but otherwise their strike rate would have been spot on.
On our first evening in Carlos Pelligrini we watched the most incredible sunset across the lake. The rays spread upwards lighting the dappled clouds spectacularly as the red sun descended through the orange sky beneath the water on the horizon. Before bed I watched an incredible lightening storm on the opposite side of the lake. Constant flashes reflected in the water gradually coming closer as more of the lake was lit up. I tracked the path of the oncoming lightening as it made its way along the bridge over the lake. As it did so the wind picked up and within a few more minutes was blowing at gale force with the lightening almost directly around me. The power of nature up this close can make you feel electric inside, scared, excited and exhilarated all at once. It really felt like I was in the eye of the storm. Finally the torrential driving rain arrived and around us people emerged from tents that had blown down or had to be helped out of the colapsed tangled mess of material around them. There was an open-sided shelter where we took refuge until the worst of the wind and rain had passed. There was constant "ting, ting ting" sound as tent pegs continued to be hammered back in throughout the night but once again I awoke in the morning floating in my tent with a newly created lake around the outside of it.
The morning after the night before, we all emerged to survey the damage. We spent the morning bailing out tents, rewashing my clothing that I had only finished drying the night before and rigging the shelter with ropes so that it resembled a chinese laundry. The locals said the storm was highly unusual and very strong but I figured that we should expect a bit of water - we were in the wetlands so they were doing exactly what it said on the tin.
I had spent 2.5hrs the previous evening cleaning the floor of the truck (my job on board is Mrs Mop). After digging the truck out of the mud the day before the floor was covered, in places up to an inch thick, in solidified clay. I had to scape it clean with a knife, scrub it dry and wet with a scrubbing brush and then wipe it clean with a jay cloth. I had banned everyone from entering until it was dry but it sparkled cleaner than when we had first picked Tortuga up. Now in the cold light of day I surveyed the brown, wet muddy carnage before me. I felt like someone who had spent 2.5hrs preparing a gourmet meal only for her guests to arrive and say that they weren´t hungry as they had stopped for a Macdonalds on the way. They hadn´t even seen my gleaming floor before it was trashed again. And I´m going to have to do it all over again said poor Cinderella!!
Luckily we were blessed with a glorious afternoon and spent 3-4hrs on a boat going around the wetlands which were teaming with wildlife. It was amazing to see capybara (the largest rodents they are in essence a 65kg giant swimming guinea pig) and caymens from 2-3feet away. There were deer, birds, capybara and caymen all sitting within feet of each other apparently feeling no sense of threat either from each other or us. At one point we got out onto one of the floating islands. It was springy underfoot and close by a cayman and a capybara sat, the later eating and the former observing us open mouthed with its prehistoric eyes. The idea of getting up close and personal with a cayman seemed like bungy jumping - your brain says that it is completely wrong but you ignore your instincts and do it anyway. I figured that if the capybara weren´t purturbed then I shouldn´t be. They could provide a decent rump steak and with shorter legs than mine I fancied my chances more if we had to run for it.
We were blessed with another incredible sunset and thankfully an uneventful evening as far as minor hurricanes went. Happily I awoke on Friday morning at 5.00am not to the now all to regular feeling of floating in my sleeping bag but to loud snuffles and the sound of ripping grass and chewing right beside my head. We had watched the capybara the previous evening around our tents and BBQ so I guessed the source of the unusual dawn chorus. I remember doing my Duke of Edinburgh at school and being pushed out of my tent by frightened tent mates as we had been imagining all sorts of nightmarish Snowdonian creatures that could have made the loud noises we could hear outside our tent. It turned out to be nothing more than a hedgehog making the racket which was amplified in the dead of night. What I would have thought then if I had known that 17 years later I would be lying in a tent in Argentina giggling in the knowledge that a giant swimming guinea pig was having its breakfast beside my head.
On leaving the wetlands we had two days of incredibly dull driving across completely flat grasslands. We covered 1000km on an absolutely dead straight red earth road where the scenery around us didn´t change. Though stunning in its own right the khaki grasslands stretch as far as the eye can see with the odd tree between the grass and the enormous expanse of brilliant blue cloudless sky. For much of the journey we sat on the roof seats of the truck and watched the birds around us, huge hawks soared above and there were big emu type birds along the roadside. We bush camped again last night but in the less than glorious surrounds of a service station. The only benefit being that we had en suite loos shared with the Argentinian truckers as opposed to the bush pits that we normaly make when camping in the wild. I seem to have a great problem finding these bush loos normally and spend ages stumbling around, cursing and twisting my ankles on tree roots in the dark, so the flourescent lightbulb was a beacon in the dark for once. I have already become accustomed to being very thankful for small mercies - waking up dry, finding a loo that is more than a hole in the ground, only being held up for short periods by the regular police checks, making it to our destination without myself or "my" truck floor being caked in mud. And I´m loving every minute of the adventure - you laugh at everything and keep remembering that it all adds to the experience and it sure beats sitting behind my desk at work!
6 votes 
