….an average of 1.5 million litres per second….or so we are told! Welcome to Iguazu Falls!

Our little adventure to Iguazu started out with our driver/guide meeting us at the airport with an umbrella and an excited “so you know about the blockade?!?” Huh? After three days of criss-crossing continents, we were a bit foggy and obviously out of touch with the inner workings of the local government in northern Argentina! Turns out some of the airport construction workers hadn’t been paid in weeks and were blocking the road to the airport – can’t say that we blame them. Thankfully we are good Vancouverites and don’t mind a little walk in the rain so off we went with our bags to walk past the blockade. A half hour later we were on the road to the border and into Brazil!

Day one of our falls viewing was on the Argentinian side of the park. Now everyone has an opinion on which side of the falls they prefer and in fact both sides are pretty awesome for different reasons. Argentina is know more for the walking trails that take you up close and personal to a number of the falls. About 70% of the falls are on this side of the park. The rush of the two biggest falls – San Martin and Devil’s Throat – is pretty amazing. We were also able to take a boat ride right up to the falls on the river below. On a hot summer’s day, the obligatory pass into the spray of the falls felt pretty darn good!

Day two was spent on the Brazilian side of the park. The park is a bit more polished and professional and involves a lot less walking to get to the falls. Only 30% of the falls are on the Brazilian side but the viewpoints provide a spectacular panorama of the whole thing. We’ll let these two little videos say the rest.

Welcome to our blog!

Last week was all about endings – we both finished up at work on Friday and said good-bye to colleagues, friends and family. So many people have been so supportive of us and had such kind things to say as we bid our farewells. We feel so lucky to have worked with such amazing people and made so many connections over the years. Needless to say it has been a pretty emotional week.

This week is about new beginnings as today was our first official day of retirement. And what did we do? We spent the day cleaning the house, clearing out the fridge and trying our best to pack everything we will need for the next three months into two medium-sized duffle bags. It is made somewhat more challenging by the fact that we could find ourselves in anything from 30C to -30C!

Tomorrow we will be up bright and early to catch our flight to Toronto then south to Buenos Aires. The plan is to see a bit of BA, spend a couple of days exploring both the Brazilian side and Argentinian side of Iguazu Falls (we’ll let you know which side we prefer in this hotly contested issue), then head even further south to Ushuaia where we will board the National Geographic Explorer. This will be our home for 10 days or so as we journey to Antarctica. Fingers crossed that the seas are calm but I have lots of Gravol packed just in case….

Stay tuned for our next post from the road!