Las Cataratas de Iguazú, Misiones, Argentina: Having never seen Niagara Falls, I wasn’t prepared for a real waterfall, but Las Cataratas de Iguazú (Iguazú Falls — Iguazú means big water in Guarani) are truly staggering: staggeringly beautiful, awesome, and terrifying.

The park has a Disneyland-amusement park quality to it. Park rangers load tourists up into silly little trains that take forever to carry everyone up to the top of the falls. The lines are endless in the heat, but when the train finally reaches the top of the falls, the walk out to La Garganta del Diable (Devil’s Throat) makes the wait worthwhile.

The pathway out to the falls is a little under a kilometer. The river rushes by beneath the walkway, and every creak the passageway makes from the pressure of hundreds of tourist footsteps adds to the excitement.

You can hear the roar of the falling water before you see the cloud of spray rising above the falls.

The pathway ends at a platform situated on the lip of the falls that is probably about 20m by 10m. When you make it to the edge through the throngs of people, you can look straight down into the mist. The noise is incredible; the spray is very dramatic. The whole thing verges on indescribable, but I’m trying.

Off to the right of the platform are the remnants of another on the washed away in the rushing water.

The best vantage point is really from below. After walking around the upper and lower passages, I had a real sense of how big the falls are. I then went on one of the tours offered in the park. Called La Gran Aventura (the great adventure), it began with a tour of the jungle and an overview of the local flora and fauna.

There are fifteen jaguars in the park, and apparently they can swim across the river and the rapids. In addition to the jaguars, there are also a number of pumas. I briefly saw a toucan and a capuchin monkey. And of course the coati are everywhere.

At the end of the drive through the jungle, the tour continued on a catamaran. The boat went up the rapids and circled around the base of the falls several times for excellent picture-taking opportunities. At a certain point we were told to put our cameras into waterproof bags. The captain then drove the boat under a couple of the waterfalls. Each time he got a little bit closer until finally we went completely under one of them.

It is so much fun! First you get hit with the spray, then with a stream, and finally the water is cascading down, and it’s impossible to see anything. By the end everyone is sopping wet and you get a real sense of the power of the falls.

It is also an excellent way to cool down in the sub-tropical heat!