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Puerto Iguazú >  Google™ Map Apr 2016  Misiones Coat of Arms

puerto Spanish port + y water + ûasú Tupi big. Population - 82,227.

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Apr 2016

Misiones Coat of Arms

Given that you're probably here for the waterfalls, the town isn't totally about the tourism although there are some tropical knick-knacks on display. Saying that, a wildlife guide came in handy as how else would you know that's a snake-necked turtle?

Puerto Iguazú - Avenida Misiónes

As a tourist, remember when you were pulled over at gunpoint in the taxi from the airport and forced to part with some pesos for a green voucher?

That weren't no shakedown, your eco-tax funds the conservation of all 259 square miles of the National Park in which the waterfalls lie, probably.

  Bambu Restobar (Avenida Brasil)

Downtown 'Restobar' with outdoor decking on the junction of the 'seven ways' and they've at least that number of how to serve a caipirinha.

The town of Puerto Iguazú only really dates from the turn of the 20th century, catering to the tourists who had started to visit the waterfalls.

Downtown certainly retains a real frontier town feel although things are a little more modern on the Av Victoria Aguirre.

She was one of those first tourists and funded the main road through that takes her name. She still provides funds nowadays in the form of a cashpoint that actually works.

Puerto Iguazú - Avenida Misiónes

This is just down from the bus station here and every half hour, they'll shuttle you to those waterfalls, which are some 12 or so miles to the south-east.

  Jardin de Los Picaflores (Fray Luis Beltrán)

An old lady's garden at the end of Av Belgrano that's brimming with hummingbirds. There's a nominal fee for the upkeep and you'll have them practically eating out of your hand, apparently.

Just out of town, this is where they wash some of those buses. It's an ingenious business model based on the Forth Railway Bridge.

Puerto Iguazú - Hipólito Yrigoyen

After some rain and driving back out on that road, any undercarriages are going to need another, immediate scrub.

Trying to describe the destination to a clueless taxi driver, who'd have thought the phrasebook would provide 'near the bathroom of the buses' as a passable translation?

  Jungle Lodge (Hipólito Irigoyen y San Lorenzo)

They have some lodges, near some jungle and there's a moth the size of a bat on the balcony of room 5.

To get here, you'll likely have landed at Argentina's Aeropuerto Internacional Cataratas del Iguazú. If not, you might have arrived via Brazil's Aeroporto Internacional de Foz do Iguaçu or Paraguay's Aeropuerto Internacional Guaraní and you're visiting by ferry from the ^iCiudad del Esteit^ or you've just driven over the bridge and through the Brazilian checkpoint from Foz do Iguaçu? Phew!

Whatever the complications, it's all about the cataras and the River Iguazú flows from the waterfalls just north of town. Where it meets the River Paraná, the Hito Tres Fronteras marks the watery border of the three countries.

SlyBob are normally big fans of this sort of thing but having now done some homework, this place was inexplicably overlooked and unforgivably unexplored.

Besides, you too will be too busy looking for a cashpoint that actually works.

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