One of the reasons for going to South America was to visit Iguazu Falls. I’ve always had a passion for waterfalls, from very small rapids in countryside streams, through fast-paced cascades in rainforest settings, all the way up to world-famous sites like Victoria Falls. Iguazu is one of the most famous and most powerful in the world – Victoria Falls has a bigger drop and Niagara a greater flow but Iguazu as w hole covers a wider area than both and the whole complex is made up of around 275 individual drops. Indeed its name itself is a giveaway to its power – coming from the Guarani or Tupi language and made up of the combination of “y” (kinda pronounced ‘ih’), meaning “water”, and “ûasú” (‘wa-su’), meaning “big”. As such it was always going to be on my hit-list while I was in the area.
Overview of Iguazu Falls’ Devil’s Throat from the Brazilian side.
The biggest question really was: like Victoria and Niagara, the falls define an international boundary and you can see different vistas from each side, so which side do I do? I researched a lot, because the experience is very different on either side, then came to the conclusion that, you know what, I might as well see both. For the record I’ve only seen Niagara from Canada and Victoria from Zambia, so this was a new experience for me.
I chose to visit the Brazilian side first. This side has most of the river volume, but not as many of the actual many falls. What this means is, viewing the falls in their entirety is much easier from this side as you get a much wider vista, but you don’t get to see many of the falls themselves in much detail. Generalist, rather than specialist. You can read about the Argentinian side here.
How to get a ticket for the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls
I bought my ticket online, the day before. You can buy them from the official Brazilian National Park website, which despite being available in several languages, had a tendency to default to displaying in Portuguese when I was trying to purchase a ticket.
The ticket comes in the form of a PDF with a QR code, and when you buy in advance you have to choose a ‘time’ of arrival – there’s quite a lot of options, roughly every half hour. Note by the way the latest time you can enter to take the route to the waterfalls is 4.30pm. It turns out though that if you mistime your arrival, there’s a helpdesk at the entrance where you can get the entry time changed. The timing is important because at the entrance there’s a queueing system in operation by order of entry time. You can also buy tickets at any of the self-service kiosks or cash-desks; I chose to buy in advance because I’d read tales of issues both with using Visa cards on site, and with accessing money from ATMs, and I didn’t want the hassle of exchanging money into Brazilian Real.
My ticket, as a foreigner, cost $100 Real, or about £13 – it seems since I went, prices have risen to $117 (£16).
How to get between the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls and Puerto Iguazu
There is an hourly bus from the bus station in Puerto Iguazu to the Brazilian falls. It leaves on the half-hour, the first is at 7.30am and the last bus is at 4.30pm. In the bus station it goes from the second of the bays, as you enter from the side, past the ticket desks. You can buy tickets on the bus but I got mine from the Rio Uruguay ticket desk (they’re the company that run the service) – it’s the same price, which at the time of my visit was 10,000 Pesos return. You get two identical paper tickets; the driver stamps or rips one, and you keep the other for the way back, despite the ticket saying it’s ‘from’ Puerto Iguazu.
Bus timetable in Puerto Iguazu bus station for the bus to the Brazilian side of the falls.
The bus takes roughly an hour, some of which is spent at Argentinian Emigration where everyone disembarks and gets stamped out the country. However, and this is important to know: there’s a number of travel blogs that talk about Brazilian immigration too. At the time of my visit, the bus *does not stop* on entering Brazil, and you do not get your passports stamped. As of Autumn 2024, if you theoretically need a visa to enter Brazil, you don’t need one to take a trip to the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls from Puerto Iguazu. This is similar to crossing into Paraguay at Ciudad del Este from Puerto Iguazu in Argentina, via Brazil.
The journey back is identical; buses to Puerto Iguazu leave the falls on the half-hour between 8.30am and 5.30pm from a point on the road to the right as you leave the complex. It’s not clearly marked, but it you wait under the rightmost shelter, you’re in roughly the right place. Again they do not stop at Brazilian emigration; they just breeze right on through. Yes, that means you spend a day legally not being in any country, though for country counting purposes this absolutely counts, They do stop at Argentinian immigration though, and on entry to the country you have to also slide any bags through an x-ray machine.
How do you get to the falls themselves?
Once you’re through the queuing system at the main entrance, you board the next available bus that takes you on the long road to the falls. This bus has four designated stops; most people deboard at the third of them. This is the access point for a walk alongside the river, and all the way along there are views out to any number of smaller cascades.
View looking over to the falls on the Argentinian side of Iguazu National Park.
The path is around 1,500m long, but takes far longer than you expect to walk it, partly because there’s so many other people doing the walk, but mainly because you’re going to want to stop at every possible lookout point and admire the view. And take pictures. You can see the river pretty much the whole way, despite it weaving through the rainforest – it’s at the bottom of a steep bank, so though the road is close by, it’s high above to the left, well beyond the trees, so you don’t notice it. It’s undulating, but not terribly steep. There are stairs rather than ramps for some of it, so it’s not really fully accessible, though it’s smooth enough to be barefoot on (which one young lady was).
The footpath along the riverside.
The path runs on the opposite of the river to most of the smaller falls, which means you get a much better overview of them than you do from the Argentina side. Doing so shows you just how vast the falls are, and how many there are. Although on the map this feels like a one-and-done walk to just the Devil’s Throat, it’s very much more than that.
Despite the large number of people, it’s very easy to see a small amount of wildlife as you walk,. Obviously birds are everywhere, but there are also small land critters that are more than happy to be photographed. These include what I believe to be coati – a sort of South American raccoon.
Close-up of a coati dashing through the leaves and the undergrowth.
The path ends at a small restaurant, shop, and toilet complex built under columns and almost into the rock. From here a second path heads out into the water, crossing on a boardwalk built above it, and ends on a large rock from where you get a very close-up view of the main body of the falls themselves – the Devil’s Throat.
Close-up of the Devil’s Throat.
The Devil’s Throat itself is, strictly speaking, the canyon formed in the rock after the falls, but when you talk about it, most people are referring to the waterfall at the start. The majority of the Iguazu River flows over this cliff edge and into the canyon; the drop is just over 80m and the width of the fall here is around 150m. And it sounds and feels like it. It is a massive wall of water rushing down from above, and is really why you come here. The way the path is situated means you get to see it head-on; it’s a direct view of the whole vista. Looking the other way you can see the river flowing downhill, over and around hundreds of small rocklets. You can also see a myriad of things in the clear water, including coins and the occasional unfortunate mobile phone. How annoyed would you be with yourself if you come all this way to take pictures and then drop your camera?
Wider view of the Devil’s Throat area, with the number of tourists clearly visible.
There’s a lot of people here – this is why you come to this side of the falls, after all, and for many people this is the only thing they’ve come to see. The paths here are rammed with people; there’s really not a lot you can do about it, except maybe time your trip for the ends of the day or on a weekday in off-season, although I visited on a Tuesday in October which is certainly not peak tourist season, yet there were still hundreds of people here.
From the Throat complex, there’s a short climb up a reasonable incline through the rainforest, past a water spring or well that’s been turned into a very fantasy adventure type urn, complete with moss and carvings, and that ends at a larger shop and food complex where the road ends and the buses wait to take you back. There’s also a memorial here to the founding of the National Park, and, if you can see through the shrubs, a view of a very quiet but very wide wider at the top of the falls, with no indication at all of what lies below.
What else is on the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls?
Apart from the walk along the river to the falls, and of course the Throat itself, there’s not much else to do or see on the Brazilian side. One of the most popular though is the boat trips. These are extra costs, not included in the entry fee, and if memory serves are more expensive in and of themselves. They start at the second of the stops the bus from the entrance takes, with a short walk down a rainforest trail to the river, then take you in boats past many of the falls and almost down the Devil’s Throat itself. You get very wet doing this – there’s lockers you can store a change of clothes and your bags in at the boat terminal, and it suggests wearing waterproof or bathing gear, and carrying a dry bag. Amusingly one of the questions in the FAQ is ‘can I do the boat trip barefoot’; it was almost as if they knew I’d be looking. The answer, by the way, is, yes, but it’s not recommended because of the floor of the rainforest trail being twiggy. I did not do a boat tour because, let’s face it, I’m not a water-creature.
The Banana Path.
Also at the second bus stop, but on the opposite side of the road, there’s another rainforest trail. I did walk down here because I am a forest-creature. This is signposted as the Banana Path, and is a 1,360m trail that goes to another part of the river which is much calmer and quieter – the Iguazu River here is very meandery and the falls are in the middle of one of the loops. The path is quiet, and is kind of an anti-climax at the end as it goes to a log cabin with average views out over the river, and an awful lot of midges, to the extent it;’s quite uncomfortable to stay that long. It is quite nice to walk through the trees though, and on my visit I saw thousands of butterflies, of many different colours and varieties, including a whole pack of them just sat on the ground.
Lots of butterflies. They scattered amazingly like a horde when I approached.
There is another rainforest trail at the first bus stop, the Poço Preto Trail, which goes for an 18km round-trip, and I do wonder who on earth takes it because by the time you’ve gone there and back, most of your day’s already gone. I imagine it’s also not that much different to the Banana Path, in that it ends at another quiet part of the river, rather than anywhere near any of the falls.
Inside one of the buses that ply the route to the falls.
The buses that ply between the Park entrance and the last bus stop at the Devil’s Throat run pretty frequently, every few minutes or so in principle, though in practice there are delays leading to large queues at either end. This also means if you’re getting on at one of the intermediate stops, there’s a chance buses will pass completely full, although usually there are going to be people getting off so you shouldn’t have to wait too long.