The best way to explore Iguazú Falls (Argentina)

Iguazú Falls is a UNESCO World Heritage site, located on the border of Brazil and Argentina. It contains 275 waterfalls, is larger than Victoria Falls in Africa, and is almost 3x wider than Niagara Falls (North America).

Getting to Iguazú

The airport to Iguazú is IGR.
If you want to stay overnight you will want to book accomodation in the nearby city of Puerto Iguazú
- When I visited, I stayed in the cute, family run Tucán Hostel, read my thoughts on the hostel here.

Getting to Iguazú National Park

To get from IGR to Iguazu Falls you can either take a taxi directly from the airport, or, if you want to take a bus, then you will have to go to the city of Puerto Iguazú first, and catch a bus from there to the park. Here is a great website for you to read more on various transports: https://getbybus.com/en/blog/iguazu-airport/.

To get from Puerto Iguazú to Iguazu Falls you can either take a taxi or a bus. With inflation, prices in Argentina always fluctuate. As of 2023…

Taking a taxi will cost you anywhere between $15 – $20 USD and will take around 25 minutes.
Taking a bus will cost you 600 pesos one way, or 1200 round trip (less than $2 one way and around $3 round trip) and it will take around 30 minutes
- It is easiest to buy your bus tickets at the station, day of, cash only. In the morning, to the Puerto Iguazu – Terminal de Omnibus and purchase tickets to Cataratas Argentinas with Rio Uruguay Bus. These buses run around every 20 minutes.

Entering the Park

As with many sites in Argentina, Iguazú Falls has a different prices for locals and foreigners. For a foreigner, general admission is around $15 USD.

That being said, there are two ways you can get the price of your ticket discounted:

Buy online and you get 15% off (you can use Visa or Mastercard for this). They also have a QR code at the entrance of the park you can scan in order to buy online.
If you can find anyone who went to the park the day prior and has a physical ticket they’re willing to give to you, then you can bring that ticket with you to the park and get a 50% discount for reusing a ticket. You can pay for this with cash or card.

Maximizing your time in the Argentine side of the park

To maximize your time in the park, aim to get there when the park opens at 8am. If you are taking the bus, this means trying to catch a bus around 7:30.

To get to the two trails you will want to hike, you need to take the Green Trail “Sendero Verde”

Then you will want to hike the Lower and Upper Circuits, each circuit takes around 1 hr. You can do them in either order but I personally enjoyed the Upper Circuit better. The reason you do these two first is because everyone in the park rushes to go to the most popular site, El Gargantua del Diablo, first. Thus, by not following the crowds you get to see the sites and hike the trails with less crowds, with the added benefit that, since there are less people and it is early in the morning, you may catch a glimpse of wildlife.

The Upper Circuit

The upper circuit brings you up and on top of the waterfalls for some really cool views.

The Lower Circuit

The lower circuit brings you to some great wide angle views of the waterfalls

El Gargantua Del Diablo (The Throat of the Devil)

After you’ve done both circuits, you want to next go to the Devils throat. In order to do this, you need to catch the in park train. The train is free and only has 3 stops.

At the visitor center at the very front of the park
Estacion Cataratas, which would would have walked by on your way to the Upper and Lower circuits
The final destination of El Gargantua Del Diablo.

You can catch the train at either its first or second stop.

Once the train arrives at its final destination, there is only one path for you to take in order to walk to El Gargantua Del Diablo. It is a metal walkway which takes you out over the water, which is a pretty cool experience unto itself. At the end of the walkway, you arrive at a location where the waterfall has cut into the rock in such a way that, from where you stand, you almost feel entirely encircled by waterfalls.

It is hard to really show in photos, so check out this video that gives a bit better insight:

At the time of year that I was in the park, there were hundreds of butterflies along the walk to and from the Throat of the Devil. These butterflies were super comfortable around people, and if you stopped walking, sometimes they would land on you.

And thats it! Now you’ve seen all the major sites of the park. Now all that is left to do is catch the next train back to the entrance and you can exit the park from here in order to catch the next bus (or taxi).