Day 4 - A little heat stroke and Otitis

After waking up in a barely air-conditioned room in a pool of sweat, we opted to GTFO of our hotel, sacrificing the money already spent on our prepaid room – it was that bad.  It was New Year’s Day, so not many alternate hotel options available – two options to be exact.  One was a bit iffy and ran the risk of the same photo fraud as our first hotel.  The other, well, the other was the nicest hotel in town.  They say go big or go home, so we went big and opted to give the nice hotel a try by driving over and begging for a last-minute room.

The Melia hotel is not situated in town like every other hotel in the area; it is located inside of the Iguazu Falls National Park and it overlooks the jungle and the falls.  We arrived at the hotel and they had two rooms available.  One facing the jungle for a headache inducing rate.  The other facing the falls at a swoon inducing rate.  Since we technically still had some refund money left over from our Quark ship cancellation, we went big and got the last falls facing view.  The room wouldn’t be ready until afternoon, so we left our luggage and walked into the park to start exploring.

The easiest way (I thought) to describe the two sides of the falls is that most of the falls are on the Argentine side, but you get the best views of those falls from the Brazil side.  We weren’t sure what to expect since we had already seen the Argentine falls.  The Argentine side is much bigger and had a train to take you to some parts of the park and hikes to give you other views.  We had heard that the most exciting thing to see was the Devil’s Throat and we wanted to ensure we didn’t miss it, so we started there first.

To get to the Devil’s Throat, you (and a billion other people) board an open train car where 4 people are squished on a bench meant for 3 people, facing another 4 people on an opposite bench.  You are so close together that you must interlock knees with the people across from you to fit.  Now let’s add in some 95-degree heat for added bonding excitement with complete strangers!  New Year’s Day is apparently one of the more popular days at the park…

The train ride was about 15 minutes and we all got off at the same stop.  You would think the falls were going to run out of water the way people shoved to get there first.  The falls are not visible right away – you walk about 1 kilometer on a metal bridge/walkway to get there – it weaves in and out of the jungle but is mostly over the river.  In the open sun. 

  

Was it worth it?  Sweat pouring down our faces – dripping off my chin - and clothes completely soaked.  Hell, yes it was worth it.  It took about 15 minutes to walk to the falls and you just get excited by the first thing you see which is the top of the falls.

Until you keep going.  And you hit the waterfall mother load.  Devil’s Throat is spectacular.  It is a massive horseshoe shaped water fall and you are literally right on top of it.  It is loud and it is (thankfully) very very wet.  

We hung out awestruck for a while taking enough pictures and video to get the falls from every possible angle and then headed back to the train.  Luckily, the train back was nearly empty and we had a comfortable ride.  We picked up a few bottles of COLD water and finally learned what the weird animal signs from the road were referencing – they are Coaties, or as I referred to them, ROUSs (if you don’t get the reference to the Princess Bride, stop reading now and go watch the Princess Bride).  Coaties are big aggressive rodents that seem to be in the racoon family. 

There are signs every five feet with a picture of someone’s bloody hand telling you not to feed or touch them because they can be aggressive. 

We saw several Coati skirmishes over food - they completely ignore people and will run over your feet, onto your lunch table, and rifle through your bags.  And despite the countless warning signs around the park telling you not to feed them, we saw enough people letting them dig through their stuff while they took pictures that I started rooting for the Coati to attack these morons.  These things are big – not squirrel size, more racoon size.  And there are TONS of them.  Not uncommon to see 20-30 in any area where there were concessions.

Back to the park…  we stopped for a quick lunch/air conditioning break and had another interesting encounter.  I had ordered a bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce and finished about 2/3 of it – I ate all the sauce leaving a decent helping of noodles.  Damon went to the bathroom and I cleared our table.  As I was walking to the garbage to dump my food and leave my bowl/tray, a youngish girl approached me (early 20’s?) and pointed at my bowl and said something in another language.  I thought she was asking if the spaghetti was good, so I said “yes”.  She picked up my bowl off the tray, grabbed a dirty fork out of the tray return area, and headed outside.  We later saw her with whom I assume was her boyfriend with backpacks – I guess they were adventuring on under $5 per day…  At least it didn’t go to waste.  Or to the Coaties.

On to our first heat stroke inducing hike – the Upper Circuit.  The hike was about 1 mile and covered the views of the upper falls getting you up close and personal with each grouping of falls.  Each view was better than the last. 

We stopped after the Upper Circuit for more water and debated calling it quits due to the heat, but we soldiered on and completed the Lower Circuit – also about a mile – and enjoyed spectacular up-close views of the lower parts of all the falls.  Our master plan worked and the ending of the Lower Circuit was about as close to our hotel as you could get without being on-property, so we hauled our dripping selves the last few meters to the reception desk, checked into our room, and immediately hopped into a cold shower to get body temps back to normal. 

When we felt human again, we went down to our infinity pool overlooking the jungle and falls, had some pina coladas and a burger, and lounged for about 3 hours enjoying the magnificent views. 

We went up to shower for dinner and I realized that my ear, which had been acting a bit funky all day, was now fully clogged and I couldn’t hear.  I poked around with a Q-Tip which only made things worse.  I’ve had this happen once before as an adult (and often as a child), and was thus pretty sure I knew what the problem was.  We are about to enter TMI territory so continue at your own risk… but apparently, my ear canals don’t naturally drain the way most folks are supposed to and occasionally (last time was 8 years ago), I had to go to the doctor to get it cleaned out.

We called the front desk to see if they had any suggestions (keep in mind, it is now 7pm on New Year’s Day).  The hotel doctor had already left, but they have an arrangement with a local clinic and they arranged to have a hotel driver take us into town so I could visit the clinic.  After about a 30-minute drive with absolutely no one out and about, we got to the center of town – completely deserted – and walked into their local clinic. 

The clinic was a tiny building with a tiny front room.  We walked right in to see the doctor who was waiting for us.  We went into the office area and I sat down to provide my information to the nurse who spoke no English.  The doctor, who looked to be about 24, and nurse were incredibly nice – luckily the doctor spoke a bit of English so I explained the issue.  I was led to a bed which had a thin pad on it and a few stains, but it’s not like I was having surgery there so I ignored it. There was a metal IV pole reminiscent of the 1960’s and the bed pillow was, some Argentinian cartoon bear.  The doctor hopped up on the bed next to me where we sat with legs dangling and looked in my ears.  He confirmed what I already knew – wax clog, aka swimmer’s ear, aka Otitis.

They put me in a chair, held a bowl to the side of my head, and shot water through a syringe into my ear to clear everything out.  Yes, it was totally disgusting in a Shrek-like way, yet at the same time, completely liberating as my hearing came back immediately.  My supportive husband looked on from a few feet away craning to see the gunk coming out of my ear – I’m sure so he could hold it over my head for the Foz story.  I got a prescription for ear drops that we filled next door (for $3).  The entire process from hotel room to hotel room was only an hour and a half and the amazing Melia hotel covered our transportation as well as all medical costs, thus re-affirming that our decision to switch hotels was spot on!

We had a very late dinner at the hotel restaurant and finally went to bed in our wonderfully air-conditioned room.