2-Day Iguazu Falls Adventure

This 2 day tour was excellent. I was lucky to have Daniela F as my guide for both days, incredibly professional with interesting stories and insights at each location. I recommend this tour if you are coming to see Iguazu Falls. The hotel was very nice too, with an easy walk to the Triple Frontiers.

Our two-day Iguazu Falls Viator trip was great. We chose to see the Brazilian side of the falls and spend a night in Brazil before seeing the Argentinian side of Iguazu Falls. Day one was magnificent! Seeing the massive falls from 'ground level' was overwhelming. The hotel accommodations provided by Viator were excellent, truly a 5-star hotel. On day 2 we saw the falls on the Argentinian side. Seeing them from above was a perfect ending to our Viator trip.

We loved the falls, Lucia is an amazing guide

The worst tour ever!! Let me start by saying that we love tours and have used tours for 40 years, we have been on long multi-country tours and short lunch tours. We are well aware that not all tour guides are stand up comedians. The Viator “2-Day Iguazu Falls with airfare from Buenos Aires” @ $2,000.00 was expensive and we were very excited to go on it. We were picked up at our hotel and loaded into a van, no one said “Hi” or introduced themselves (Never did learn the tour guide’s name…) There was none of the usual - “Hello, I am so & so and today we are going to explore blah blah”. Zero, crickets… So, we are being driven by 3 glum souls deeper and deeper into a rainforest with zero conversation. There should have been plenty to talk about, the rainforest was beautiful and we were passing what looked to be indigenous settlements, but no, not a word. By this time we were starting to feel like we were headed off to an organ harvesting site. We asked what was going on and received grunted responses about picking up others (Ok, thank God!) We picked up others and assumed that we would now get a run down of what to expect, but no, that never happened… We were finally told that we were going to Brazil first, our printed itinerary had us going to the Argentinian side first but that’s fine. This was supposed to have an English speaking guide, he would utter a few things in english but the little that he said was mostly in spanish. Fine, we are off to see a UNESCO Heritage Site, we will get through this! We arrived at the falls and followed the guide to the bus, still no talk of what to expect (How long is the trail, what we are looking at, where to meet, NOTHING). We get to the falls and are pointed to a trail.` The guide is grumply sitting under a tree. By this time, we are grumpy too. We have no idea how long the trail is or what the conditions are, but we soldier on. It is 4 in the afternoon and 100 degrees. I am not feeling 100%, so we get through what looks to be about 75% of the walk and decide to wait for our group to head back. After a bit we realize that it appears to be a one way trail, no one was coming back.. We asked an unrelated guide what was going on and he happily explained that it was indeed a one way trail and most groups met at the shopping area at the end of the trail. We went to the shopping area and waited for our tour group to emerge. Horrible!!! But wait, the ride back to the hotel just gets better! The traffic is bumper to bumper (obviously, not the guide's fault) After about an hour of this, they send the youngest guide, with our passports in hand, to run up ahead to check us out of the park. Again it’s 100 degrees, young guide sent on a 3-4 mile jog. After about another ½ hour our guide and driver become frustrated and start driving erratically on the other side of the road against the incoming traffic. Yes, you heard me correctly, weaving in and out of oncoming traffic, horns blaring, people screaming at us!! Frigging fighting nightmare! We pass the young guide and keep going, I yell “stop”, but they continue. The young guide now flat out running to catch up (With our passports….). We finally escaped the park. We arrived back at our promised “4 star” hotel and are now able to check in. We had left our luggage at the hotel desk in the morning because it was too early to check in. Too early to check in also meant that we had to take all of our valuables with us on the tour and because we had zero faith or trust in our guides, we carried them on our hike from hell. Shocker alert!!! The hotel is a dump, an 80’s Aztec monstrosity complete with cracked avocado green linoleum flooring and unpainted plywood walls. We emailed our contact for advice for the second time that day and asked what to expect the following day. We learned that our exit flight has been pushed back from 4pm to 8 pm. That's 12 hours with the guides from hell, to visit a waterfall?!?!. No thanks. We asked for an itinerary and how we were going to fit our luggage in the already filled tiny van. We received non-helpful information back. Enough! We notified the contact that we will be discontinuing the tour and asked if they could book us on a 10:30am flight that had plenty of seats available. Zero response. We caught a cab back to the airport and swapped our 8pm flight for the 10:30am and enjoyed a beautiful day in Buenos Aires.

This tour was amazing. Our guide, Ariel, was well organised and approachable to answer any questions. He ensured everyone was comfortable and kept well hydrated as it was very hot and humid during our stay in the region. It is a very busy tour but well worth it for the magnificence of the Iguassu Falls. There were some difficulties with information provided by the tour operator however they always responded to messages and clarified information when contacted. Be sure to do the jet boat ride if you do this tour- absolute fun, even if you get drenched.!!