Iguaçu from both sides

I highly recommend Triplíce Tour, located in Hotel Del Rey (Rua Tarobá 1020, CEP 85851-220, Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná, Brazil; phone [45] 2105-7500).

On a tour to Brazil in October-November ’09, my friend Mike and I visited Iguaçu Falls for three days and booked a day tour with Triplíce to visit Itaipú dam, the Bird Park and the falls on the Brazilian side for BRL190 (near $104). As it turned out, there were only the two of us on tour.

Our guide, Fernando, who spoke excellent English, is co-owner of the company. Because it was raining, he suggested that we skip the Bird Park and do it on our way to the airport on our last day.

We enjoyed his service so much, we booked a day tour for the next day with him to the Argentinean side of the falls for BRL100 ($55).

For that next day’s trip there were seven in our group along with Fernando and a driver who was just as gracious. Some of the group wanted to take the boat ride up to the falls, while some of us didn’t. One couple wanted to go hiking the trails into the rainforest.

Fernando accommodated all of the different requests with great courtesy and even changed the sequence in which we visited the falls when the line for the train ride to the trails for the Devil’s Throat cataracts was too long.

On our final day, Fernando escorted Mike and me to the Bird Park as planned. We had some additional time after that visit, so we took a helicopter ride over the falls for BRL180. This was a 15-minute ride with some spectacular overviews of what we had seen up close — a great way to end our visit to these magnificent falls.

My suggestion — if you have just one day to see the falls and don’t mind a lot of walking, visit them on the Argentinean side. There are points along the way where you get overview vistas plus up-close encounters from above and below the falls, and you can get out to Devil’s Throat, which isn’t accessible from the Brazilian side.

RON OAKHAM

Tucson, AZ