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7:00 a.m. There are good reasons to get up early, even on vacation. It’s practically impossible to sleep to the singing of the birds outside, and the tables on the hotel verandah are already hard to get. One of the many features of the Hotel Tropical das Cataratas 1 is breakfast in the fresh morning air, while watching the low-flying toucans and the spinning and diving swallows in the mist around the falls. The only hotel inside Iguaçu National Park is in direct contact with one of the most extraordinary natural wonders of the world. Its fine, classic colonial architecture, painted in light pink and with wooden stairways, makes every exploration jaunt along the wide corridors and through |
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the adjoining tropical gardens a special delight. The 50-year-old building and its large rooms was originally a casino. But after
being remodeled several times, the hotel was proclaimed p fa Heritage of Humanity, in 1986, along with the surrounding National Park. This unique hotel is so engulfed by the constant rumbling of the falls that the windows of its 201 apartments have wooden wedges to cut vibration noise.
8:00 a.m. By this time, you have been taken by the subliminal tremor of the falls, and are anxious to get near the epicenter. Go now and beat the bus loads of tourists who will soon arrive from the city of Foz do Iguaçu. Take the Cataratas Trail 2, out in |
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front of the hotel, and enjoy one of the most impressive shows on earth. The 1.2 kilometer paved trail, with stairways, follows the edge of the deep gorge. The lookout points are more like box seats in the great amphitheater of the cascading water. Near the main falls, a walkway with railings, laid over stone pillars, takes you directly to the Devil’s Throat, through a billowing mist. There, where the two main falls drop over 80 meters, one can feel what perhaps the Caingang Indians meant when they named the place “iguaçu”: big water.
If you’re left a little dizzy by this vortex, maybe you should take the new panoramic elevators to leave the gorge. They will open on |
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