The volcanic wonderlands of Rotorua and Taupo

Straight after landing in New Zealand we took a car and drove to Rotorua, a volcanic area, still pretty active judging by the fumes, the many natural hot tubs around, and the wonderful smell of sulfur (I say wonderful, not because it smells good but because it allows one to fart, fairly discretely, and blame it on the volcano).

What color would you like your water today?

Rotorua was our first New Zealand home for 2 days. The hostel was very average and definitely below our expectations but the location was pretty central at least.
Around Rotorua we went to visit the thermal park of Wai-O-Tapu. It's a pretty neat park where we got to see many different manifestations of the underlying volcanic activity. If the smell wasn't really my favorite, the many colors of the rock and the water were definitely a highlight!

Iguazu Falls are huge!

Denise and some of the falls

 From Buenos Aires we did a quick jump north to Iguazu Falls. The weather up there was way hotter than anything we got so far. It wasn't quite as humid as in the amazon thankfully, but the sun was pretty unforgiving.

The falls are right at the border between Argentina and Brazil. A bigger part of them is in Argentina but a very dramatic fall, known as Devil's Throat, is more easily visible from the Brazilian side. Looking at both options the infrastructure on the Argentinian side is a lot more developped with many walkways and view points, and even a 1km long walkway above the water to reach the Devil's Throat. We decided to start with that side. Unfortunately we didn't get the time to make it to the Brazilian side as well afterwards, since it's actually 1 hour later in Brazil and it's a 50kms drive to go from one side to the other.