Misiones

The Argentine side of Iguazú National Park is built for proximity: a network of raised metal walkways (the Upper, Lower and Devil's Throat circuits) leads visitors directly over and alongside individual cascades, and a small train connects the circuits to save walking between them. The Devil's Throat circuit ends at a viewing platform suspended directly above the largest and most powerful single cascade, where the sheer volume of water makes conversation difficult and a permanent mist rises high enough to be visible from a distance. Boat trips that go directly beneath some of the smaller falls add a wetter, more visceral alternative to the walkways, and the surrounding subtropical jungle, alive with toucans, coatis and butterflies, makes the approach itself part of the experience rather than just a route to a viewpoint.

Misiones takes its name from the Jesuit missions established here from the 1600s to convert and protect Guaraní communities, before the order's expulsion from Spanish America in 1767 left the settlements to decay. San Ignacio Miní, the best preserved of these ruins, retains substantial sandstone walls, carved facades and a clear sense of the original settlement's scale, and is easily visited as a half-day trip from Iguazú or Posadas, the provincial capital. The wider Misiones interior — red laterite soil, rolling subtropical hills and yerba mate plantations — is a genuinely different Argentina from the pampas or the Andes, worth at least a detour for travellers with time beyond the falls themselves.