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| Looking around a hill. |
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| Water cascades over the landscape. |
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| Rainbow over the river. |
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| Walkways over The Devil's Throat. |
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| Plants manage to thrive amidst the turbulent water. |
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| A smaller waterfall contributes to the river. |
An eternity ago, my sister lived in Malawi, and I visited her with mum. We had a great time, as equal in unique experiences for me as this trip was. Part of our itinerary was a stay by Lake Malawi. One morning there after breakfast I wandered down the steep, rocky path to the beach (yes, Lake Malawi has beaches. It's beautiful there.) Something hopped from the rocks and sat in the middle of the path. It was smallish but not tiny. It looked at me. I looked at it. I looked at it some more. What the hell was it? It was a strange feeling, seeing an animal I didn't know. At the tender age of thirty I assumed I had seen pretty much all the animals that there are to see. Well, not every single species, and not in person. Every sort of animal, usually presented to me by David Attenborough on the telly. So just what was I looking at? Was it dangerous? It seemed a ridiculous thought, but in my mind all bets were off.
A short trip back up the path to talk to the owner of the place where we were staying and I was assured that they're quite harmless. They were rock rabbits, aka hyrax. A truly strange encounter, I thought. Surely I have now really seen all the animals.
All of this is a roundabout way of saying that I saw an animal I hadn't previously known existed at Iguazu Falls. That animal was the ring-tailed coati, and while I wasn't quite as surprised as I was by the rock rabbit, it was still delightful to see something unexpected.
Coati are similar to raccoons, and often travel in groups. I would refer you to one of the views above to get more acquainted with the creatures, but I completely failed to set a suitable exposure for dark furry things hiding in shadowy bushes. I tried to salvage them digitally but the results were poor. There are a couple of regular camera shots in the bonus photos linked at the bottom of this page
They were however very cute. I noticed some children had stuffed coati toys. They were evidently a big deal in Brazil, but as we'd just arrived they were news to us. The toys were a little problematic. Although not dangerous when left alone, coatis do not appreciate human contact, especially not from the grasping hands of infants. I didn't see them actually maul any children but I did occasionally hear suspicious rustling from the undergrowth. I can only assume the plush toys are part of their evil scheme.
After seeing how popular they were, I had high hopes of finding a suitable coati-themed souvenir. My preferred souvenir medium is the fridge magnet. God help me if they ever start making plastic fridges, but I love the things. They're relatively cheap (although I imagine the markup is quite lucrative) and small, and once home they go on the fridge door where I can admire them every day. Also they sometimes come in novelty shapes or have lenticular images, and what 3D enthusiast can resist a lenticular fridge magnet?
Alas, I found no coati fridge magnets. All there seemed to be were large stuffed toys similar to the ones clutched by children as their parents dragged them around the falls. None of these were particularly appealing, especially given the already difficult luggage situation. Our internal flights in South America were all subject to a maximum luggage weight of 15 kg. A back of an envelope calculation suggests that if I were to sacrifice previous luggage space, I could fit between two and seven actual live coatis in. This would have added an exciting element of danger to packing, and would have been greatly surprising to everyone at customs.
In the end I bought a relatively boring fridge magnet with no coatis on it.
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